Saturday, January 24, 2009
*Photo Update*
Check out the slideshow to the right. I finally got around to uploading more photos. This set covers many of the things I've done over the last three months. You can click on the pictures to get you to the album of full-sized photos with captions, or the link below will get you there too.
Winter Break Part 1 - Korea
Winter break began at the end of December and runs until February 9th. That's a long break, but there's more. After the break ends, we have one week of school, that week of the 9th, and then we commence spring break until March 2, when the new school year officially begins. Why we have one week of school in the middle of a two month span, I'm not really sure. I've gotten some vague explanations of making sure teachers have enough time to finish all the paperwork from the previous semester, and prepare everything for the graduation ceremonies which will take up the last two days of that week. That means I have to teach only the first three days of that one week during these two months.
Sounds like a sweet deal, and it is, but I still have to do some work. My contract, and the contract of everyone else in my program, stipulates that we get only seven days of vacation over winter break, officially speaking. We are required to do English camps, which aren't like sleepover camps, thank god, but just a few days of special classes for smaller groups of kids. Both of my camps were during the first week of January. Monday and Tuesday at my school, 20 advanced students, and one other foreign teacher. It was super easy. My second camp was at the elementary school right across the street from my school. It ran the rest of the week. There were about 80 students and three other foreign teachers, and we finished by 1pm everyday. Plus for both camps I got paid for the materials I prepared which was a nice and unexpected bonus. The camp at the elementary school was great because I have never worked with younger kids before and they were really enthusiastic and funny, and were better at English than I had anticipated. The other foreign teachers at that camp were nice too. There was one guy, Andrew, who struck me immediately as a religion enthusiast.
I figured I was being overly and unfairly judgmental based on his protruding, balding, forehead, his blatant lack of social skills, and his bulging eyes that seemed to always be unblinkingly staring at you with The Word until we had the following conversation during a break period the first day:
"So, Ethan, what brings you to Korea?"
"Oh, I don't know. I like traveling and I figured this would be a good way to have a good job and do some traveling. Basically, 'Why not?' And yourself?"
"Missionary work." As he bulges his eyes at me, probably trying to read my soul.
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, I was in China before, but it was difficult. I didn't find very many Christians..."
I interrupt, "Well isn't that the point?"
"Well yes, but..." Blah, blah, blah. Then he quickly mentioned how he felt he didn't connect with the other foreigners around him as his eyes bulged and he told me about one particularly sinful scene: "And there was one party I was at where I actually saw marijuana being used!"
I nearly laughed in his face at this but managed to hold it together. On the last day he asked if he could have my phone number, I think he felt there was some holy connection between us. I told him I was an atheist and would really enjoy discussing religion sometime. I think this surprised him. Either way, I haven't gotten a call from him yet. And now that I think about it, he looks quite similar to Jeffrey Lewis.
That was the extent of my English camps. I had only one week of camps, both within five minutes from my apartment, and I got them over with nearly as soon as vacation began. I know other teachers in Daegu who were not as lucky as I was, and in fact, I don't know any who were. The weekend before the camps I was snowboarding, as I previously wrote about. That trip was actually Thursday to Saturday, which left me Sunday free. I took a trip to Busan, Korea's second largest city, which is on the coast about an hour away. I met some friends in the morning to do some bouldering in a new area. We spent a bunch of time wandering around, exploring potential climbs. Busan is much warmer despite the fact that it isn't too far from Daegu, so it was nice climbing outside for a change from the gym I go to twice a week.
