A Seoul-ful New Year: part 2

A mere one year after the pseudo-military dictatorship ended in South Korea, Seoul hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics. In fact, "the desire not to taint the Olympic Games with military dictatorship and riots served as an impetus for Korea’s transition to democracy." Thank you, Olympics.

If my primary title is Mister Christmas, then a secondary title would be Connoisseur of the Olympiads, so seeing the Olympic venues was an absolute must during my stay in Seoul. Breda was kind enough to accompany me in the sub-zero weather.

funky art piece in the courtyard. 

a hall to honor and house the best sport evar.

We found workout equipment in the shadows of buildings where the world's best athaletes competed. I'm pretty sure that it's for "golden-aged" citizens to use in their daily exercises, but that didn't stop us from playing on it.

inspired by the Olympic spirit, Breda works her... um,
I actually have no clue what half of these machines work.

look mom, an Olympic rabbit!

In case you didn't know, Korea has been awarded another Olympics for 2018 (sheesh, why hasn't the US won a bid recently? Chicago tried going for 2016, but Rio nabbed it). So Seoul built a World Peace Gate adjacent to the 1988 sites.

Koreans skating under the World Peace Gate while dreaming of beating Apollo Anton Ohno.

After taking in our fill of Olympic Dreams, we headed to a huge museum in Korea. We mainly looked at pottery. fancy.

Breda has lived in Korea for over two years now, and one of her friends invited us to their place for dinner! by then my palate had adjusted to kimchi, but my legs/feet hadn't adjusted to sitting on the floor (I'm such an old man).

yes, even grandma (<3!) sits on the floor like a pro.

 after a delicious dinner, the uncles insisted on us playing a traditional game or two. We picked up on the first one, which basically consisted of throwing four sticks onto the ground. Your piece moves on a board depending on what position the sticks land.

It was made especially exciting by the non-sober uncles who danced around with the sticks and yelled out with gusto the number of moves your piece got.

"do!" "gen!" "gal!" "yuk!" "mo!"

Just as soon as I finally got the hang of the stick game, they pulled out a card game that twisted mah jong and poker. Actually, I have very little clue as to how the game was run. I just played along and held cards while someone told me what to do.

I do know that to play a card, you had to flick your wrist so that it would land with a satisfying fwap on it's paired card. I did that real well.

Then after dinner we got to play with hedgehogs!!!! I'd never held one, but it was kinda like cuddling a hamster that had overdosed with very stiff hair gel. And they have adorable noses.

hedgehog whisperer 

hi.

The only thing that topped dinner, games, and hedgehogs was getting to see the family's kimchi refrigerator (yes, you read that right) and pots in which soy and other sauces are made! I was probably a little too excited to see real-life kimchi pots, but I figure that if they could jump around with sticks and plastic playing cards, then it was ok for me to take a bajillion pictures of the pots and fridge.