OINK

OINK is an acronym for "Only In Korea".  This is a real acronym, not something I made up. 

Here are a few OINK pictures:

Kic Ker Candy~
Instead of a Kit-Kat in Korea you can get a Kic Ker

Kit Kats are my favorite candy bar, so I was very excited when I found these.  Unfortunately, Kic Kers aren't very good.  I am going to stick to the real Kit Kats.

Female only parking~

At first, I thought these were pregnant women parking spots.  But after doing a little bit of research about these specially designated spots I found out they are for all women.  Here are the 3 reasons given for the spaces that I could find:

1.   They are always close to the building so that women do not have to walk as far to their
      destination
2.  They make the city more conductive to wearing high heels
3.  And the third reason is a direct quote from the website "Korean Beat"--
         The “pink lines”, painted pink, are 2.5 meters wide rather than the standard 2.3,
         offering aid to women drivers unskilled at parking.   

How awesome is that?

Motorbike Trash Collectors~
This was quite the contraption.  It was a motor scooter that had been modified to attach a trailer.  It even had a small covering in case it was raining the driver didn't get wet.  Do you see there is a man riding in back on top of the trash?

Dong Bang Snacks~ 
If you have been reading this blog for a while you know that I think Koreans are obsessed with toilets and poop.  I don't understand it, but this snack only helps to prove my point.  In Korean, dong means poop and bang means bread.  Literally, this is poop bread.

Nice poo swirl hat.

You could get the bread with all types of fillings.  We all choose chocolate.

 Seriously, OINK!

Garden of Morning Calm-Winter

Since the first week we arrived in Korea I have been keeping a "bucket list" of all the things I wanted to do before we left the country.  My list has grown quite long and Russ and I are quickly realizing that our time here in Korea is flying by.

One of the very first things I added to my bucket list was visit The Garden Of Morning Calm.  It is a garden that is open year round.  In spring, summer and fall they have different flowers that are in bloom and it is supposed to be beautiful no matter what season you visit.  But in the winter there are no flowers blooming and so they light a large portion of the garden up with millions of lights.  In all the pictures I looked at it was beautiful.

Uncle Joe recently visited us for a few days and we decided this was the perfect time to check another item off my bucket list and visit The Garden Of Morning Calm.

I had read that over 600,000 people visit this garden every year, it one of the most popular tourist attractions in Korea and it is packed every weekend.   This weekend was no exception, thankfully we got there early enough that we beat most of the crowd, but by the time we left it was very full.

The garden was beautiful.  Unfortunately, my photos are from my i-pad and don't do it justice.  

 They had decks you could look out over the garden.

 This was an awesome tree.  We couldn't read the sign to figure out how old it was but it was massive.

 One last picture before we left the garden.

 On our way home we stopped for dinner.  Korea is famous for its fried chicken.  I am not a huge fried chicken person, but I love it here. 

 Another awesome Korean adventure.  I hope to make it back to the garden a few more times before we leave so that I can see it in other seasons.

Sites in Seoul

I love this city!  You never know what you will see while out in it.  Our family went out last night to look for a store that Russ was hoping to find.   We took the subway to the area we thought the store was in and spent about 30 minutes walking around looking for it.  We finally realized the store was actually in a different part of the city a couple of blocks away and decided to walk in that direction rather than try and subway there.  As we were walking I decided to snap a few pictures of some of the things we passed.  Nothing about this walk was out of the ordinary, we have lived here long enough now that many things don't jump out at us as strange anymore, but for those of you that don't get to experience Seoul on a daily basis I thought you might find some of these sights amusing.

First, we saw this cool "art" exhibit.  I had read about it a few times and actually was wanting to find it but never took the time.  We just happened to walk out of the subway and pass it.  I snapped a few pictures.

All these umbrellas look like they are suspended in mid-air.  I don't know why they are there but it is a pretty cool display.

A few were hanging a little lower and you could eat at the tables beneath them.

The tops of the umbrellas-they were all different and all so colorful.  How fun is that?

As we walked down a little farther we saw the entrance for a huge market.  We decided to walk through it...with about a million other people.

These pictures do not do the number of people in this small area justice.  At times you could move because there were so many people packed around you. 

This was a very Korean market, not a lot of foreigners in this area.  There were stands selling pretty much anything you can imagine from bedding to dishes to herbs to clothing to fruit.  Anything you could want you could find in this market.  The center of this market was filled with food stands and people sitting around them eating.  They were making all kinds of different foods at these stands.  Some of the food looked delicious...

Some not so delicious...

I have no idea what was in either of these huge tubs, but it was thick and not very appetizing looking.

 And some of it looked pretty gross...

This is a bowl of intestines from some sort of animal.  Based on the next 2 pictures I am guessing it is pig intestines.

Various pig parts.  That is a snout on top of the pile.

More pig parts.

As we were walking out of the market I saw fish hanging around waiting to be sold.

After we left the market we passed this coffee shop.

They seem to be pretty confident that they have the best coffee around.

We stopped to have dinner at a small restaurant.  It was cold and both Russ and I ordered soup.  When you order soup in this country it most often comes out boiling hot.  Literally, boiling.

In the end, we never found the store we started the adventure looking for but we had a great time exploring the city.  When just walking a few blocks leads to this much fun how can we ever be bored?  Like I said, I love this city.

Middle School and Semi-Formal Dances

It has been a while since I have posted any new adventures.  In order to have FAMILY adventures you need to be together as a FAMILY.  I was back in the states for a while, right after I returned home Russ left for a few weeks of training and was only home for a few days before he was gone again for a peninsula wide exercise.  During all this craziness we did manage to fit in a few small adventures but today I want to share some pictures from Taylor's latest adventure.  Taylor is in middle school now, I can't believe it, and with middle school comes middle school dances.  She has been to a few small dances already but this past weekend was the big semi-formal dance.  She was very excited to attend. 

I didn't chaperone the dance so I don't have any pictures of her during the event but I did snap a few pictures before she left the house.

She looks so grown up.  In this pictures she is talking to me telling me to hurry up she is freezing cold.

All ready to go with a little bit of sass. 

The event was held in the ball room at the hotel here on base.  I dropped her off and snapped just a few more pictures before I left.

Photo-bombed by her sister

Russ was away this evening so he wasn't there to take pictures with us. 

With a few of her friends.