Asan botanical gardens

The Asan botanical gardens resides about 25 minutes from Camp Humphreys.  It is an easy drive to a beautiful series of greenhouses set out in the country.  You pay a small fee of 2,000w about $2 to enter and children under 3 are free. The entrance fee includes a small succulent you receive. I went there many times with my son when he was a baby. In the carrier he loved to look around in every direction at all the beautiful plants and flowers. When he became a toddler he could gleefully walk around on his own investigating every area, pulling on the plants, and absorbing everything nature tries to teach a child. He learned some plants have thorns, and bees can pretty unforgiving when you interrupt their lunch.

We took my mom when she visited Korea. An avid photographer and lover of natures beauty she was mesmerized taking it all in through her lens. Theres a parakeet enclosure with hundreds of birds in the center of Asan. You open the door and walk in with food and the birds just flock to you to eat from your hands. I forgot what a bird lover she was, and she recounted to me how she had two parakeets when I was a child and I freed them from their cage through a window. This was like as if you had gathered all the freed house birds and brought them together to chitter-chatter all day and eat treats from transient tourists.

My son and I went back with our baby wearing group several times.  Each trip a few months after the last you could see the new milestones the little passengers were making. Jaxon began crawling and eventually walking and wasn't content to be glued to me anymore.  He started to talk and tried to names things with words that didn't fit but made sense to him.  Eventually he learned the names of many things and knew exactly where he wanted to go, to the ice cream stand of course. He'd briskly walk through the center breezeway to the picnic tables giving me no time to enjoy the new blooms.  Pointing and saying I-cream please, I-cream please momma.

I miss that beautiful spot so near to Anjeong-ri's hustle and bustle, and all the vast construction happening throughout 2015 and 2016.