Happy, South Korea

Friends and family, we are officially headed to Japan--our FINAL COUNTRY! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our two weeks in Korea were fantastic. This country has it all. The people are super friendly, the cities are easy to navigate, the history is fascinating, the food is clean (and the little kids eat it!), and the scenery is incredible. We loved it here.

We started with Seoul. In and of itself, the city is great. It was made even better because we had TWO friends there! Kristina stayed with us in our cute little apartment in the Myeongdong District. It felt so good to all be together for the third time on our trip! And we all got to meet Ryan's awesome friend, Eric, who (from what I can tell) is the God of Korean basketball.

We began with a trip to the iconic Lotte World.

We did all the things. Rides, ice cream, and cruising around in oddly shaped boats.

We took a day-trip to the DMZ, which was just surreal. The area is heavily controlled by the South Korean military, so we passed through checkpoints and had our passports inspected on the way in and out. Once inside, we enjoyed beautifully designed buildings and infrastructure built by South Korea to make the DMZ quite the tourist attraction.

We walked up the hill to the Dora Observatory, where we looked over the DMZ and into North Korea. The DMZ is an ecological paradise, mostly because it is full of an estimated one-million landmines that keep people away. Then beyond the trees is Kaesong, North Korea.

This is the former liaison building in North Korea, where the North and South met to discuss issues. North Korea blew it up in 2020, destroying the structure and blasting out all the windows.

It was just wild looking into this secluded country and trying to explain to the kids the unique situation with North Korea.

We all loved learning about the secret tunnels North Korea built under the DMZ to access South Korea. We even descended 72 meters underground to walk through one of the tunnels, which was big enough for 30,000 North Korean troops to enter South Korea in just one hour. (We hit our hardhats a lot on the ceiling though, so I'm doubting those numbers.)

The rest of our time in Seoul was just easy-breezy fun. We watched some 3-on-3 basketball,

Baker continuously and unsuccessfully tried to knock over Eric,

Ginny and Kristina worked on coding Ginny's Roblox game,

and we visited the YTN Seoul Tower in Namsam Park.

From Seoul we traveled South to Busan City for a short stay. We spent a day exploring Gamcheon Cultural Village, a neighborhood in Busan full of art, colorful buildings, and delicious food.

From Busan we flew to Jeju Island off the Southern Coast of Korea. We were about to ask a lot from the kids (more on that in a second), so we went to the Arte Kids Park for a day of easy fun. The park was super trippy and awesome.

Then came the big day: Mt. Hallasan. The tallest peak in South Korea, accessed by a 12-mile roundtrip hike mostly over brutal never-ending lava rocks. What could go wrong?

Well, amazingly, not much went wrong! The kids made it on their own six feet to the summit!!! I'm so proud of them. (Baker was too busy running away from swarms of biting flies to get a summit pic, but he was there!)

We changed the kids into their Tevas on the summit (clutch move), ate some lunch, and started the descent. Not surprisingly, the day started to get a bit long around the 7-hour mark. Lu ran out of juice, and Baker battled through some hard moments, but they gave it everything they had. Ginny was an absolute rock-star.

Then we enjoyed a couple relaxing days wandering around Jeju a little, but mostly just laying around. All in all, two thumbs way up for this beautiful country!!

We are off to Japan in the morning. We have a lot of fun things planned, including seeing our super awesome friends from home and meeting more of Ryan's basketball buddies! We are excited for hugs, familiar faces, and making new memories.

Last 25 days....let's do this!

All my love,

Madeline