When dreams come true...

"A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself.  Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself"

- George Bernard Shaw

     For those of you who don't know, the 2018 winter Olympics are in Pyeongchang, South Korea.  Also for those of you who don't know, I become slightly obsessed every time the Olympics come around.  Last weekend three of my friends and I attended the Four Continents Championship which is an Olympic test event.  So we got to go and sit in the exact arena where the Olympics will be held in a year! I started freaking out as soon as I saw the sign.  It was almost as exciting as Disney World, almost.      

While the whole city is nowhere near ready for the Olympics, the arena was in a newly built area so everything was specific to the Olympics.

 To get to Pyeongchang, we took a three hour bus ride at 7:30AM.  We were going to just waste time in the city but at the bus station there were volunteers that ushered us into a taxi straight to the arena.  We were so thankful they did.  There were beautiful kites to watch and tents full of kid's activities, you all know how much I love kid's activities!

I was a little upset they didn't have Olympic merchandise yet but we could take lots of pictures with the mascots.

Then we found a tent with booths dedicated to different regions of Korea and Japan.  I'm not quite sure why there were booths from Japan.  The people running the booths were sooooo excited to see us.  We saw maybe 10 other foreigners at the whole event.  Very soon after we entered the tent we had a crowd following behind us watching everything we did.  There was a woman who would write anything we wanted in Korean calligraphy.  This was supposed to say Erin Pyeongchang 2018.  Apparently they wrote my name as Mirene.   

One guy had a high striker (don't worry I had to google what this thing was actually called).  Here we had a group of old ladies taking photos and videos of us doing this.  Lindsey and I managed to hit it hard enough to to pass the top paper but the guy was so excited to have us visit his booth he gave prizes to all of us, handwarmers and weird stuffed animals that I think were supposed to have apples as a head.  

The next tent we found had mini games of all the different winter sporting events.  We started off with shooting for the biathlon and did some curling.

Lindsey then tried out some virtual reality skiing and a mechanic luge.

We channeled some "Cool Runnings" here.  Also I never realized how truly difficult it is to get in and out of this thing.  I am crouching here because there is no way I could actually sit down and get back up.  How are the athletes able to do it so fast?!

They had the rings! They had the rings!

Weird police and firefighter bear heads.  Just in case you couldn't tell I'm in the black helmet and Klarise is in the green helmet. 

 Then we finally got to the event! We started with pair skating.  I am not embarrassed to admit that I got a little teary eyed during the first performance.  It was such a magical experience.  I can only imagine how I will react to actually seeing the Olympics.   

The four continents invited to the event were Asia, Africa (yes apparently there was one South African skater but she withdrew), Oceania, and the Americas (yes apparently North and South count as one).

They were handing out flags so of course I got one!  Once again we were the focus of a lot of attention.  We were interviewed by a camera man and shown on the megatron.  

Unfortunately the US did not medal in pairs but we won gold in the men's, bronze for the women, and bronze and silver in ice dancing.

 For some reason they did not give out the medals for ice dancing after the event so we were able to see the medal ceremony.  The two people on the right are a brother and sister pair, Alex and Maia Shibutani.  The won the silver medal.  After the medal ceremony the answered questions from the audience.  Koreans are obsessed with couples, dating, and love.  One person asked the brother/sister pair if they felt love while skating.  It was so awkward to watch.  The skaters handled it well and explained that they were family so of course they loved each other but there are many types of love.  Even still the whole Korean crowd went, "oooh."  I still cringe thinking about it.

Now just enjoy  all the photos of pair skaters.

I was trying to find a better setting to take action shots with my camera and found one that take 16 photos at one time.  I'm not quite sure why you would use this setting but hey, it looks cool. 

I got even more excited during the medals ceremony for the pairs when they turned out the lights and turned on the spotlight.  Anyone remember the movie "Cutting Edge"? I loved watching all the remakes of that movie and this is almost exactly the same as the VHS cover.