The weekend following my camps I went on an overnight trip with a small group of teachers, students, and parents from my school. One teacher had asked if I was interested in doing this trip before school ended, and I was hesitant at first, because he speaks almost no English so I wasn't exactly sure what he was inviting me to, or what my responsibilities would be, if any. It turned out it was just a day hike - take a bus two hours north Saturday afternoon, chill in a motel by the mountain, and then up and down Sunday, hit a spa, and come home Sunday evening. This sounded all well and good. In reality, I sat around most of Saturday evening while the food was being cooked in a freezing common area - that's one interesting thing about Korea: they save a ton on energy usage by heating only classrooms or, in this case, bedrooms, but hallways and the like remain unheated. Anyway, we ate and then I stood around while everyone spoke Korean. That night I slept on the floor in a room with four other teachers. Sleeping on the floor can be uncomfortable as it is, but throw in snoring and the realization of a hike in the cold the next morning and it suuuucks. I put on my iPod to try and relax myself into sleep, but halfway through Dark Side of the Moon I knew it wasn't going to help at all. I managed to get a few hours at some point, some how.
The next day we were up bright and early, and I was ready to go right away, but it took about two hours to get everyone up, eat, and get organized. The hike took about 3 hours up and wasn't too bad at the beginning. It was only very cold but the sun was coming out and we were still low enough to be sheltered from the wind. As we got higher up, it got worse and the sun didn't make a damn bit of difference, and the wind was absolutely deadly. There were patches of snow here and there, and some people opted for crampons at these spots. By the time I made it to the top, my toes were freezing, my hands were freezing, and I had spent most of the hike wishing I wasn't doing the hike. The view was okay, and there was an observatory located nearby, but it wasn't open to the public so I couldn't go in to defrost. I was one of the first ones up there, and one of the first ones down.
Later on, when everyone had come back down, we chowed some food and headed to the men's side of a spa - or public bath - where we all stripped down naked with a bunch of other strangers and sat around in hot tubs and saunas. This was my second time in a place like this, and it is of course very strange to us Western folk who have all sorts of hang-ups about being naked. I'm learning not to really care though, and it makes you think our reservations the first time you go in and realize you are probably the only person out of dozens there that think its strange that everyone is naked. These places are super relaxing and cheap and after spending all day on a frozen mountain it was great. I didn't get too many questioning looks about my tattoos, which, from what I am told, many people here think only convicts have.
The following two weeks, I had no camps, and my vacation wasn't scheduled until the very end of January. I still had some work to do though, two conversation classes per day at my school (that I was getting extra pay for!). Other than those classes I didn't have to be in at school, which, again, is more than I can say for some other foreign teachers, because according to our contracts we only have those seven official vacation days, so some people have to sit at a desk and do nothing all vacation if they don't have any camps scheduled. I still came in early and stayed late, using the time to plan out my next semester's lessons and so on. Regardless, compared to a normal school day, I still came in late and left early, so all was good. The classes themselves were okay. The levels of the students were very different, so if I was helping the really low-level kids, I was ignoring the high-level kids, and vice versa. Either way, I got the classes done with, picked up some extra cash, and got a lot of work done ahead of time for next semester.
The weekend in between my two weeks of conversation classes, I went up to Seoul for the first time since my eight-day orientation program in late August. I took the bullet train up and went to visit Seoul Tower before I met up with a friend of mine from that orientation, Eddie, in Itaewon for dinner. Itaewon is an area of Seoul that has a ton of foreign restaurants and clubs, and is apparently close to an American military base. As such, I saw more Westerners than I had seen since I left the states practically. We had Mexican food with a Korean friend of his (of limited-English abilities) at a restaurant where some soldiers were conducting some sort of event where they would go up on stage and congratulate each other for jobs well done. Maybe a going away thing, who knows. From there we went to Hongdae, a really jumpin area with a ton of bars and clubs, and not quite as Westernized as Itaewon. After a few drinks and watching people slip on the ice, we dropped Eddie's friend off at the subway (with a bit of convincing, he was set up with her by a friend and she didn't want to go home alone) and waited for his girlfriend, with whom we went out for a bit more before barely catching the last bus to Incheon, a sprawling city just outside of Seoul where Eddie lives.
