It has been a really busy week. I really thought I would have been able to write this post by now, I am sorry for making you all wait. I promise it will be worth it, lots of pictures and videos! I took 503, but don't worry I won't post them all!
Seoul Land was a lot of fun! We made it a big group excursion which was great! We went with Mike's friend Doug, The Hirsch Family and the Rauhala Family. There was no one in the park but us which was really great. It turned out that it was a good thing we went in a group because otherwise there would have been no one to play with! We went on Labor Day which was a US Holiday but not a Korean one so that made it even better!!!!
The drive to Seoul Land took us down the highway about 20 to 30 mins with mountain views!
The bottom right shows agriculture domes. Not an inch of space is wasted in this country, and check out those mountains!
Seoul Land is one of many attractions in Seoul Grand Park. Here is Ellie, Giulianna and Avery waiting to figure out where we had to go get our tickets.
Seoul Land had a giant ball right in the middle which was quite reminiscent of Disney's Epcot but much smaller. And the main entrance walkway was all little building store fronts kind of like Main Street USA. The rest of the park was more like an amusement park like Six Flags. It had your standard rides, merry go round, bumper cars, roller coasters and kiddie rides. Seoul Land is broken up into several small sections which even includes a wild west town.
The entrance...
Giulianna's Ticket
The Hirsch's and The Raulaha's
Yay! The Hirsch Family in Seoul Land!
Copyright infringement?
Family pic at Seoul Land, Seoul Grand Park, Korea
All the kids (except Rhyon) in the carriage.
Giulianna and Ellie riding the horses.
Doug and Mike in trouble already!!!
The kids got to do most of the rides, and the 3 big kids even got to hit some big people rides. Turns our Giulianna loves the big rides and is very adventurous. However just like her Mommy and Grandma Linda, she hates the dropping feeling rides. She got away with some of the big rides but depending on the ride and the person running it she was sometimes a centimeter too short. It was horrible telling her they wouldn't let her ride, but she was really cool with it most of the time.
Mike riding the merry go round.
Giulianna having so much fun!
Rhyon rode this too. I think it was his only ride!
Cool horse with Korean Flags.
Kiddie Bumper cars, Giulianna and Gavin.
Avery and Gavin.
The kiddie bumper cars was hilarious! Check out the video. Our kids definitely drive like Koreans! LOL There were big bumper cars too, but we aren't as fun to watch or look at, we did have fun riding them though!! It was nice actually being allowed to crash into the terrible Korean Drivers!
Above the kiddie bumper cars was something they called the Sky Cycle. It was a fun low speed ride. It gave an interesting little view of the park.
Doug cruising on the Sky Cycle.
LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! Avery and Giulianna
Little Ellie, she is so cute!
Mike and I on the Sky Cycle.
Gavin and Kristjan on the Sky Cycle
We also took some time to check out the archery range and haunted house. We learned that haunted houses are much scarier in ones own language. We totally missed out on the scary story because we had no idea what they were saying! Ben and I were the only brave ones to ride the crazy twisty ride of DOOM! (I don't remember what it was really called.) It flipped you over and barrel rolled you at the same time. It was fun, but one thrill was enough!!!
Leaning Tower of Pisa? Not sure why but we will go with it...
Kristjan, Mike and Doug testing their Archery skills.
Not sure why we had a Dutch Windmill either...
Or a phone booth?!
Everyone loves a sleeping baby.
One of the coolest things in the park were these huge stuffed animals that you could ride for 1,000 won. The kids got a kick out of this.
There was a kiddie land that everyone seemed to enjoy. There were two huge ball pits, a trampoline, the biggest bouncy house ever and this huge jungle gym ropes course.
This is the drop ride I was referring to. Giulianna wasn't a fan. Avery loved it!
I made this one huge so you could see Rhyon, look just beyond my back! He was not happy!!!!
Avery, Gavin and Giulianna diving in!
Rhyon was much happier spectating.
Gavin, probably up to no good!
Grace loved the ball pit too!
This ball pit had huge balls! Giulianna was all about it!
"It's a grown up, ATTACK!!!"
Mike and Doug thought the sign said that No Clowns or Soccer Playing Robots were allowed in the bouncy house!
One of the only rides Laurie got to participate in.
This is my favorite picture of Gavin for the day, just look at his face!
Christina and I both love angel wings!
They told me to look angelic, I think I failed!
Doug, he is certainly no angel!!!
We needed more pictures of Rhyon, not sure he appreciated this though.
And that concludes our day at Seoul Land! It was a great day of fun with some great people. We are really enjoying spending time together as a family and with our new friends! We can't wait for more adventures!
This weekend has been a busy one. So I am going to do a separate post for each day. I took way to many pictures for it to all fit on one post.
On Saturday we went to the National Museum of Seoul. The museum can actually be seen from Yongsan Post. Overall it was interesting. The entrance courtyard and gardens are beautiful. The building is huge! Everything is pretty spread out over 3 huge floors and several galleries. It was very clean and the exhibits were well presented. There were really cool animated videos telling of the history of Korea. The videos were mostly in Korean, some with English subtitles. Most of the exhibits told you what you were looking at in both Hangul and English but the descriptions were mostly Hangul. There was a ton of pottery! Ancient pottery, pottery on loan from personal collections, pottery from a ship wreck they recovered, celadon pottery, and pottery from other counties! After a while we were pretty bored with the pottery. There was an entire exhibit of statues of Buddha. That was interesting and we learned two important things in that exhibit. First, the look of Buddha is different in every country, and second the different positions of his hands mean different things. Unfortunately I can not explain either of the above lessons in detail because everything on the signs was not English.
