THE end.

Yep. Here it is...the end of 95 days in Korea. It was real, it was fun...but it wasn't real fun. My normal life is way cooler and I'm beyond happy to get back to it...just check my other blog for proof!

Here we go...gettin' on the bus to the airport!!!

Loadin' all the luggage...

Incheon Int'l...can I just say how happy I am to be here right now with a one way ticket to Honolulu?!??!?!?!?


Sittin' on the tarmac, ready to push back from the gate and get this show on the road!

HOME AT LAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a great flight. Korean Air rocks. Free drinks, two meals, hot towels, sleeping masks, toothbrushes & toothpastes, snacks, free alcohol...what more do you want on a plane? Seriously?

Hope everyone enjoyed this blog. If you care what my real life is like you can always regularly check in on The Jumping Percheron. If not...thanks for reading!

Almost Outta Here!

Well...the celebration continued last night. Me, Cox, and Diaz wanted to go out and just repeat 10 million times how happy we are for ourselves and each other that we made E5. The other night results came out so late that we were only able to go to beer and hof for an hour before we had to be back on base for curfew. And that night we didn't find Cox until later and then that's when we drank some more on base. So we kinda wanted to go out as the three of us together. We celebrated that we made rank, that we'll all be home in less than 24 hours, and also that it was my husband's birthday and Cox's wedding anniversary. We were just some happy mofos!

First we went drinking at a bunch of bars in Suwon:

Slammin' a bottle of cherry soju.

Which turned into 2 more bottles of lemon soju...

Weird corn nut cheeto things and chocolate rocks...

One alley of bars in Suwon.

We drank anything and everything. I lost count of how many bars we went to. We drank everything from Soju to Long Islands...THEN we took a cab to Songtan to the Osan bars:

This was at Lani's bar...we had to go say bye to her.

Pie.Eyed.

:)

What A Way To End This Trip!

Well, the list for the 09 E5 promotions came out early this morning, which was late last night for us in Korea. I was sleeping and two commanders, the 1st Sgt., and two of my NCO's came and woke me up to tell me I MADE IT! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FIRST TIME AROUND! YEESSSSSSSS!! I am officially a Staff Sergeant Select! To make it even better I found out I am in the top 30%! It feels good to know that I didn't just barely scrape in under the cut off line. I didn't want to be one of those people.

The 3 of us that made it from our team here in Korea. Me, Cox, and Diaz. WE ROCK! CONGRATS TO US!

A trip to beer and hof across the street for individual pitchers of soju was mandatory.

Me with celebratory straight soju!

So, I am now outta Korea in under 48 hours. I CANNOT WAIT. I get home the day after my husband's birthday so, not only are we celebrating his b-day Sunday evening but also that I made E5. I'm pretty sure I walked around with a silly ass smile on my face most of the day. Life is good.

I decided to take some random pics yesterday while I was walking to Osan...

Bye bye Songtan station and the damn Cheongyagni train that always pulls up to the platform right as I walk in the parking lot, forcing me to miss it almost every time.

Bye bye, weird ghetto butcher. This dude is always hacking something up on the cement floor. I've even seen him hacking up pig heads and I regularly see pig heads in a bag just sitting in the door way.

Ew, see there's a bag of animal parts by the red stool. Ugh.

Bye bye ghetto, broke ass Songtan streets.

These are restaraunts, I'm not making that up. Notice the most bad ass mailbox you've ever seen in your life on the left...that green antifreeze container nailed up by the door, yeah...that's a mail box.

Bye bye weird ass old fruit stand lady under the bridge.

Awww, my beloved Bengals! I walk by this store everyday to see them. I wish they weren't illegal in Hawaii, or I'd already have one. Thankfully, they're NOT illegal on the mainland so when we PCS next year...I'll have a Bengal already reserved!!!!!

Really, I'm so ready to get out of here. This place is filthy...as you have seen, and smells like 20 different kinds of nastiness every 5 feet. It's a mix between a trash dump and a flea market. I mean I have had fun and all that but Korea as a place...uh, the only reason I would go is if the military makes me. There's no way I'd spend my own money to come over here. I'm thankful that this was my "deployment" but will I miss anything about this place? Absolutely.not.even.for.one.second.

Two More Palaces and a Temple.

Made it to two more palaces and stumbled onto a temple on the walk back to one of the subway stations today :)

Here's Unhyungung Palace:

Traditional wear of the King and Queen.

Pictures of palace visitors.

