Winter Wonderland

What a fun weekend I just had! At 7:00 pm Friday night I met up with Ryan, a guy I know from the gym, and one of his coworkers. We took the subway to Hannam where we met two more friends and, along with about forty others, boarded a chartered bus bound for Yong Pyong Ski Resort.

Over three hours of listening to tunes, meeting new people, and devouring Jell-O later, we arrived at the ski shop to pick up our rentals. Finally, around 1:30 am, we were the second group to make it to the resort. Since our group consisted of seven people, we assumed we would have a villa all to ourselves; imagine our surprise when we discovered that our three bedroom villa was to house eighteen people! All seven of us shared the large upstairs loft, complete with five Asian floor mats that served as our beds.

After we met some of our housemates, we went to another villa where some DJs were just starting to spin the music. We met some people and danced awhile until Kelly and our friend Steve finally arrived, and we all went back to the house together. We played some cards before hitting the hay (or should I say bed mats) at 4:00 am.

It was difficult, but we managed to wake up, get into our snowboard gear, and hop on the shuttle for the slopes all before 10:00 am. Since we both had only been snowboarding once before, Steve and I gladly took Kelly up on her kind offer of giving us a little lesson. We took a long gondola ride up to the top of the mountain and began our slow descent down a 5 km run. There were lots of classic "wish we had a video camera" wipeouts, and even Steve's knee slamming into the back of my head, but we managed to get down to the bottom all in one piece an hour and a half later. We then decided to have lunch, and I inhaled my first piece of pizza in three months. After lunch, we went back out to the slopes for a couple more runs before the lifts closed at 4:30 pm.

I know I've been very slack about taking pictures lately...I realized today as we were on the bus that I didn't take a single picture all weekend. Therefore, I made Kelly and Steve pose just to give me some color in this long blog!


We were all exhausted, and pretty banged up (I have bruises covering my whole body, a rather large knot on my head, and a bruise the size of Texas on my bum...now that I think about it, though, that injury was probably sustained the night before during a one-on-one soccer match on the slippery floor of our living room), but we resisted the urge to take naps. A few of us went to the resort's common room for a delicious steak dinner prepared by a 5-Star chef and his cronies. Unfortunately, my appetite wasn't what I was expecting it to be...it took just a few bites of my meal for me to start having to take big breaths. I'd have to say the amount I consumed definitely wasn't worth the $25 I spent, but the boys at my table were very excited about receiving the charity!

Saturday night, after recovering from our food comas, we hung out in our villa for a bit before heading to the pajama party. Everyone there was dressed very comfortably in sweat pants and t-shirts, and we danced for hours to some very good music. I danced until I was completely drenched in sweat before calling it a night around 3 am.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed and into an icy cold shower (for some reason, the heater wasn't working...it was so cold I couldn't breathe!). Kelly, Steve, Ryan, and I boarded the bus and were rolling out of Yong Pyong around 1:30 pm. We finally got back into Seoul around 6 or 7 tonight.

This past weekend was definitely one of the best since I've been here. I had such a fabulous time, and it was so nice to finally be in an environment in which you could easily meet lots of other foreigners. Over 350 people in all came on the trip, and about 99% were foreigners. Hopefully tonight I'll have a good rest to refresh me for another week of teaching!