Olympics! I'm super stoked that I got to attend the 2018 Olympics being hosted in Korea. My friend Selina and I got tickets ages ago to go watch a curling match and when we got actual tickets in the mail, we were feeling excited! SO MANY people are here visiting from far-away lands just for the event so I am feeling pretty lucky that I already live here and just have to take a trip across the country!
Let's start with that trip across the country, shall we?
We booked the bus from Cheolsan to Gangneung(Olympics) for 10:10 am on Saturday but lo and behold when we emerged from the subway station at Cheolsan there was no bus terminal! We asked some locals for help and out of the kindness of their hearts they solidified what we already feared; we went to the wrong place.
This was scary because even though we had all day to get the Olympics for our game at 8pm, we had been told that the other methods of transport would be all booked up. Luckily for us, that wasn't the case and we were quickly able to hop on the KTX ("Ko-rail, time excellent"- Jeni 2k18).
I had never been on the KTX before even though most people swear by it for getting around Korea, so this was pretty great even though it was an accident. Selina and I finally boarded the train after 3 hours of trying (and failing) to make our way to Gangneung!
Also, a deadly thing about the KTX is that it has Wi-Fi! I was able to check on some medals standing while on the way to see it in real life! That's cool.
But then I needed a nap. I smiled to myself as I slipped on my TaTa sleep mask to snooze for the rest of the 2 hour ride.
(For those of you who don't know- I love the kpop group BTS and this mask is one of the member's cartoon characters which I am quite proud to own! I am able to let other people know that I'm ARMY even while I sleep in public. Anyways...)
About an hour and a half later we rolled into the first sighting of Olympic grounds!
We went to watch curling so we didn't get off here at PyeongChang but I'm tempted to go again in a few weeks for the Paralympics just to check it out!
Once we arrived at the end of the line we got off to see that we were among friends. Lemme tell ya, Canada was well represented by visitors at the events! Everywhere we looked we saw people rocking their red, white, and black Canada puffy coats, scarves, and mitts. How cool? Two of my home countries meeting. I thought it was 대박 (daebak=awesome).
We had some time to kill before our game so we decided to head into the games center to check out the atmosphere and grab some food (and beer, of course). We weren't surprised to see people from all countries chowing down on 만두 (dumplings), 라면 (ramen), and 오뎅 (fishcakes) all of which are staples in my Korea diet.
After some satisfying 만두 (and not so satisfying pizza for Selina) we went out to check out what was going on besides sports!
There were loads of sponsored games, big screens, catchy kpop, happy looking local families, and smiling (slightly drunken) foreigners. We apparently missed out on hitting up the Canada House, though, where we could have indulged in some samgyeopsal poutine and Molson products. *heartbroken*. Oh well.
Our time had finally come to enter the curling arena!
Canada managed to kick USA ass in the game we watched so it only lasted a couple ends! Lucky for use we were surrounded by all sorts of interesting spectators (including fellow Canadians, James and James), who managed to make all four games exciting at the same time!
Once everything was all finished up in the curling center, we headed back out in to the frigid cold to check out the atmosphere after the hockey game. It was the same as before except now everyone was a lot more drunk since it was 11 pm (a more respectable time to be drunk than 3 pm, I've been told).
We had a couple more adventures over the next couple hours which included our extreme luck with finding a 찜질방/ jjimjilbang (Korean bath house) where we spent the night sleeping on the floor in a sauna.
Though the trip to the Olympics started out a little shaky, it was a total success in my books and I returned home on Sunday afternoon feeling like I had satiated my desire for an adventure. Until next weekend, atleast 😉.
Thanks for reading!
Until next time!
안녕!