Unfortunately my camera died right after the pairs finished.  After the pairs, we watched the single women's long programs.  I have to say I think I prefer the pairs to the women.  

     It was such a nice weekend, I loved every minute of the competition.  I have already entered the ticket lottery for the Olympics! I can't believe its only a year away.  This week has been very stressful.  Tuesday was kindergarten graduation and the two new teachers arrived at the school.  I love my kids but they are so ready to move to elementary school and I am so ready to have a break from them for a week.  This was the only time I was ever able to get all of them to sit nicely and look for a photo.

The kids even got to wear graduation caps and gowns for the ceremony.  After graduation we had about an hour photo shoot.  All of the moms wanted family photos, individual photos, and photos with the teachers.  















I was given a beautiful bouquet of flowers from one of my girl's grandmothers and a beautiful bridal photo frame.  I think they were trying to hint at something.

Being famous...

"Life is like a roller coaster, it might be scary but in the end you want to do it again."

     In February, Korea and most of Asia celebrate Lunar New Year.  Its a holiday to pay your respects to your ancestors and spend time with family.  Since we aren't Buddhist and don't have family in Korea, we used these days off to go to Korea's Disney World called Everland.  Because of the holiday, Everland knew there would be few Koreans going to the park so over the holiday they had half price tickets for foreigners.  We went on Lunar New Year Day.  It turned out to be the perfect day, the park was practically empty!  

Just like in Disney the park is made up of different themed areas.  Unlike Disney every single detail has not been thought of.  Everland is like Disney's knock-off cousin.  

In one part they had a garden that had a miniature version of Everland.  

Half of the park is a zoo and one of the rides is a safari where you ride a bus and it drives through the animals.  At first it was cool but then we got to the lions and tigers.  Now I know there are Siberian Tigers that live in the mountains but most tigers are from jungles.  The lions and tigers looked super unhappy and frail in the cold and snow and some of them were doing that sad pacing thing animals do in zoos.  Then we got to the bears and the bus driver threw treats to them if they did tricks.  Overall extremely sad zoo.  

However the rides and animal hats made up for the sad zoo!

Our students always come to school with small stuffed animals attached to their headbands.  Now we know where they get them from.











On the train ride to Everland, a girl came up to us and asked us if we would be willing to be in her student film.  Of course we said yes to after our day at Everland we met her at the film studio at her university.

Our entire part was to sit on this box and turn around to look in the camera.  

After they filmed our part, the students took us to the fancy room with all the knobs and buttons to watch the film they were making.  Unfortunately there were no English subtitles but we think we understood they basic plot. 

 Unfortunately they did not use any of us in the final movie but we did end up in the credits.  Gabby for some reason was the 8th person credited and her part is listed as "foreigner" 

Lindsey and I were way at the bottom and credited as "whoeover helped"

   This will go down as the weirdest day In Korea so far.  Who knew I would ever film a Korean movie?


February has also been the month of birthdays in Korea.  We celebrated Beth and Lindsey's birthdays.

Lindsey was super excited to try out a norebang.  These are all the rage in Korea and involve getting a private room to sing karaoke in.  Its super weird but also super fun.  

We also had the pleasure/misfortune of going to poo poo land, yes it is a real thing.  A whole museum/interactive playground dedicated to poo.

Korea has a weird fascination with poo.  

To exit poo poo land you had to go down this beautiful pink slide.  Also side note the things we are squatting over on the right are squat toilets.  These are still very prevalent in Korea and I'm quite proud that I can now confidently use one.  

This photo opportunity was supposed to be a Korean king and Queen Elizabeth standing beside a weird squat toilet.  

Lindsey was super excited by the whole experience.  

Besides the weird poo poo experience we also had a great brunch.

This was the last birthday party of the school year and we only had one birthday girl, Yujin.

Tuesday is graduation for our kindergarteners.  They will come to school Wednesday and Thursday but then they will be finished.  My snowy owls will be off to elementary school.  I am super excited to start fresh with new students and to decorate my classroom!