Hubris

Mari's foster brother is being adopted by a wonderful family that we have gotten to know over the past few months.  They left for Korea a week before us and so I had been following their blog avidly for pictures as well as any travel tips.  In one entry, they describe trying to visit a certain palace on Monday, only to learn that it was closed on Mondays.  The next day they decided to visit a different palace, only to find out that (you guessed it), it was closed on Tuesdays.  The family then made a funny comment about how they should have read the guide book they brought along before going.

So, I decided that we should visit The War Memorial Hall of Korea this morning, as we were still suffering from major sleep issues related to the time zone change (more on that later) and thought it would be a nice, easy morning activity. I first checked my trusty guide book and confirmed that yes, they are closed on Mondays but open on Tuesdays.  Thus, feeling a bit smug that I avoided the other family's mistake, I set out with Christian and Jeff for the short 15 minute walk to the hall.

The grounds surrounding the actual hall are filled with actual planes, tanks, and other military equipment and are quite impressive.  Christian had a great time exploring this area.  But when we went up the steps to the actual hall to get inside, the ticket counter was closed and it appeared deserted.  Hmmm.  I checked my watch - it was past the time that it was supposed to open.  There were a few people looking around as well, so we thought we would wait a while and see if perhaps they opened at a later time.

While waiting, we saw many groups of little children, probably either from schools or some sort of day care, marching around the grounds.  They all wore various uniforms and carried backpacks - the youngest ones looked even smaller than Christian and their backpacks were almost bigger than they were!  So, so cute!  However, we also noticed that they weren't going into the main entrance.  We tried following them for a little bit to see where they were going (perhaps they were going in some special new entrance that we didn't know about?), but felt weird and soon abandoned the effort.

Anyway, after a while we figured that they weren't going to open and walked back home.  I went online and found out that because June 6 was a national holiday in Korea, the museum closed on Tuesday instead. D'oh!  Too bad we can't read Korean because I'm guessing that large sign on the front door would have given us the story.  Anyway, we still enjoyed our morning outing so it wasn't a complete loss.  

As for the sleep issues:  when I posted last night at around 7ish, Christian was fast asleep in bed.  Unfortunately, he woke up at 11pm, midnight, and 3am.   Finally, it was clear that he was up for good and it was just way too early!  So, we're watching movies and eating cereal at 4am.  By the time 8:30am rolled around he was complaining that he wanted it to be bedtime - he was done for the day. Ugh!   We took a big nap this afternoon when we got back from the War Memorial and kept him up late, so hopefully he will sleep better tonight.  We had some great Korean barbecue tonight with our friends who just checked into our hotel - the same ones who came a week early. 

Tomorrow is the big day: we are visiting the orphanage and meeting the foster mom in the afternoon, and then going to her house afterwards for dinner.  I'm bringing a whole package of tissues and I'm hoping it will be enough! 

Here are a bunch of pictures from today.  Sorry, I'm too tired to sort them out more: