Gwanchoksa Temple

After the Strawberry picking, we went to the Gwanchoksa Temple!  This temple is in the same area as the strawberry picking place (Nonsan), so we decided to make a full day trip out of it!

When we first got to the temple, we were greeted by a small hallway, which is known as the Cheonwangmun gate.  On either side of the hall were two statues, each with a different item in their hand.  One had a guitar and another had a sword.  These statues are known as the shrunken-headed four Heavenly Kings.

Next we ascended up a steep staircase.  I had to hold little Monster because I was worried he would trip and fall down the stone staircase.

We then came to an open area with buildings all around.  There was a huge and beautiful two story building that was painted intricately in the traditional Korean colors.

There were detailed paintings of flowers, designs, people and faces.  The colors were so stunning!  Inside we could hear chanting and worshiping taking place.

To the right of the building was the largest stone statue I have seen!  This is the main reason why people come to this temple- the18 meter tall statue of the Stone Standing Maitreya of Gwanchoksa Temple.  This is the largest stone Buddha in Korea!  This stone statue was built about 1000 AD!

Next to the stone Buddha is the stone lantern!  I loved how the tips all curled towards the heavens.  I'm sure during the spring and summer it is absolutely beautiful because it was surrounded by flower pots!

Next to the lantern and Buddha is the stone four-tier pagoda.  All the stone work was so beautifully crafted and preserved!  It was neat to see something made so very long ago!

The last thing we saw was a covered bell.  I have no idea what the bell was for or what it represented,  but it was beautiful and I wanted a picture with it!  Ha!  So if anyone knows what this bell is, let me know!

Nonsan Strawberry Picking

An-yong-hash-nim-neec-a, this is Big Sis here. FYI I just said "Hello there" in Korean. The reason I know this, is because I have been taking Korean class at school. Anyway, I am going to write about  the Nonsan Strawberry Picking patch (AKA a strawberry green house.) It was about an hour drive from Osan Air Base, but it seemed pretty fast.

When we drove in the entrance of the Strawberry Farm, me and my siblings started to become very curious and excited. If you know Monster very well, he knows an animal when he sees one, especially a dog. Well, it turns out, since this is basically a farm, there where many farm animals there such as dogs, many cats, a few tortoises, bunnies, and (no joke) a goat! But, besides the super cute animals and a crazy Monster yelling "Puppy! Puppy! Puppy!", we headed towards the green house for the real reason we where there.

When you arrive to the Strawberry farm, you have to check in and pay to stay. The reason is because(wait for it...) you get to eat an unlimited amount of strawberries. But, the sad part was, you could only eat the strawberries you pick there, and you're not allowed to take any out of the farm unless you buy some. We where given a guide that could speak English, and we headed to green house 9 out of the 40 green houses.

"BEES", I yelled when I walked in. Yep, I am very afraid of bees. Me along with M&M and Little A ran behind mom for protection. That didn't really do anything, because all she did was push us back in front of her and tell us the 'buck up'. Pretty much what a mom would say to you for a really pointless fear. After calming down and realizing that the bees had no interest in us, we moved along the long aisle of the biggest and reddest strawberries I had every seen in my life. All we had to do was listen to the guide on how to pick a strawberry that was the sweetest (based on the shape of the stem) and how to pick it with out killing the plant. After that, we were set loose and were having the strawberry dream of our life.

Monster devoured every strawberry he saw within a 5 foot radius, he would run, pull it off as quick as possible and eat it whether it was a red one or even a green one.

I however, just simply walked down the aisle and picked about 10 strawberries that where the biggest and the reddest ones in the green house.

These strawberries were literally the best strawberries I have even eaten.  They tasted so sweet and yummy!

M&M ate so many strawberries that she was beginning to feel sick.  Actually, I think we all ate ourselves sick.

Since it was a green house, the green house radiation made me and everyone else start to feel real hot, so we decided to pick just a few more strawberries, quickly eat them, and go outside of the green house to cool off in the 60 degree wind. Yes, it was still feels like winter here. We asked our guide if there was anything else that we could do there to pass the time, and there was, it was kite flying. To be honest, I am a pretty decent kite flyer if there was a good enough wind, and oh boy there was a very strong wind on a certain field at the farm. That's where we flew the kites.