It's funny these palaces are right in the middle of downtown Seoul. You walk out the gate and you're back in a downtown metropolitan area. I mean duh, what do you expect, that palaces have been around for a long time, but still.

450 year old main gate.

Ok, this was Changdeokgung Palace. This is by far the coolest palace I have been to. The only way you can get into it is on a guided tour. I didn't know this when I got there but noticed the last English tour was in 30 mins, so I waited. There's only 3 English tours daily, so I happened to walk up at the right time.

Our guide spoke very good English. She asked me where I was from and I told her Hawaii and she started laughing and getting all excited and told me her sister had moved from Korea to Honolulu.

The tour was a total of 1.6 miles and took just over an hour. This palace has only been open to the public since 1996. The last people that lived in it lived there until 1989, until they died. The last direct descendant of the royal family died in 2005. She also told us that even though the palace is spread out the King and Queen hardly ever walked anywhere. They were always carried on their special chairs. They didn't even have to get up to use the bathroom. They would have servants bring tubs of water for them to use the restroom, the servants had to take the water back with them to dispose of it.

The main ceremonial court.

The King's throne.

The King's special house where he spent time with his concubine.

Walking to the forbidden garden.

Only the royal family was allowed into the forbidden garden, along with very few personally invited guests.

750 year old Juniper tree.

I'm not sure what the name of this temple is. I just happened to see it on my way walking back to the subway station.

Some weird old camera.

These are just a couple pictures I took when I was walking back on base.

Seoul Racecourse, again...I had to.

I went back to the racetrack again today :) I can't help it...I HAVE to see some ponies! I MISS MY HORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Any horses are better than no horses! Cox went with me today, she's never been to a track before.

Meet my horse of the day:





Ugh, like I said in the last post from the track, The World's BIGGEST SUCKER FOR A CHESTNUT WITH A LOT OF CHROME = ME.

Heh, and here is my boy winning the race by a nose!!!!
Click on the pic to enlarge and see how I caught him flying, all fours waaaay off the ground.

I will ALWAYS have lots of love for greys!

Seriously!!

We saw this hat at the gift shop, how random is that?!?!

Me with the happy horse family LOL.

Here I am putting the lock for Klein and I on the infield horse :)

Beautiful day.

Chi Koooooo!

A little paint mare that is a carriage horse.

Awww...

*SIGH*

Ahaha, two point on a hedge horse, with the most ass backward bridle I've ever seen in my life.

Uh?

Makin' a break for it!

Runnin' for the roses.

Seoul Tower, Round 2.

Cox and I went back to Seoul Tower tonight to see the city all lit up. Of course, it had to be raining a little, but it didn't ruin the view.

View from the subway when we cross the river...

Waiting on the next train...

Looking out of the cable car on the way up.

Looking down :) Cox, you did good :)

Standing at the base of the tower.

Looking out over Seoul.

Those are not UFO's, they're just reflections off raindrops.

Hehe, I found our lock!

I also had Klein and I our own lock engraved for the wire horse at the Seoul Racecourse infield.

It's blurry, but it's looking up at the cable car on its way to the tower.

Seodaenum Prison and Gyeongbok Palace.

First up today was Independence Gate and Seodaenum Prison:

Independence Gate.

Independence Gate was under heavy construction so we couldn't really walk around the actual park and check it out anymore. I guess some civilian had recently lit the park on fire in protest so now it has to be restored.


Seodaenum Prison was pretty much a concentration camp for when the Japanese forcibly occupied Korea from the early 1900s to the mid 1940s. Patriotic fighters were captured and brought here to be tortured and executed. This place is also under heavy restoration right now.

Solitary cell.

Video of an execution.

A torture cell.

Water torture cell.

The Wall Coffin.

Cell block.

The judges. Wtf is the point of judges at a concentration camp anyway?

The Corpse Exit Tunnel. After their deaths prisoner bodies were carried through this tunnel to the cemetary to avoid the chances of being publicly seen.

The tree is known as the Wailing Poplar. Prisoners were beaten against it. The brick was you see to the left is a small enclosure around the Execution House. We were allowed to go in and look but there were signs every where saying not to take pictures and that our actions were being monitored on cameras.

Ok, they are in their own country, so they can read this yellow barrier...yet they still ignore it and go right on through.

The tomb I went to the other day in Seoul, this is the palace of one of the kings buried there.

Petting the MEAAAAAAN kitty!

Aww, how cute :)

Sucks to be the dude that had to paint all that...

This last pic is for Lance :) Look dude I found the only real Indian in Korea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He plays his flute thingie in the subway LOL.