Of course, my beloved uncle Arthur is the reason for this trip. He had a small stroke while working outdoors at his place in Alaska, and consequently fell down an embankment, breaking his neck (literally) and experiencing a concussion, with concomitant brain injury, impacting memory and cognition.
Alaska is not a good place to get treatment for those things, so he was air-ambulanced from Ketchikan down to Seattle, and upon discharge from the hospital he has been staying with our very close and long-term family friends who live west of Portland, Oregon. He has stayed here so many times before, over the last 30 years, that it is a familiar place with familiar people (both of which is helpful relative to the memory issues).
Anyway, that's just a short summary of why I'm here. Arthur is still just Arthur, despite the current situation – his personality is unchanged and in some situations you'd never realize what could be wrong.
Today we had Korean Shin Ramyeon (Korean-style spicy ramen, 신라면). Keith had said he liked ramen and I was telling him about spicy Korean style, which is different than the non-spicy Japanese style that is popular in the US. So when I saw the Shin Ramyeon on the shelf in the Fred Meyer store in Forest Grove the other day, I bought some. And today, we had it for lunch.
Arthur and Keith both liked it – I expected they would, because they both like spicy food, anyway. So we had a Korean 분식 (bunshik = fast food) lunch. Here's Arthur with his ramen. Note that he doesn't normally use chopsticks – he was hamming slightly for the camera.
Later, I went to the airport and fetched my sister, who is flying up will be here after I leave to return to Korea on Friday.
[daily log: walking, 4km]