We where given two kites to use. Little A was like a flash when she was handed the kite because all she did was take off running towards the field. She was more then excited to fly the kite!  M&M kind of sort of started off the flying part of the kite, but it didn't last long due to the way she was flying the kite. I started off Little A and M&M and they where having so much fun. Monster even tried it too.

After about 20 minutes of kite flying, we turned the kites back in. We had the option of making strawberry jam, but we didn't have much time left to stay at the Strawberry farm. Instead, we finally convinced mom and dad to go pet the animals. When we went over to the bunnies, our guide ran into us and he noticed us looking at the bunnies. He opened the gate and gave us strawberries to feed them. It was so much fun watching them eat up the strawberries. They where so soft too.

The goat didn't really like to be petted, but we feed him anyway. After a few minutes of petting the dogs and looking at the tortoises, we had to leave. It was a very interesting and amazing event in the middle of February. This was surely an adventure to remember.

PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics

After our Olympic fail earlier this month, and after hearing all the stories from my friends about their experience at the Olympics and after all the hype, I REALLY wanted to go to the Olympics.  Every day I would search on the Facebook groups, to see if anyone was selling an extra ticket.  One morning, I happen to get lucky!  I found that there was two tickets to the figure skating singles for Women!  The only problem, it was tomorrow!  I quickly replied, "I want it!" and went to work trying to figure out what I was going to do about kids, and school drop off and pick up and Little Monster!  The best part about this ticket was that it was through ITT, so transportation was provided!  I asked Kevin if he could get off, so he could come too, but that was impossible.  I spent the entire day getting everything situated with the kids.  I was so excited that I got everything to work out!  I was even more excited about the chance to go!  For Reals!  An Olympic success to make up for the fail!  I wanted to go so very bad, that I didn't care that I was going to go all by myself!  I was even prepared to take Little Monster, if I couldn't find a sitter.
As luck would have it, my neighbor has a sitter for her son on Wednesday, so she said to just have her sitter watch the Monster too!  So fabulous, I don't have to take a monster in tow!

The bus was scheduled to leave at 5:00 AM, with a report time of 4:45!  As if my day wasn't already going to be magical, I found out that four of my friends were also going on the ITT Olympic day trip too!!!  When the olympic tickets went on sale back in November, they had decided to make a girls day out of it and all got tickets together.  I was so happy and excited that I would have friends to share this time with!

I met Corianne, Ruth, Heather and Kara at the bus.  We all sat in the same area on the bus and chatted for a little bit, before the bus turned the inside lights off and we all took a long 2 hour nap to the event.

When we arrived, we were at the exact arena that Kevin and I had attempted to take the kids just a week ago.  It felt so empowering to have a ticket and to be able to pass the border to the other side!  I think having the Olympic Fail, made this experience so much more amazing, powerful and magical!

One thing Koreans definitely know how to do right, is selfie spots!  All around the venue are great picture perfect spots!  Here are a few:

We walked around for about an hour.  We found the Olympic Rings and got a picture, of course!

There was also a huge North Face Exhibit.  North Face had tents set up and each tent represented a different area.  There was a cute fire in the middle and lots of picture spots!

We made our way back to the entrance, because that was where the ice skating rink was located.  The Ice Skating was at the Gangneung Ice Arena.

When we got into the arena, we found our seat in the back with the rest of the ITT peeps.  Since I was not seated with the other four girls, I took an aisle seat that was empty by them.  As the event started, the rest of them just came over and sat by me.

We started talking to the two women behind us.  Come to find out, they are the family of one of the ice skaters who were competing from Belgium, Loena Hendrickx!  As we were asking them questions about Ice skating and her daughter, a man comes over and sits next to them.  We find out he is the male olympic skaters for Belgium and Loena's brother, Jorik.  We talk to Jorik for a good half hour learning the ins and outs of Ice Skating.  I know that if you don't have a picture, it really didn't happen, but I promise!  It totally happened!  We tried to get a picture a few times, but we just didn't feel right asking.  Dang, I should have been the tacky American, and just taken the dang picture!

About 1/4 of the way through, Corianne come back from going to the bathroom, and tells us that there are five seats super close to the front that she was just told we can move to!  So we leave the ice skater and his family for better seats!

We were totally stoked to have some super great seats now!  We were only about 6 rows up! We watched the rest of the Ice Skaters!  The final 6 were absolutely enchanting!

