PyeongChang 2018 - Day 0 (February 9th) Gangneung and PyeongChang

Today is the Opening Ceremonies! We got home from ski jumping around 1 AM yesterday so we get a very late start. I work on the blog for a while and then we walk down to a convenience store in the apartment cluster (16 14 story apartment buildings - they really believe in high density living in Korea) to see if we can find something to eat. This is tricky because everything is in Korean. Thank God for pictures on food items! We think we've got two instant raman bowls, a couple bottles of water, some chocolate bars and a bag of tortilla chips (talk about cross-cultural).

When we get back to the apartment we discover that our meals are rice bowls, not raman, but the idea is the same - mix the dry components, add boiling water  and wait. This works out quite well. I've got one that has mushrooms and some sort of meat. Beth has a fish-based one. And the tortilla chips are reasonably good imitations of the real thing. Success!

We have train tickets to go to Jinbu at 2:40pm, but after our shuttle bus fiasco of yesterday, we decide to wait until 4:30pm before making our way to the Opening Ceremonies. Since we are wearing enough clothes to keep us reasonably warm at night outdoors, we knew we would cook if we walked back to the train station. We don't know how to call a taxi to the apartment so we elect to try the local bus. There is a bus stop about 800 meters (0.5 miles) from the apartments so we walk over there and wait. I have an app that supposedly will tell me when the bus we want (either 302 or 304) will arrive, but I can't seem to make it work or the buses in Gangneung don't have the transponders that allow it to work. But there are other people waiting so it seems like this will work.

The bus arrives about 10 minutes late and we hop on. It takes only 4 stops before we are at Gangneung station. We head over to information and get two tickets for a train leaving in about 10 minutes.

They announce boarding of our train and we join what looks like a fairly long line to get through security. Unlike yesterday when we basically straight through the metal detector no matter how much metal you were carrying, they are quite meticulous this time, but hey, this is the Olympics. We are used to this stuff.

After the short ride to Jinbu, we enter the station and are greeted with a corridor lined with security personnel. Behind them are perhaps 100 photographers and other assorted media crammed into this little station. We knew that someone important was either on our train or the one that was only about 5 minutes behind it, but did not know who. We find out later that Korean President Moon Jae-In (last name first in Asia), US Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's younger sister Kim Yo Jong were all on the train. I understand from talking later to a Korean that we meet that President Moon is in hot water over talk of Korean reunification and is making a show of being "one of the people" by taking public transport instead of motorcades. Needless to say, they were not sitting on the back of the train with us.

Outside the station, a guy smiles and hands me a bag and says welcome to Korea. My initial reaction was confirmed by the handout which shows the steps to salvation. As we queue for the shuttle bus to PyeongChang, we pass a quartet singing gospel music and a minister works his way down the line from passenger to passenger asking us to accept Jesus. Uh oh, we have arrived in the evangelist zone! I understand the need for evangelicals to proselytize and big international events like the Olympics draw them like a magnet. I am sure that I will run into someone in the next 10 days offering to trade what looks like an Olympic pin in exchange for a 5 minute sermon.  Unfortunately, it looks like the Korean form of evangelism is particularly virulent and we are in for more of this than at previous Olympics.

The bus ride to PyeongChang is a little longer than yesterday's trip to Alpensia, but it goes by quickly. Along the way, we pass what looks like the site of the Olympic Downhill course and perhaps the Slalom course as well. The bus lets us off almost directly in front of the Olympic park. We see multiple entry gates, but there is no signage to indicate whether we should enter at a specific gate. We manage to find an English speaking volunteer and find that any gate is okay. Before we enter, we see a group performing down the street:

I guess that people here are just used to the cold, but we can't stay too long in one spot before getting really cold. We go through security and head for the concessions stands. There is a long line for western food, but we head right for the Korean food line which has no line. Despite the menus, not all of the lines have all of the items so Beth gets hot chocolates in one line while I get steamed buns, one filled with red bean paste and the other with a mixture of meat, glass noodles and vegetables, from another line.