One of the main points of my visit was a poker game that was organized for Saturday evening. We relaxed all day Saturday, taking a walk and watching a movie, until it was game time. The first game we got a little crazy and played Texas Hold 'Em with jokers wild with seven people with a 2,000 won buy in just for the hell of it. The real game was with eight people and no shenanigans with the jokers. I got third place which meant I got my 10,000 won buy-in back, which was good enough for me. Eddie took the 50,000 first-place pot, breaking a losing streak he had going. Then it was off to a different part of the city for a rock show, cheap beer, darts, pool, video games, street food, meeting random Koreans and going to a norae bang with them, and then witnessing a low-powered but long-running fight between a couple groups of Korean guys and girls in their early 20's maybe. The next day I forgot my iPod at Eddie's and headed back to Seoul to catch a slow train back to Daegu, reading a bit, but mostly sleeping. I always end up sleeping during bus or train or plane trips, I don't know why, its just become my traveling routine.
Sounds like a sweet deal, and it is, but I still have to do some work. My contract, and the contract of everyone else in my program, stipulates that we get only seven days of vacation over winter break, officially speaking. We are required to do English camps, which aren't like sleepover camps, thank god, but just a few days of special classes for smaller groups of kids. Both of my camps were during the first week of January. Monday and Tuesday at my school, 20 advanced students, and one other foreign teacher. It was super easy. My second camp was at the elementary school right across the street from my school. It ran the rest of the week. There were about 80 students and three other foreign teachers, and we finished by 1pm everyday. Plus for both camps I got paid for the materials I prepared which was a nice and unexpected bonus. The camp at the elementary school was great because I have never worked with younger kids before and they were really enthusiastic and funny, and were better at English than I had anticipated. The other foreign teachers at that camp were nice too. There was one guy, Andrew, who struck me immediately as a religion enthusiast.
I figured I was being overly and unfairly judgmental based on his protruding, balding, forehead, his blatant lack of social skills, and his bulging eyes that seemed to always be unblinkingly staring at you with The Word until we had the following conversation during a break period the first day:
"So, Ethan, what brings you to Korea?"
"Oh, I don't know. I like traveling and I figured this would be a good way to have a good job and do some traveling. Basically, 'Why not?' And yourself?"
"Missionary work." As he bulges his eyes at me, probably trying to read my soul.
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, I was in China before, but it was difficult. I didn't find very many Christians..."
I interrupt, "Well isn't that the point?"
"Well yes, but..." Blah, blah, blah. Then he quickly mentioned how he felt he didn't connect with the other foreigners around him as his eyes bulged and he told me about one particularly sinful scene: "And there was one party I was at where I actually saw marijuana being used!"
I nearly laughed in his face at this but managed to hold it together. On the last day he asked if he could have my phone number, I think he felt there was some holy connection between us. I told him I was an atheist and would really enjoy discussing religion sometime. I think this surprised him. Either way, I haven't gotten a call from him yet. And now that I think about it, he looks quite similar to Jeffrey Lewis.
That was the extent of my English camps. I had only one week of camps, both within five minutes from my apartment, and I got them over with nearly as soon as vacation began. I know other teachers in Daegu who were not as lucky as I was, and in fact, I don't know any who were. The weekend before the camps I was snowboarding, as I previously wrote about. That trip was actually Thursday to Saturday, which left me Sunday free. I took a trip to Busan, Korea's second largest city, which is on the coast about an hour away. I met some friends in the morning to do some bouldering in a new area. We spent a bunch of time wandering around, exploring potential climbs. Busan is much warmer despite the fact that it isn't too far from Daegu, so it was nice climbing outside for a change from the gym I go to twice a week.
The weekend following my camps I went on an overnight trip with a small group of teachers, students, and parents from my school. One teacher had asked if I was interested in doing this trip before school ended, and I was hesitant at first, because he speaks almost no English so I wasn't exactly sure what he was inviting me to, or what my responsibilities would be, if any. It turned out it was just a day hike - take a bus two hours north Saturday afternoon, chill in a motel by the mountain, and then up and down Sunday, hit a spa, and come home Sunday evening. This sounded all well and good. In reality, I sat around most of Saturday evening while the food was being cooked in a freezing common area - that's one interesting thing about Korea: they save a ton on energy usage by heating only classrooms or, in this case, bedrooms, but hallways and the like remain unheated. Anyway, we ate and then I stood around while everyone spoke Korean. That night I slept on the floor in a room with four other teachers. Sleeping on the floor can be uncomfortable as it is, but throw in snoring and the realization of a hike in the cold the next morning and it suuuucks. I put on my iPod to try and relax myself into sleep, but halfway through Dark Side of the Moon I knew it wasn't going to help at all. I managed to get a few hours at some point, some how.
