Paralympics Hockey Game

Hey there! This is Big Sis and I am going to tell you about my experience at the Paralympics Hockey Game. The Paralympics is basically like the normal olympics, but with people that have lost their arm(s) or leg(s).

The ride to the Paralympics was the same amount of time as our failed trip to the olympics, which was about 4 hours; super long road trip.

The trip to go see the Paralympics was meant to be for everyone in the family, but we thought Monster would be a monster since it was past his bedtime and decided to not bring him. This meant that a parent had to stay behind.  Mom volunteered to stay because she already went to the olympics and dad hadn't gone yet. Since we had 2 extra tickets, dad asked one of his friends if he and one of his kids wanted to come with us the the Paralympics.

Last time we drove to the olympics, I got car sick and threw up (we had a bag for that reason), so I was really nervous for the car ride this time. I took a motion sickness pill, had bags at my feet at all times, and rode in the front on the left side this time, and thankfully, I didn't get car sick.

The temperatures outside where still in the 30's and 40's so it was pretty cold to walk there. Unlike last time, we had our tickets before we left the house. Me and M&M tripled checked to make sure that we had our tickets. We also made sure that they where in the most secure place in the car and on dad.

When we checked in and got to the stadium, we went to our seats, which where at the very top of the stadium. Little A was so excited to be at the very top.

When the game started, I was looking at all the players.  There were dozens of players that had overcome their own trials of life to play this game. When the players came out, on one team, their was this guy who had NO legs at all. Little A really liked to watch him most of all for that reason. She thought that it was the coolest thing in the world to see a person with no legs. To be honest, it really is amazing to see a person, playing hockey, with no legs. The game started, and before you could say, "Volks Wagon Beetle", the players where at least 10-20 meters away from their starting point.

The game was really fun to watch. I don't know much about hockey, but watching the game changed that. The game was very interesting to watch. The players were very fast, strong, and very very competitive. As it turns out, the guy with no legs was the strongest and the fastest person on the ice. The players were on something, like a giant skate, but there was only one skate that the players sat on. The way that they moved around was that at the end of the hockey stick was a rubber stopper that helped them push them along on the ice. The players had two hockey sticks, 1 for each hand. That means that the players go 2x's faster.

The game lasted for about an hour and a half. By the time the game was over, it was really late at night, 8:45 in fact. Thinking the most obvious future cause, the game would end and everyone was going to flood out of the stadium and leave super quick; to prevent that, we left the game 5 minutes early. We left the Paralympics with amazed eyes and a new memory.

The ride home was really fast without the traffic and we made it home by 10:20. It was an amazing night for all of us and we where very grateful to have shared it with a friend too. New adventures await.

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!

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

Olympics! Objective #1: FAIL MISERABLY.

So we have been asked by many of our at home family and friends if we are going to the olympics. Truth is we didn't really want too, primarily because it was freezing cold, the distance is 4 hours from our home, the times are always at night for indoor events, and the prices were insane. People stood for hours and hours to get tickets for event outside ITT on base, and we decided that it just didn't seem like something we wanted to put our kids through. That was until peer pressure creeped in...

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.