Bronze Knife shaped coin. A characteristic artifact of the Lianhuabao-Sejukri culture, 4th century BCE.
Gold Crown and Belt, 3 Kingdoms period, 5th Century.
Giulianna and a Replica of Jungseong-ri, from the 3 Kingdoms period, 5th Century.
A close up.
This is the Ten Story Pagoda. It takes up a good amount of height in the museum.
Replica of the crowning hall.
Mike and the kids under a hand made flag.
Inside the Museum.
One of many pots!
Need I even explain?!!!
Buddha
After touring the main part of the museum we had lunch. We ate at the cafeteria, which is nothing like you would expect. The menu choices are not at all what you would think, no hamburgers or chicken fingers. Choices included seafood bean paste soup which is what I had, pork cutlet, a hodgepodge kids meal with rice, spaghetti and a pork cutlet, there was curry and some other things. Korean food is definitely interesting! It was all pretty good, absolutely not American! After lunch we went over to the children's museum. For this part you have to get timed tickets which allow an hour and a half in that area. We were lucky to get tickets and had a few minutes to wait until our appointed time, so we hit the gift shop. Somewhere in the gift shop a tragedy occurred. Giulianna lost her Hello Kitty beanie baby. I had been reminding her all day about Kitty and when the chaos to get into the children's museum occurred Giulianna must have put kitty down and walked off, and I didn't notice. When I went back a few minutes later she was gone. At that moment she wasn't too upset because of all going on around her, but for the next two nights at bedtime she cried about how she wanted Hello Kitty. Poor kid! So the children's museum part wasn't at all for a kid Giulianna's age. Most everything in it was intended for school age kids. She had a good time though putting together some giant puzzles with Daddy and just checking things out. Its so cute how she tries to talk to the Korean kids and they can't understand her. I am constantly reminding her they don't understand.
Rhyon playing with a pot in the children's museum.
Giulianna teaching a Korean boy to cook!
Mike and Giulianna trying to build an ancient pot.
Museums are fun!!!!
Playing with a giant magnet puzzle.
Rhyon in an "Ancient Castle"!
Rhyon becoming part of some ancient painting that I can tell you nothing about because its description was completely in Hangul.
Giulianna wanted to really ride the horse!
Picture Giulianna took of me and these weird giant stuffed "people".
On our way back to post after the Museum there was a street vendor selling what I can only describe as a pancake. Basically they took dough and put some cinnamon sugar stuff in the middle, make it flat, and fry it for a minute. I had to have one, so I bought 3 one for each of us, and share with Rhyon. Then I dropped Mike and Giulianna off at the playground and went to the commissary for groceries. After that we went home and called it a day!
View of Yongsan from the National Museum.
Out side of museum.
A view of the city from the museum.
Sunday we went to Church and then to a birthday party. Giulianna went crazy playing in the bounce house at the party. We were there for a while and then headed home for naps since the following day we were going to Seoul Land! Look for my next post all about Seoul Land!!!!
I know I usually wait til Sunday to post since we do the most stuff on weekends but this weekend will be a long one so I want to update about our week now before things get crazy and fun filled this weekend and I become over whlemed with cool stuff to post about. So far this week has been great!!! Mike was off on Monday as a training holiday after the long separation. We didn't do much that day just hung around and had some relaxing family time. We took a little walk to the 7-11 and got some snacks but that was about it.
Tuesday the kids wanted to go out and play one the playground so we did. Giulianna started playing with 2 little girls, one her age and one a bit younger. Their Mom and I started talking and found out we are neighbors! She lives 2 doors down. We really hit it off and when we decided to leave because the kids needed a drink and a nap, we ended up in their house for almost 2 more hours. The next day we took a walk to the river, a learning experience for me! It was cool, there is an elevator that takes you down to a tunnel that goes under the road and then out to a bike and walking path along the river. We walked toward a spot were there was one of those outdoor gyms and a playground. After letting the kids play a while, we headed back toward Hannam Village with a stop for lunch at Dunkin' Donuts. Not a very healthy lunch but the kids loved it. Somehow when we got back we ended up back in their apartment for another few hours. Then Thursday I took the older daughter to story time with us, we parted ways for lunch and nap time and then the kids hit the playground before dinner for a while. This morning we spent time at the pool together. Its been just great and is so nice to have a friend and be getting out more!!!
City Skyline from the walking trail. It was a very hazy day.
Let's chase the pigeons!
The girls playing on the bouncy toys.
Enjoying some donuts, between these 2 and Rhyon they ate a dozen munchkins!
The kids are doing great! Rhyon is a walking monster now. He loves the
playground and will even take on the big slides by himself. I will have
to get a video of this, its pretty funny. Giulianna loves playing with
her new friend and hopefully I will be able to get her into preschool.
But we have to wait another week to register for CYS (Child Youth Services)
since we could not get an appointment for that until next week. Today when we
were in the pool she held her breath and dove under to retrieve 4 diving
rings. I was so proud and happy that she was feeling so brave today.
We finally got the extension I ordered for the second baby gate this week. Its been wonderful knowing Rhyon can not go up the stairs anymore! We also set up a futon in the playroom so we have a place for people to sleep when they come visit!!! (HINT HINT) We are still waiting on for our furniture and stuff. According to the website it is due in country the 9th. I am hopeful that means it will be delivered next weekend but Mike isn't optimistic on that happening. Like I said last post we are hoping to go to Seoul land this weekend, probably Monday with our new friends! I would like to go somewhere Saturday too and Sunday we have a birthday party. Mike also has Tuesday off but that is likely going to be for weekend recovery!