The next day we were up bright and early, and I was ready to go right away, but it took about two hours to get everyone up, eat, and get organized. The hike took about 3 hours up and wasn't too bad at the beginning. It was only very cold but the sun was coming out and we were still low enough to be sheltered from the wind. As we got higher up, it got worse and the sun didn't make a damn bit of difference, and the wind was absolutely deadly. There were patches of snow here and there, and some people opted for crampons at these spots. By the time I made it to the top, my toes were freezing, my hands were freezing, and I had spent most of the hike wishing I wasn't doing the hike. The view was okay, and there was an observatory located nearby, but it wasn't open to the public so I couldn't go in to defrost. I was one of the first ones up there, and one of the first ones down.
Later on, when everyone had come back down, we chowed some food and headed to the men's side of a spa - or public bath - where we all stripped down naked with a bunch of other strangers and sat around in hot tubs and saunas. This was my second time in a place like this, and it is of course very strange to us Western folk who have all sorts of hang-ups about being naked. I'm learning not to really care though, and it makes you think our reservations the first time you go in and realize you are probably the only person out of dozens there that think its strange that everyone is naked. These places are super relaxing and cheap and after spending all day on a frozen mountain it was great. I didn't get too many questioning looks about my tattoos, which, from what I am told, many people here think only convicts have.
The following two weeks, I had no camps, and my vacation wasn't scheduled until the very end of January. I still had some work to do though, two conversation classes per day at my school (that I was getting extra pay for!). Other than those classes I didn't have to be in at school, which, again, is more than I can say for some other foreign teachers, because according to our contracts we only have those seven official vacation days, so some people have to sit at a desk and do nothing all vacation if they don't have any camps scheduled. I still came in early and stayed late, using the time to plan out my next semester's lessons and so on. Regardless, compared to a normal school day, I still came in late and left early, so all was good. The classes themselves were okay. The levels of the students were very different, so if I was helping the really low-level kids, I was ignoring the high-level kids, and vice versa. Either way, I got the classes done with, picked up some extra cash, and got a lot of work done ahead of time for next semester.
The weekend in between my two weeks of conversation classes, I went up to Seoul for the first time since my eight-day orientation program in late August. I took the bullet train up and went to visit Seoul Tower before I met up with a friend of mine from that orientation, Eddie, in Itaewon for dinner. Itaewon is an area of Seoul that has a ton of foreign restaurants and clubs, and is apparently close to an American military base. As such, I saw more Westerners than I had seen since I left the states practically. We had Mexican food with a Korean friend of his (of limited-English abilities) at a restaurant where some soldiers were conducting some sort of event where they would go up on stage and congratulate each other for jobs well done. Maybe a going away thing, who knows. From there we went to Hongdae, a really jumpin area with a ton of bars and clubs, and not quite as Westernized as Itaewon. After a few drinks and watching people slip on the ice, we dropped Eddie's friend off at the subway (with a bit of convincing, he was set up with her by a friend and she didn't want to go home alone) and waited for his girlfriend, with whom we went out for a bit more before barely catching the last bus to Incheon, a sprawling city just outside of Seoul where Eddie lives.
