Rolling Ball and Fun Museum

Just like they have a ton of themed cafes in Seoul they also have a lot of museums.  Some of the museums are historical, some are cultural, some are dedicated to the arts, some are very random (they have an entire museum dedicated to rice) and some are for fun.  In fact, they even have a museum called "The Fun Museum".  The Fun Museum is right across the way from The Rolling Ball museum.  One humid, rainy afternoon we decided to visit the Rolling Ball and Fun museum.

We started with the Rolling Ball Museum.  You may be wondering "What is a rolling ball museum?", we were wondering the same thing.  I had just read it was a fun place to take older kids.  After buying our very cheap tickets we walked inside and realized it was an entire room filled with huge marble tracks. 

They had some that were interactive.

Some massive ones.

This one was all wooden with a large, metal ball rolling around in it.

Some that were just fun to watch.

They were in all shapes and sizes.

 They even had one you could build yourself.

Russ and I are waiting while the girls worked on building their own marble track.

This was a huge one that the ball would spin around based on the way you moved the wheel.  We all worked up a sweat turning the wheel.

They had these great signs describing each of the tracks.  I definitely think something was lost in translation on a few of the signs.

What in the world is a "schanze"?

We had a great time and spent over an hour walking around, watching and playing with the marble tracks before we headed over to the Fun Museum.  

Just like the Rolling Ball Museum, the Fun Museum was exactly like it sounded.  It was a museum (or rather a large room) filled with "fun" or funny items.  We had a great time taking pictures of each other.

A ton of people smoke in Korea.  Russ and I often joke that they haven't figured out that smoking is bad for your health yet. They had these funny gloves in the museum where you could hold your cigarette without having to take your hand out of the glove.

For the record I have never seen anyone here use these things.

 Some fun book covers.

They had these silverware crowns that Russ and I put on as well as this glove so that you could hold hands in the wintertime but still keep your hands warm.

 The whole place was filled with quirky, fun stuff for us to try on.  We went on a week day when the Korean kids were still in school so we had the entire place to ourselves.

 This is a toilet paper holder that as the toilet paper runs out the man and lady figures get closer together until they are kissing when the roll is empty. 

  They called these "The Disco King of Wash Up" dish scrubbers.

This was an egg white separator where the egg white comes out of the nose.  Pretty gross and funny at the same time.

 They even had a rolling ball track in this museum as well.  This was the biggest one I have ever seen.  It was made of steel and it used a bowling ball.  We had to turn the wheel to get the bowling ball to the top. 

At the end of the Fun Museum, we thought the fun had come to an end for the day; but oh how wrong we were.  They had another small museum that was included with our ticket that was full of bears that were dressed up.  Remember in an earlier post I told you how the Koreans like to dress up bears and take pictures of them?  Kind of freaky to me, but they think it is cute.

Beyonce bears.  I'm not sure if she would be honored or embarrassed to see herself in bear form.

Michael Jackson bear

The famous Korean rapper PSY bear

Wedding bears.

They had bears dressed up from all different countries and they had other scenes with bears.  No pictures of those, it just is a bit much for me.

"If teddy bears ruled the world..." I never thought I would read a sentence that started with those words.

 A few last bear pictures before I decided I had had enough.

 A stop for some donuts on the way home.

 Our on the way home picture.

With the exception of the freaky bears, it was another great day exploring Seoul for the Pound family.

Fun Times With Sam and Maddie

Our family had a great time with Sam and Maddie.  Their weeks here flew by and we were busy pretty much every day they were here.  They especially loved the markets, and since I love any shopping I took them to quite a few different markets around Seoul.

One of the most popular items of clothing right now in Korea are ajumma pants.  Ajumma is the Korean word for "any woman that is married or old enough to be married".  Therefore, technically, I am an ajumma, but the Koreans typically use it for older women that are more of the grandma age.  Being an ajumma in Korea means you pretty much have a free pass to do anything you want, say anything you want and wear anything you want.  If you are in an ajumma's way on the market street she will just shove you out of the way, if you are sitting in her seat on the subway she will stare you down until you finally move and there is no reason to what an ajumma will pair together to wear for the day.  Maybe I will start a new series on this blog called "Ajumma Style" to share some of the fun combinations we see every day.  Sam and Maddie particularly enjoyed picking out the fun, "matching" ajummas.  I pretty much think ajummas run the country behind the scenes.  You don't mess with an ajumma.   One very distinct feature of ajummas is their pants.  They wear these pants that are either knee length or full length and the literally translation for the name of these pants is refrigerator pants because they are so cool (in temperature not in style) to wear.  It has taken me a year to fully embrace my ajumma style but as soon as Sam and Maddie got here they began to embrace their inner ajumma and wanted to get some pants.  The best part about ajumma pants is the price...you can easily find a pair at the local markets for less than $3.00.  One day we all got a pair and modeled them for Russ.

Ajumma pants come in all different colors and pattens.  On this particular day we all happened to have coordinating ones on.  Made for a nice picture.
We decided to try to do some karate kicks in our ajumma pants. 

 

This was the best we could do.  Russ probably took 15 pictures of us and we couldn't all get our feet up at one time.

I had so much fun with these girls.  Just looking at these pictures, I have a big smile on my face.  How can you not have fun doing karate kicks with ajumma pants on? 

I took the ajumma pants to another level and dressed a pair up and wore them to church. 

I am trying to convince Sam and Maddie to wear them to school and start a new style trend in the US.  They aren't sure they are ready to do that yet.

Besides shopping, I made sure we did a few cultural things as well.  I didn't want them to go home and only talk about all the shopping we did.  So one Saturday we took them down to Suwon and walked around the Suwon fortress wall.

We all got a chance to ring the big bell.

Even Russ and I got in on the fun.

It started out innocent enough, but Russ wanted to really get that thing ringing and it got a little out of hand for me.

He rang it so loud, I was out of there.

They also have a bow and arrow shooting station at one point on this wall.  The girls all decided they wanted to try to shoot arrows.

They all did a very good job and each hit the target at least once.

But guess who hit the target the most out of any one?

Yep, that is a scary sight.  She hit the target 3 times.

After they all shot their arrows they had to go out and collect them.

We stopped along the way in this rest area for a break and a chance to look out into the city.

This road sign made me laugh.

I am pretty sure it is a given, that if you don't turn before you hit the river your car will fall into the water.  I don't know that the sign showing the car going into the water was necessary.

Our days with the girls were wonderful and we are so thankful for the time we had to spend with them.