They skated with such grace and beauty!  There really was a huge difference between the first three heats and the last one.  These women were worn with ice skates.  Being in the arena and feeling the music course through your veins, having your nose chilled by the air, and feeling the hum of the spectators is an experience I will treasure and always remember.  It really was magical.

When the event was over, we had about an hour and half to walk around and go to the Official Olympic store.  As with all things Korea, the line to the store puts Black Friday Walmart lines to shame!  There were so many people! So. Many. People!

Luckily I have lived here a while now, so when I got in the store, I had no problem with the zero personal space, or the fact that there is not curtesy of waiting your tuen to get something, you simply elbow your way in, grab the scarf you want, and elbow and duck your way out.  I proceeded to slow and duck and grab all the things I needed for the official store and quickly got in line so I could check out in time to catch the bus home.  I was able to come home with a few beanies, scarfs, mittens and magnets!

Seoul Children's Grand Park

As promised, we stopped at the park after we left the Winterfest.  We hadn't been to this park yet, but I was told it was a big park.  After parking, it took a little while to actually find the park.
The kids enjoyed playing on the huge playground equipment!

They loved the huge tire swing!

Little Monster especially loved the slides!

We only had about an hour before we needed to head home, so the kids ran and played.
As we walked back to the car, we stopped by a super cool bench,

a dragon statue that Little A absolutely loved and kept asking me to take more and more pictures of her with it,

and last, but not least, a traditional Korean building!

Team USA Winterfest: Yongsan

There was no school today and Kevin had the day off of work, so we spent the weekend in Seoul at US Army Garrison Yongsan.  Yesterday we saw the War Memorial of Korea, so today we went to the MWR event- Team USA Winterfest.  We arrived at the event and were immediately bring pulled by the kids towards the different candy booths.

The event was sponsored by Hershey's candy, so there were men handing out free Hershey's Gold candy bars.  The kids kept getting handful, after handful of the little candy bars.

Since Hershey's is a key ingredient in s'mores, there was also a s'mores booth, where we got to roast marshmallows and make our very own s'mores.

The entire purpose of this event was to support Team USA in the olympics, so there was also a mini curling table at the event to attempt to curl.  The kids had a blast at curling!  We took turns being the ones with the brushes, and also being the one who pushed the "ice block".

After going to every single booth outside, we made our way to the inside event.  There were two separate things going on inside the event, one was a live concert and show.  We were able to see a cheer squad, Al Roker and Craig Melvin from the Today Show, Cedric the entertainer,  and my favorite, a live concert featuring Rachel Platten!  I really love her songs!  I was really excited about seeing her live.

The other thing going on inside was the meet, greet and autographs of Olympians!  This included the silver medallist figure skater, Sasha Cohan.  The girls were excited to meet a real figure skater.  There was also an Army soldier, Matt Mortensen and his teammate Jayson Terdiman, who were competing in the doubles luge for this, the PyeongChang Olympics. Lastly there was Garrett Hines who was a former silver medalist for the bobsledding team.

The event was really neat, the only problem was that the autograph part wasn't organized very well!  We ended up standing in line for two hours to get Sasha's autograph.  When Cedric the Entertainer and the cheer performance performed, they closed the autographs so that they could see the show.  Super annoying!!  By the time we got in the front, we were next in line, and they closed it so the Olympians could watch the comedy show.  When it opened back up Sasha didn't come back!  We were so upset!  The girls were able to get the autograph of Matt and Jayson, but they were the only ones there.

We stayed hovering for a while, and then I spotted her behind the stage.  One of the stage hands asked if we needed anything.  I said, "YES!  We need Sasha!  We've waited two hours to see her and she's right there, can you just ask her to turn around so we can get a picture."  He actually did go over and ask her, and to our surprise, she turned and gave the girls a hug and took a picture with them!  We were so grateful!!

The kids were hungry and pretty much done by this point.  We had already been at the festival for four hours.  I asked if we could stay for just two songs!  Just two!  I made a deal with the kids, that if they let me stay for just two songs, we would stop at the park on the way home.  I had been waiting all day for Rachel's concert.  They were sweet enough to sit and let me enjoy, sing along and dance to the first two songs, then as I promised, we left.  I was super sad to miss the concert, but I knew the kids were done!

Since The Today Show was featuring the event, we actually ended up on the Today Show clip about the Winterfest! It was pretty cool to have family text me and tell me they saw us on national TV!

https://www.today.com/video/al-roker-and-craig-melvin-visit-us-troops-in-south-korea-1164885059983