One of the main points of my visit was a poker game that was organized for Saturday evening. We relaxed all day Saturday, taking a walk and watching a movie, until it was game time. The first game we got a little crazy and played Texas Hold 'Em with jokers wild with seven people with a 2,000 won buy in just for the hell of it. The real game was with eight people and no shenanigans with the jokers. I got third place which meant I got my 10,000 won buy-in back, which was good enough for me. Eddie took the 50,000 first-place pot, breaking a losing streak he had going. Then it was off to a different part of the city for a rock show, cheap beer, darts, pool, video games, street food, meeting random Koreans and going to a norae bang with them, and then witnessing a low-powered but long-running fight between a couple groups of Korean guys and girls in their early 20's maybe. The next day I forgot my iPod at Eddie's and headed back to Seoul to catch a slow train back to Daegu, reading a bit, but mostly sleeping. I always end up sleeping during bus or train or plane trips, I don't know why, its just become my traveling routine.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Open (build) Temple in Your Country
As I was waiting on the a bus platform Sunday morning, I was approached by a Korean man who began to speak to me in English, which, from previous experience, meant one of two things: he was just curious and wanted to practice his English, or he was looking to sell me some sort of religion.
"Do you speak English?"
"Yes."
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from America."
He handed me a sheet of white paper, folded approximately in half.
"Here take this paper. When you read it, tell your friends."
Then he quickly left, leaving me a bit confused, and pretty intrigued by what could be on this paper. Thinking about why the dude ran off so quickly, why he told me to pass on to my friends whatever information was inside, and why the small piece of paper was folded over to obscure its contents started thoughts of some black market underground sweetness running through my head as I opened it up.
This is what I found:
(click for a larger view)
I had been right about thinking he was trying to sell me some religion, but I was kind of disappointed that was all it was after such a mysterious solicitation. I read over the paper was pretty amused nonetheless. Apart from some basic and expected Engrish, there are some real sweet lines on there:
I'm glad they specified Christians are okay. Apparently Jew, Muslim, Mormons, and other various cult members are shit out of luck.
Ah, what a relief that becoming a Buddhist priest is a choice - only if I want. I thought for a second there I was instantly obliged to become one just by reading the paper. At least it would be beneficial to me.
It obvious what they are trying to say here, but I still find it hilarious that it sounds like Jesus Christ was born today and that Buddha has him beat by being born 500 years prior. Great stuff, but if the "true" god is really determined by who is oldest, I guess we should all try to start worshiping some long-forgotten caveman god from eons back.
"Do you speak English?"
"Yes."
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from America."
He handed me a sheet of white paper, folded approximately in half.
"Here take this paper. When you read it, tell your friends."
Then he quickly left, leaving me a bit confused, and pretty intrigued by what could be on this paper. Thinking about why the dude ran off so quickly, why he told me to pass on to my friends whatever information was inside, and why the small piece of paper was folded over to obscure its contents started thoughts of some black market underground sweetness running through my head as I opened it up.
This is what I found:
(click for a larger view)
I had been right about thinking he was trying to sell me some religion, but I was kind of disappointed that was all it was after such a mysterious solicitation. I read over the paper was pretty amused nonetheless. Apart from some basic and expected Engrish, there are some real sweet lines on there:
Visit Zen Meditation Center (Temple)! Christian - no problem.
I'm glad they specified Christians are okay. Apparently Jew, Muslim, Mormons, and other various cult members are shit out of luck.
Become Buddhist priest (if you want)-> beneficial to you.
Ah, what a relief that becoming a Buddhist priest is a choice - only if I want. I thought for a second there I was instantly obliged to become one just by reading the paper. At least it would be beneficial to me.
Buddha was born prior to Jesus Christ 500 years ago.
It obvious what they are trying to say here, but I still find it hilarious that it sounds like Jesus Christ was born today and that Buddha has him beat by being born 500 years prior. Great stuff, but if the "true" god is really determined by who is oldest, I guess we should all try to start worshiping some long-forgotten caveman god from eons back.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Shredding Korea
New Years Day:
Wake up at 6:30am. I'm going skiing with a large group of public school teachers from Daegu and I need to meet the two teachers from my school that are going to be on the trip so we can all ride to the buses together. Except for my alarm, I turned off all sounds and vibrations on my phone so my five hours of sleep wouldn't be interrupted by late night New Years text messages or phone calls from friends who were out all night. Turns out it was unnecessary as no one felt the urge to bother me. Just by chance I see that my phone's screen is lit up. One of the two teachers I am going to meet is calling to make sure I am up, which I am, but just barely. I manage to eat a bit for breakfast before I grab my bag that I packed yesterday and walk down to my school to meet Yong-bum, the librarian who has never skied before in his life and fits well into the stereotype of a male librarian: meek and frail and glasses and quiet. He and Dong-hun are waiting for me in Dong-hun's car. Dong-hun is a P.E. teacher at my school, and, aptly, is talented an every sport I have played with him.
