Multiple friends and coworkers kept sharing their experiences and how amazing it was, so on a Friday night we decided to suck up the potential inconvenience and just go. We knew we weren't going to get any event tickets as the timing was too late, but we wanted to see what we could do to at least go to Olympic Village and get "the experience", if you well. Oh we got an experience for sure...
We left Saturday morning early to head on out. After the wonderful experience of 2 hours of food prep, and running through every possible scenario with a two year old, we got on the road. Drive initially wasn't bad, but once out of Seoul and heading east toward Pyeongchang we started a series of complete road shutdowns, or near deadlocks. The distance initially was planned for 3.5 hours, which eventually turned into 5. Thank goodness for DVD players, but after 2 meltdowns from Monster, we felt as if we finally made it Zion.
Now you would think that it would be easy to find the olympic complexes, and in some ways I am sure that could have been the case. The main issue here was the government change that occurred 9 months before the Olympics hit. The last Korean President was removed from office for corruption, and landed the new president with the task to redoing all the planning and completion for the Olympics. Therefore, parking lots and shuttle systems were everywhere, but no parking was directly available close to the place we went. We tried finding the parking lot that had the appropriate shuttles, but to no avail. We finally found the olympic park, but were not able to park within a few miles of it.
After finding an obscure location to park, we walked about 30 minutes to the olympic park, grateful that it was only in the 20's that day and not lower like it was at the slope events. Mind you, by way of time hack, we were 6 hours into this ordeal now.
We walk up the hill, see the entrance and proceed with some sort of relief that we can say "We came, we saw, we did it." Not the case. We get to the entrance and find out that you are only allowed to go into the olympic park if you have a ticket for an event. We asked if we could purchase a ticket somewhere and we were referred back down the hill. Destroyed and frustrated by the Korean absolutism that exists here, we walked back down the hill to then be met with our next ray of sunshine.
Korea is a country experience that is always highlighted by the numbers. By this I mean that what you normally see at Costco as far as people go, double it, the amount of people going to an event (like a movie) triple it, the bus and subway; double it. We looked on the line only to estimate that there was a volume amount of people that would take roughly three hours in line to even get a pass. Why are there so many people trying to buy tickets on the day of, in 20 degree weather! Our hearts were shattered, now 7 hours in to this ordeal and no way of being able to attend a single portion of anything from the olympics. I looked around trying to find a way to stealthy smuggle my family over the border, but alas they must have taken a page from Potus and fortified all borders!
After gentle deliberation between us (sarcasm), we came to the realization that yes we literally just wasted 7 hours of our lives, we have frozen our children, and still have the daunting task of then returning home, void of any memories that we can look back on with a glimmer of happiness. We trekked back to the car across the arctic wasteland and started to drive back. Heather realized we were close to the beach, so we decided to stop and see what a Korean beach was going to be like.
Now to our surprise, yes it had sand, yes it had waves, but added a garnish across the entire beach were huge sculptures and things people had made. One was a skull, which being an oral surgeon made me finally feel something was right in the world.
The kids really wanted to take their shoes off and play in the ocean. They just didn't understand that the water would be just as freezing as we all felt.
After snapping a few photos I won the parent of the year award but looking down at little dude who I thought was clothed enough, only to see him convulsing with cold! I felt so bad! I rushed him back to the car and fired up the heat to thaw him out. He didn't turn into full icicle but was close. Winner moment!
So we packed up and left. We stopped off for fuel and food and back on the road, only to then get caught in another freeway shutdown. This time though: we didn't move for 1.5 hours. Perfect topping to the ice cream sunday we were having. After finally being let go for good behavior we made a second pit stop to relieve all the hummingbird bladders in my girls, only to then have Big Sis top the night off by barfing in the car from motion sickness. Luckily she gave us fair warning and were able to secure a bag for her, but you can imagine the thoughts in Heather and I's mind. All we need now is a diaper blow out...
We got home at 10pm that night. Lets do the math: 15 hours of travel, 1 hour of walking in 20 degree weather, 4 frozen kids and frozen snuggies, barf in the car, and "0" olympic experiences. Floated a hundred times now across my brain: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Oh how we planned to fail on this...miserably!
-Kevin
OK, so I need to put in my two cents... This is Heather- Even though we failed at actualizing being able to see the Olympic Village or anything olympic, the beach really was neat! The sculptures were impressive and original! Yes, the kids were absolutely freezing, and true we drove a very long time to stand on a beach for 15 minutes, but oh well... The pictures make me laugh, because if it wasn't for all the words, it would have looked like we were having the time of our lives. But really, it's just me saying- "Smile! Smile! If you don't smile I am going to stand here until you do!". Hahaha! Oh how deceiving pictures can be. I'd have to say the only true 'happy' smiles are the very first picture when we got in the car and were expecting a day at the Olympic Village.
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