A visit to the toy museum on the most heavily fortified border in the world

The day before Christmas Eve our school went out to a toy museum located right on the border with North Korea. I was so shocked about how close we were! Literally right on the border! Any way, I'll write about that a little later. Now about the museum...

This picture pretty much sums up the atmosphere that came from the kids knowing geographically where the museum was. They were pretty tense about any signs of aggression from the north which were quickly addressed with swift action and intimidation.


The kids love the museum. It was a lot of fun for us to and it had a coffee shop that made the best hot chocolate we've ever tasted ANYWHERE!

Lots of legos. These ones I thought were pretty cool and I guess I would think they were even cooler if I liked legos.


Now this kid on the floor is something else. He's around six years old and has perfect pronunciation. One of the cutest kids ever. He liked the floor.


I admired the fine decorations of the bus we traveled to the museum in. I don't think the kids appreciated it as much as me.


So here's a picture of THE fence that separates the two countries. In this location the actual geopolitical border is the body of water in the distance and the land on the other side is North Korea. At this location when it is quiet you can hear announcements on loud speakers from the north to its citizens and military. I've never seen so much razor wire in my life! Too bad it was so hazy. We could still see buildings in North Korea which was pretty cool.

Snow, snow, and more snow!

We haven't updated the blog for sometime because of problems with our camera. With those resolved, here is a peek into some of the significant events during the break.

We went to several museums. One of which was the War Museum that was quite breathtaking. Outside the museum on the grounds we looked at all the rockets, planes, tanks, and artillery used during the Korean War.

Jenna was most excited about this one. Check out all the snow! People say it was the biggest snowfall in Korea in perhaps 100 years. Nearly a month later there are still a few piles left which have even survived a couple days of cold rain.




For Christmas we decided to celebrate by getting a cake! We got it from our local bakery just a minute or two away from our apartment. It was decorated quite nicely and tasted like many of the Korean cakes...much less sweet than our American counterparts... Oh, and Santa isn't a part of the cake and is instead a decoration on our refrigerator. The Christmas Tree looks a little more excited than I was, but believe me I was plenty excited about our Christmas Cake.



So it snowed on Christmas Day and we went out to the park near our house. It only snowed like half a centimeter but a pair of Korean teenage girls were able to make two miniature snowmen. Notice how Korean snowman only have one ball for the body and one for the head, unlike their three-ball American cousins. I guess it's like one and two hump camels.


I love the arms! I'm not sure what that yellowish-brown thing is on the one on the right's head. We approached the snowmen right after the girls finished making them. They were in the middle of jumping up and down and giggling wildly about how cute these two were. You get an idea of the size from the wood panels of the bench they're on.

Here is Matt enjoying the snow. It doesn't usually snow like this in Korea often.


Here's our refrigerator. Jenna decorated it to give our room a festive feel. The decorations were made in our school with the kids as we talked about Christmas.