There is plenty of time so we go over to the Olympic superstore. It is really crowded so I buy some pins with the mascot Soohorang doing different sports and then we go back outside. Next stop is a visit to the ICT pavilion. ICT stands for information and computer technology and is some sort of joint government/business effort to demonstrate Korean technology. Inside the entry way is a tank full of robot fish that, while a little jerky in their movements, do a reasonable job of mimicking the real thing. The also demonstrate ultrahigh definition TV where you can view an object in pseudo-3D by rotating your viewpoint with respect to the object on the screen. Using this technology, you could, for example, experience the bobsled from the drivers perspective. There are also some virtual reality rides and some examples of augmented reality, but we don't spend much time with those because it is getting time to get to our seats.

Here is the view from our seats:

The stadium, which will be dismantled after the Paralympic closing ceremonies is five sided. Directly across from us is the section where the athletes will sit. The Olympic family (sponsors, head's of state and other dignitaries, sports federation members and national Olympic committee members who are not marching) sit in the section to the left along with TV broadcasters and in the section above the athletes. The rest of the people, who appear to be primarily Korean, are in the remaining three sections. Because the different ticket agents are sold blocks of tickets, we are mostly in a group of Americans, but Beth is sitting next to a Swiss guy (who is living in Hong Kong and is attending his first Olympics) and I've got a couple from Kazahkstan in front of me (who keep waving their flags in front of my camera).

One of the highlights of the opening ceremonies is seeing what is in the bag attached to your chair because it will give you clues about the show. This is our fifth opening ceremonies and our bags have far more in them than we've ever seen. We have:

4 handwarmers

2 bootwarmers

1 seat cushion

1 butt warmer that fits in the seat cushion 

1 blanket

1 hat - ours are blue, but we see other people nearby with yellow, green and red (should be black also, but those are hard to see at night)

1 white rain poncho

1 combination miniature Olympic torch with LED light and pen

1 drum with handle - it takes us some time to figure out that you unscrew the cap at the bottom and pull out the drumstick

1 multilingual instruction sheet with times and description of the meaning of the parts of the show and what we are to do with the torch and drum

Apparently during the test event for the opening ceremonies, several dozen people were treated for hypothermia so the organizers went crazy to make sure that it wouldn't happen again. They also put warming areas downstairs with big butane area heaters in case the cold gets too much for you.

The first hour is the preshow. They start with two guys speaking, respectively, English and Korean. Unfortunately, the guy speaking in English was not using his microphone correctly because the sound kept dropping out. Then a combined group of South and North Korean tae kwon do athletes come out to perform. It was about then that we heard a bunch of cheers and noticed this:

These are the famous North Korean cheerleaders that were brought to the Games to support the 10 athletes that are attending. Their cheers are very coordinated, but I thought that they were often cheering at the wrong times (like not waiting until a break in the tae kwon do performance). In any case, they dominated most of the preshow.

The other important item during the preshow was teaching us how to count down from 10 in Korean. A more or less phonetic version is: Shil, Goo, Pahl, Chil, Yoogh, Oh, Sah, Sahm, Ee, Eel. We are supposed to yell this shortly after the worldwide TV audience tunes in.

While we are waiting for the start of the ceremonies, I notice a group of Russians in a nearby section:

I can't quite make out the letters from our vantage point, but the single letters on their jerseys, but they appear to spell out some sort of protest to the way that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has dealt with Russian after the investigation into extensive Russian doping at recent Olympics. The Russian government continues to claim that Russian doping is fake news perpetrated by the US. I'm sure that there is some politics involved, but when you find male DNA in the urine sample of a female hockey player, you know that there is a problem somewhere.

We do our Korean countdown and the first part of the artistic program begins. This is mostly Korean mythology and is beautifully done. Here is a picture showing some of the animals of zodiac and other mythical beasts like dragons and phoenixes:

This section appeared to be a little shorter than we are used to, then the Korean flag is brought into the stadium by a combined group of past Korean Olympic medalists and promising youngsters:

The Korean national anthem is played and the flag is raised. The President of Korea declared the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games open and then the parade of nations begins. As usual, the Greeks come in first:

After that, it was really difficult to figure out who would come next because they are using the phonetic Korean hangul alphabet to decide the order. For example, after Greece comes Ghana, Macedonia, Nigeria, South Africa, Netherlands and Nigeria. But the one that I really wanted to see was Samoa. As you may remember that Tongan tae kwon do athlete Pita Taufatofua walked into the Rio Olympics wearing only sandals and a traditional grass skirt. He made such a splash that he was bombarded with modeling and acting offers, but he had bigger plans. After Rio, he taught himself to cross-country ski, first by dragging wooden boards across the sand dunes of Samoa to build up his muscles and get the feel for the glide that cross-country requires, and later on the snow. He competed in 6 world cup events and qualified for PyeongChang in his last chance. And her he is again carrying the Samoan flag:

This guy is going to be an Olympic legend!

