We made it to the Olympics! Luckily, for us, it wasn’t too hard to get to. The Olympics were taking place about 100 miles from Cheonan in a town called PyeongChang. We bought tickets when we first arrived to Korea for the Women’s USA vs. Finland hockey match. We tried to buy the same tickets in the United States but they were really expensive. When we got to Korea we received our Korean Alien Registration Card. This allowed us to buy Olympic tickets just like a Korean citizen would, which meant the tickets were like half the price. There was just no way we could pass it up! One of the most amazing things Korea did while preparing for the Olympics was building an entire new train line along the eastern part of the country to get people to PyeongChang. Korea won the bid for the winter Olympics in 2011 and since then the government managed to construct 172 miles of new high speed train track (the train goes 155 MPH, and runs from Incheon to PyeongChang, with stops in major cities) and they built six new train stations along this line. The trains have Wi-Fi and ample leg room. It was about 2 hours from Seoul to PyeongChang so every little amenity helps. Also, The tickets were really affordable. They were about $20.00 each way, which isn’t bad considering how far we had to travel. We were so so lucky! It wasn’t completely freezing the weekend we were going to the Olympics. Heidi, who also was with us for this adventure, had been up in PyeongChang to see a friend a few weeks earlier and it was -15 degrees. I think our average temperature was somewhere in the 20s. It was still really really cold, but totally doable with our puffy long jackets, mittens, beanies, hand-warmers, boots, and other miscellaneous layers we had on. We got to the lower Olympic village around ten. There were two Olympic Village areas but we only had time to visit one of them. We visited the Olympic Village at the base of the mountains. The other Olympic Village was up in the mountains where all the skiing events and opening ceremonies took place. Our hockey match didn’t begin until 4:50, so we had plenty of time to look around. Our first stop was of course the Official Olympic Store. It was huge and people were literally going nuts for merchandise. I guess I can understand that though. They traveled from far far away to come see the events. Casey and I collect pins from places we go. Pins are super small and don’t take up a lot of room, so for us, it’s perfect! We also checked out the NorthFace store! NorthFace was a huge sponsor of the Korean Olympic team. We decided to buy the Team Korea Olympic Jackets. They are really neat, and we wore them to school the next day and our kids loved them! Next we hit up the Korea Tourism building. We love the Korean Tourism website so we figured we had to check it out! We had gotten to the Olympic Village right when it opened so luckily for us, there wasn’t a lot of people in the Korean Tourism building yet! We got to try on some Hanboks (traditional Korean Clothing) and color our own bag, which had a traditional Korean drawing on the front! After we were all cultured out we had some lunch and had time for one more building before we needed to catch a bus over to our hockey stadium. The Samsung building was awesome! It showcased a lot of their old phones and a bunch of the old torches used during the other Olympics. We also got to try a wicked cool VR simulation. We never really were big on VR but this one was really cool! It was approaching game time so we made our way back to the bus stop area where we ran across a parade, so of course, we had to stop and watch for a few minutes. Finally it was time for the game! We hopped a Pyeongchang Olympic bus and soon arrived at the Kwandong Hockey Arena. We arrived right on time! We quickly found out our tickets were for seats just three rows up and just off center! Not too shabby! It was crazy to see the excitement of all the people around us, and it was so neat to see people that had traveled all the way from America to support the American athletes. It was actually really weird to hear so much English too. America ended up winning 3-2! They also ended up winning gold and Finland ended up getting bronze, so it was neat to be able to see two medaling teams compete (even though we didn’t know it at the time). We took a late night bullet train home and got to bed around 1AM but it was definitely worth it! It would just be a coffee day at school the next day :) We had quite a busy week after the Olympics. It was Lunar New Year so we got Thursday and Friday off! Yippee! It reached 30 degrees so we decided to brave a hike. We ended up doing a hike in a city called Anyang on the Thursday we had off. It was really pretty but was much longer than we expected. After ten miles of hiking it felt great to sit down on the train. The next day was the actual Lunar New Year. In Korea it is known as Seollal. This is one of the biggest holidays every year in Korea. Christmas isn’t celebrated near as much as it is in the states, and people spend Christmas with their friends rather than with family. During Christmas, most everything is open: malls, movies, restaurants, pretty much everything. But during Seollal, which is celebrated for four days, pretty much everything is closed except large chain coffee shops, major malls, and the large palaces in Seoul. During this time, the palaces are free to get into. Usually they are $1.00 - $2.00 to enter, so it really isn’t that much of a fee to begin with. The first place we visited was Jongmyo Shrine, which was used for worship during the Joseon Dynasty. There were also little “raccoon dogs” there that were so so cute! Apparently, its official name is the mangut or tanuki. They were just wandering around probably looking for food. Next we went to the Bukchon Hanok Village. A traditional Korean house is called a Hanok, and this specific area in Seoul has a bunch of Hanoks that are used as shops and houses. It’s a gorgeous area and always has some yummy treats! Our final stop was Gyeongbokgung Palace. This is the largest, and I believe the prettiest, of the five main palaces in Seoul. As we were walking to the palace we accidently stumbled our way past the Blue House! The Blue House is the president’s office and residence. Of course, we had to stop and get a picture. They offer tours in the Blue House, but you have to sign up about a month in advance, so we are looking into doing that. We also ended up in Seoul another time, and we stopped by the Korea War Memorial Museum. We usually aren’t museum people but the museums in Korean and Japan have been awesome so we have been going to more and more. We made it through about half the museum but learned A LOT about the Korean War. The war began on June 25, 1950 after North Korea invaded South Korea. There were so many battles I had no idea existed. If I have time I would love to read about the Korean War. We also stopped by a café in Seoul that was a lego café, the official name is Get and Show, but we just call it Lego Cafe. You buy some drinks, and some time and then pick a lego set to build. We bought an hour worth of time, and picked out a train station lego kit. We had so much fun we ended going back a few weeks later to build a rocket ship! Afterwards, we went to an area called Hongdae, which is like the cool kid area! Our final destination for Seollal was to a city call Bucheon, which is just south of Seoul. It actually is quite a large city and felt really spread out. We decided to go to the Korea Manhwa Museum. Manhwa is pretty much Korean Comic books. It was really neat to see. The majority of the Museum was in Korean so it was hard to read, but still impressive to see. We ended the day with our own personal bowls of Shabu Shabu (like personal hot pot) and it was so so yummy!
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