My eye lids are dropping and I'm waiting to get on the bus so I can sleep but we have to pick up Dong-hun's girlfriend first. He is over thirty and not married, and has recently begun dating this girl, so it's a big deal because if you are over 30 in Korea and not married, it's not good. I say hello and miraculously remember her name. I have enough trouble remembering the names of fellow Westerners I meet, let alone Korean names. We get to the bus and I settle into sleep, waking up briefly when we stop at a rest area, but I'm too tired to get out and eat or drink anything so I just go back to sleep. I get out of the bus for lunch at a restaurant that Big Bang ate at according to a note on the wall, but I'm relatively out of it, and don't bother really talking to anybody at my table, all of whom I will be sharing a room with at the resort.
When we get to O2 Resort in Gangwondo, the majority of us, those who do not have our own equipment or ski wear, shuffle through a bunch of lines to get our stuff. It costs 10K Won to rent ski pants and a ski jacket for three days. This is currently the equivalent of $7.50, and there are no forms to fill out, or papers to sign saying you wouldn't just go home with a new set of fairly fashionable ski clothes. The snowboard and boots are about $15.00 for the three days, also without any sort of burdening paperwork. We are in a huge tour group of about 350, so maybe they already had our information, or just didn't want to deal with the sheer number of us. Anyway, I get everything I need and we miss the last of the afternoon skiing, but apparently there is night skiing so all is not lost for the first day.
Our hotel is brand new, as is the entire resort. In fact everything is so brand new in this its opening year, that there are only two trails open: easy and intermediate. After dinner (free - does this resort plan to make money on anything?) it's time to hit the slopes. I ride up a lift to the midway point of the easy slope with one of the guys I am sharing the hotel room with, Jae-bon, and then up another lift to get to the top of the easy trail. They aren't kidding when they say it's easy. It's been nearly a year since I last snowboarded, but I don't need much of a warm-up, and this trail hardly counts as a warm-up anyway. I cruise down over the snow orange from the floodlights, and walk over to the intermediate trail to see if I can find a bit more of a challenge.
It's not much more of a challenge, although the first part is a bit steep. The chair is quick, and so is the ride down, about six minutes round-trip. Oh well. There is a park, but it appears to be closed. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to mess around in that. The tabletops are small, but the angle of the ramps look like they'd launch you pretty high. After a few laps on the "intermediate" trail I go back to the easy trail just for some variety, and stop halfway down to get some hot ramyen for 2K won, or $1.50. I love that things are so cheap here. Hot ramen mid-slope in the states would cost you at least $6. The easy trail turns out to still be quite easy so I do a few more laps on the intermediate trail and then go into the lodge to play a baseball game on my cell phone and eat a Snickers bar to pass the time in a more exciting fashion.
After meeting up with my roommates in the lodge towards the end of the evening, I take another run or two to close the night out and head up to our hotel. Like the hotel I stayed at in Busan, there is a closet full of mattresses to spread out on the floor, but unlike that hotel, there is also one room with a bed that the women take over. There are about nine of us in the room, which has a huge living room and kitchen, a small sleeping room room for us men, a balcony, the good-sized bedroom, and two bathrooms. We stay up pretty late eating food and talking and watching TV.
