Korea for the Day

I had another Space Available adventure a few weeks ago!

My friend Megan and I hopped to Osan, Korea for the day!!!!

FANCY!

We rode a C-12 which was exceedingly more posh than the C-130 we took to Guam!

We pulled out of the hangar and circled and came back in because some database hadn't uploaded. We sat in the "Ready Room" while they got everything updated.

Megan's husband is the CO of H&HS Squadron and has one of the front row seats in the ready room with his squadron's patch and his call sign "Joey" embroidered on it.

We then got back on the plane and got the thumbs up from our friends, "Grunt"and "Hal."

When we were sitting on the runway the second time, waiting to take off, three hornets from VMFA(AW)-242 took off right in front of us. ZOOM! ZOOM! ZOOM! It was soooooooooooo (big long dramatic pause!) COOL!!!!!!!!

There was even a beverage service.

I bet my flight attendant is tougher than any flight attendant you have ever had! :)

We landed a short 90 minutes later.

Megan and I took a taxi to Chili's (of course!) and then walked off base and "CHECK!" Another country is marked off of my list! (Didn't count until we walked off base!)

We even stayed in Korea because the Lodge on base was full.

There are a bunch of contracted hotels off base and they even had a free shuttle in the morning back to base.

We walked around and shopped. I brought home lots of treasures for the girls and Mick.

But I left the ceramic penis at the store.

Instead I bought more family acceptable things like blankets, pirated (assuming) DVD's, and various chachkes.

This is toward the end of the day when I frantically said to Megan, "I've hardly taken any pictures!"and we went back to the blanket shop where I bought Mick a Texas blanket and asked the owner to pose with me.

The Korean people were very friendly!

What struck me as the most different from Japan is that more people spoke English than in Japan and they accepted dollars, not just the Korean won (pronounced Juan) off base. Some places gave change in dollars, some in won. I'm presuming it's because the won/dollar have a one/one exchange rate, but since I have never seen a place in Japan that accepts dollars...it felt really weird!

One man at a different blanket store (where I bought Gigi a Dora blanket) talked with us about Iwakuni and our bazaar and it make me realize that I should have been looking for one more butterfly cabinet while I was there. So this man actually left his store and walked us a few blocks to this store

which was closed. But wasn't that nice of him? (Also, picture is for reference for anybody else who is shopping in Osan for the day!)

One funny sign.

After all of that shopping we were thirsty and planned to stop here at "Friends Bar" because it sold "Kilkenny" beer, which is Megan's maiden name! :)

But when we walked into it and looked around, we were worried that it might be a place that is off-limits to service members and quickly exited and ended up next door at a pool bar.

Then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner

Which was delicious although I totally went too spicy!

and then we went back to our hotel room and played games on her iPad!

This was on top of the closet.

We had to get up early for a 7 a.m. "show time" and got some McDonald's before we left.

EggMcMuffin means "delicious" in all languages!

McDonald's even delivers!

We were the only passengers on the plane back to Iwakuni and were greeted with a little care package from our friend Major Elizabeth "Uma" Pham who knew were were going to be on the flight.

Thanks Liz!

Our pilots were "Muddy" and "Nanners."

They weren't flying when they took this picture, I promise! :)

We hit really bad turbulence on our descent, but I wanted to do Mick proud and refrained from praying the Lord's prayer at the top of my lungs (like I did when I was in labor with Olivia...I'll never live that one down!) and truly felt safe because I knew that my pilots were hard-charging, exceptionally trained Marine Corps jet pilot officers! How lucky was I? I told them that the Nick Jr show "Fresh Beat Band" has a song called "Just Like a Rock Star!" (I sure know how to woo those pilots, don't I?) and I was singing it in my head the whole trip! :)

This is right after the turbulence ended.

What a day!!!!

Thanks to Mike ("Joey" who is Megan's husband) and Mick for making it happen for us to get away!!!

 I told Megan that we will be talking about

this one for the rest of our lives!