Finally, the team that everyone else was waiting for was the Korean unified team which marched into the arena with two flag bearers under a special unified Korean flag:

It is difficult to overstate exactly how big a deal this is to the Korean people. Feelings about reunification are very complicated. Sunny told me that they've been taught in school from age 7 that people from the North are monsters and I'm sure that the same is true for children in North Korea. But at some level, they all view each other as Koreans. All of the saber rattling between Leader Kim and President Trump has made people in the South very nervous so this unified team carries their hopes that everything will work out.

After the parade of nations, they did something unusual and went back to the artistic portion. I am not sure that I understood the meaning, but it seemed to involve Korea using technology to move into the future. Here is a picture from this section:

The heads of the Organizing Committee (POCOG) and IOC President Thomas Bach address the audience and Bach draws cheers by speaking partly in Korean. At this point, they used to release a bunch of doves, but high definition cameras caught a bunch of them being fried in the Olympic cauldron so now we do the dove of peace a different way:

The Olympic flag is brought into the stadium and an athlete and judge recite the Olympic oaths promising to compete in the spirit of the Olympics. They also added a line about not doping which I can't remember being their previously. Finally, the Olympic flame comes into the stadium. I wish I could show you some pictures, but we appear to be sitting in the only section of the stadium that cannot see the cauldron from our seats. We can just barely see Korean figure skater Yuna Kim (Gold medalist and first Korean to medal in figure skating) in her small skating area at the base of the cauldron.

At this point, we are getting pretty cold and ready to head home, but first, there are a bunch of fireworks:

This vertical firework launcher was pretty cool, but overall, I thought that there were probably a few too many fireworks and our section was engulfed in smoke before they ended. Fortunately, the wind was blowing pretty strongly so it cleared quickly.

With 40,000-50,000 people in the arena, the lines to get out of the stadium are huge and we feel like we are corks being carried along in the current. But eventually we get out and are able to walk without being shoved around too much.

We had previously seen signs directing spectators going to Jinbu so it didn't bother us that there were no English speaking volunteers confirming we were going in the right direction. But when we got to the spectator pickup area, there were no signs - just volunteers telling us to keep going. We see lots of queues for buses, but it is not clear to us which queue we should be in. We finally understand that all of the queues are for buses going to Jinbu, but all of the queues are huge. To make matters worse, after the initial big group of buses departing, there are very few that stop in front of us. We wait about 40 minutes before we are able to get onto a bus. We hear later that the buses stopped completely with more than 1,000 spectators still waiting to get onto a bus - not good.

We arrive back at Jinbu and the station is packed with people trying to get either to Gangneung or to Seoul. We get into the queue to get tickets (the train that we had tickets for left more than an hour earlier), but it is not going quickly. Fortunately, the station master did some outside-the-box thinking and realized at the rate that spectators were getting new tickets, all of the trains would leave with huge numbers of empty seats. He claps his hands and announces that anyone going to Gangneung should follow him and buy tickets on the train. We happily follow him up to the platform.

Our train (leaving at 12:12 - the same one as last night!) is still several minutes away. While we wait, I'm approached by a couple guys from China who want to trade a pin for the official milk supplier for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing for one of my pins. I agree. This draws the attention of a woman wearing a Chinese delegation jacket. She wants a couple of my NBC PyeongChang pins and has some Beijing Olympic mascot sports pins to trade. Deal!

The train finally arrives and we head back to Gangneung. We head immediately to the taxi queue. There are a line of taxis and we move to the left as people in front of us get into taxis. There are only two groups in front of us when we run out of taxis. But when the next taxi arrives, it blows right past us to the original start of the line meaning we are now at the tail of the line instead of the front. It takes us nearly an hour before we get a taxi home. Time 1:30 AM. It has been a good day, but we are really cold and tired.

Steps for the day: 6544 *phone died again - cold weather and batteries don't mix!