January 2nd:
It's somewhere around eight AM when I open my eyes. The previous night was spent between overheating, thanks to the heated floors, and trying to drown out the snoring guy next to me. I think it was Jae-bon. I close my eyes again and get up a bit later, not bothering with first tracks on 90 seconds of corduroy, although I must say, for being purely man-made, the snow is decent. I've dealt with much shittier conditions repeatedly in New England. I make it down to breakfast with Dong-hun and his girlfriend. There's nothing like rice and kimchi and soup for breakfast, but on the bright(ish) side, they did have bread and jam. I spend the remaining part of the morning doing laps on the intermediate trail, constantly looking at the rangers working in the park, hoping it's open the next run. It's not though. I ride up the lift with some random guy snowboarding, and when I say "Ahnyeong haseyo" he says, "Hi, I'm not Korean." Turns out he's from Hong Kong, on vacation, so I do a few laps with him on the trail and chat with him on the chair.
After lunch I take a few more laps and then head up to our hotel to relax for a bit with a couple of young teachers I am staying with. I do some reading and they head back out after awhile, but Dong-hun and his girlfriend Ji-hyang have come back so I hang out with them. I go out for another few runs before coming back in around 3:30PM and break out the cards I brought and teach Dong-hun and Ji-hyang how to play Golf. I dominate and thus they cook dinner for me instead of vice-versa. I get out for the evening session again, hoping the park will be open like one of the ski patrol people told me earlier in the day, but maybe something was lost in translation, because it's still not open. After more of the same I head to the lodge again to work on my baseball season and eventually get found by one of the young teachers I'm sharing the room with. She's pretty cute actually, except for some teeth issues. Anyway, we eventually go up to the room to retire the snowboards for the night with the intent of playing some pool. The pocketball table, as they call what we know as a regular pool table, is occupied, and so are all the other four-ball tables. These are tables with no pockets, and are used to play a game called four-ball which involves two red balls, a yellow ball, and a white ball. Alternating teams, white and yellow, try to hit both red balls on one shot without hitting the other team's ball. It's ridiculously hard. We visit the arcade instead. Later in the evening after I show the cute teacher and Seong-mo, another young teacher I am sharing the room with, how to play Golf, and beat them both, winning beer out of it, we go back to the arcade, and then see the pocketball table is free. Me and Yong-bum, my school's librarian, beat the cute teacher and Seong-mo two games out of three and are entitled to not paying. We get to bed around three AM, which seems to be nothing unusual for Koreans.
January 3rd:
Last day at the resort. The snowboarding has been by no means exciting, but it has still been a good time since the people I am staying with are fun. I get up sorta late, and don't get onto the snow until 10:30, agreeing to meet everyone in an hour to turn in my equipment. I do a couple laps with Jae-bon and Dong-hun. Dong-hun has spent most of the trip teaching his girlfriend how to ski so I haven't spent much time with him on the slope. It turns out that he is super good at skiing, at least as far as one can be good on such a mild hill. There is a slalom course that is closed off to the general public and I ask him if he has ever raced slalom. I am surprised and impressed to find out that four years ago he was Daegu city's amateur champion in the giant slalom. In a few days I find out that he is or was also a national bobsled athlete. Wow. That's not too common at all. Anwyay, I do a few laps by myself, after they take off. I take some time to make a round-trip video of the intermediate trail, from the bottom of the chairlift up to the top, and then back down again. Here it is:
Unfortunately, I don't do a very good job at catching the liftie dressed in a cow costume at the beginning. There are a few of these lifties in different animal costumes, presumably just for fun. I've seen some students wear them on special occasions, and they are hilariously cute. Seeing women in full body hampster and cow costumes makes the casual trip up and down well worth it. The run following the completion of this video, the park is finally open. I look at the time and see I have to meet everyone in twenty minutes to turn in my stuff. What luck.
