I’m home!!!!!!

Not home as in the lemon tree home, or even my new apartment, but in some random cheap hotel near LAX Airport. But it’s home because I’m finally reunited with my family!!

My parents arrived in the afternoon in a rented mini-van. I was wiping the floors of my now bare room when they reached my doorstep, and I could hear my parents calling, “Sophia! Sophia!” (in a heavy Korean accent)

I don’t care if Adele sang my name, the sound of my parents calling my name sounds even more heavenly. I leapt up and embraced my parents and my brother, all of us grinning like a bunch of sillies.
They were starving from the 5-hour flight from DC, so we immediately went out for lunch. Not anywhere fancy, just the open food court at my school. We had Carls Jr. burger and California Pizza Kitchen. I had the vegetarian Japanese eggplant pizza and a cup of Dakota split pea and barley soup, but I could taste nothing. My ears and head were just buzzing with excitement and joy to see my family again.
By the way, my family is trooper. I had SO much stuff, but they cheerfully helped me load and unload all of them, never complaining even though it was seriously a lot of work. Who else would do this kind of labor so joyfully for me? Nobody but my dear family.

My parents LOVED my new place. I feel like everything is just working out so smoothly. We happened to arrive early at my new apartment and the manager was not there to let us in, so we wandered out and just chanced upon this Korean car dealer and we might just have found a car for me. We’ll give it a test drive tomorrow and if all goes well, it’s gonna be mine! Fingers crossed!

But dear Lord, unloading and unpacking takes forever. Especially when you have several boxes of kitchen equipment and an embarrassing amount of canned items and food. Gargh.

Also we needed a day to get electricity in my new place, so we decided to just sleep at a hotel and kick back with a nice dinner.

It was already about 8 p.m. when we were ready for dinner, so we just went ahead to the same place my parents had loved the last time they were here: Curry House in Little Tokyo.

My brother and mother studying the menu:
My brother wiping his nose. It was chilly.
You know another reason I love my family? We are a family who LOVES spicy stuff. So yup, all of us ordered our curries “super hot.”
Which is the maximum level of spiciness Curry House offers.

My dad got the Seafood Curry with spaghetti:
Super hot, of course. You eat it by slathering the lightly dressed spaghetti with the spicy Japanese curry:
My mom ordered the Chicken and Garlic Curry:
Which comes with a spinach pilaf.
Really really good.
My brother ordered the Chicken Katsu curry with runny egg and cheese:
Really crispy and flavorful katsu, and of course the super hot curry made the best dipping sauce!
Like me, my brother loves runny egg and melted cheese. Good  boy.
I ordered the spicy omelet rice:
Chicken Chili pilaf wrapped in soft omelet and topped with meat sauce.
Oh my Gosh. So so so so goooood!!! The egg was incredibly luxurious, just slightly under-cooked for that lovely velvety feel. And the meat sauce tasted a bit like regular Ragu sauce, but I don’t care, it was amazing mixed with the rice.
Another Lee family trait: we love our pickles. We finished this whole jar of pickles:
And then asked for another jar and finished that too. The management probably hates us now.

We didn’t really care for the salad that came with our entrees.
But we didn’t really mind because we were so happy with our food and our company. Our food just vanished within minutes, and we just had such a lovely time together.
Tomorrow we’ll hopefully be picking up my new car, and then finishing unpacking and shopping at IKEA. Now, I’ve got to return to my family time.
Ta-ta!
Question of the Day: What do you love about your family? What is your family’s quirk?

Related posts:

1. A Little Tokyo Day Trip
2. The Bunny’s Fat Spoon
3. We Loved. We Fought. We Hated.
4. Pampered
5. It’s Everybody’s Battle

Tagged as: chicken, curry, deep-fried, egg, Japanese, omelet, pasta, pickles, rice, seafood, spaghetti