My first run I hit the first jump with a straight grab to get a feel for it, then boardslide a rail and almost fall because it is so slow and I almost have my weight too far forward anticipating less friction. I hit the last jump with another straight grab. My next and last run, I get real crazy and throw a 180 grab down on the first jump, and see by the reactions of the Koreans sitting around in the park that it was clearly something impressive. I boardslide the rail again and hear some ooh's and ahh's disappearing behind me and decide to really blow them away with a 360 on the last jump, which I execute pretty poorly and skid out on the landing but don't entirely fall on. Still, I'm sure they were impressed by this way-gooks skills. I only wish I had more time to play around on the jumps and rails, or had someone really good with me who could blow their minds with some decent tricks.
I could push it and get one more lap in the park in, but I figure that it's 12:28 and I should be on time to meet everyone at 12:30. Of course, no one shows up till 12:50, meaning I could've taken three more runs in the park I waited for all weekend to open. Every minute they were late, I figured they would show up the next. I also figured I would hurt myself trying to do something stupid in the park if I felt rushed on another run, so by staying in the lodge I was really acting in my own self-interest. Oh well. Now it's lunch time, so we chow down before heading up to the hotel to pack our things and get back on the buses to Daegu. This time I score the center seat in the back row of the bus so I can stretch my legs out down the aisle as I sleep.
Wake up at 6:30am. I'm going skiing with a large group of public school teachers from Daegu and I need to meet the two teachers from my school that are going to be on the trip so we can all ride to the buses together. Except for my alarm, I turned off all sounds and vibrations on my phone so my five hours of sleep wouldn't be interrupted by late night New Years text messages or phone calls from friends who were out all night. Turns out it was unnecessary as no one felt the urge to bother me. Just by chance I see that my phone's screen is lit up. One of the two teachers I am going to meet is calling to make sure I am up, which I am, but just barely. I manage to eat a bit for breakfast before I grab my bag that I packed yesterday and walk down to my school to meet Yong-bum, the librarian who has never skied before in his life and fits well into the stereotype of a male librarian: meek and frail and glasses and quiet. He and Dong-hun are waiting for me in Dong-hun's car. Dong-hun is a P.E. teacher at my school, and, aptly, is talented an every sport I have played with him.
My eye lids are dropping and I'm waiting to get on the bus so I can sleep but we have to pick up Dong-hun's girlfriend first. He is over thirty and not married, and has recently begun dating this girl, so it's a big deal because if you are over 30 in Korea and not married, it's not good. I say hello and miraculously remember her name. I have enough trouble remembering the names of fellow Westerners I meet, let alone Korean names. We get to the bus and I settle into sleep, waking up briefly when we stop at a rest area, but I'm too tired to get out and eat or drink anything so I just go back to sleep. I get out of the bus for lunch at a restaurant that Big Bang ate at according to a note on the wall, but I'm relatively out of it, and don't bother really talking to anybody at my table, all of whom I will be sharing a room with at the resort.
When we get to O2 Resort in Gangwondo, the majority of us, those who do not have our own equipment or ski wear, shuffle through a bunch of lines to get our stuff. It costs 10K Won to rent ski pants and a ski jacket for three days. This is currently the equivalent of $7.50, and there are no forms to fill out, or papers to sign saying you wouldn't just go home with a new set of fairly fashionable ski clothes. The snowboard and boots are about $15.00 for the three days, also without any sort of burdening paperwork. We are in a huge tour group of about 350, so maybe they already had our information, or just didn't want to deal with the sheer number of us. Anyway, I get everything I need and we miss the last of the afternoon skiing, but apparently there is night skiing so all is not lost for the first day.
Our hotel is brand new, as is the entire resort. In fact everything is so brand new in this its opening year, that there are only two trails open: easy and intermediate. After dinner (free - does this resort plan to make money on anything?) it's time to hit the slopes. I ride up a lift to the midway point of the easy slope with one of the guys I am sharing the hotel room with, Jae-bon, and then up another lift to get to the top of the easy trail. They aren't kidding when they say it's easy. It's been nearly a year since I last snowboarded, but I don't need much of a warm-up, and this trail hardly counts as a warm-up anyway. I cruise down over the snow orange from the floodlights, and walk over to the intermediate trail to see if I can find a bit more of a challenge.
It's not much more of a challenge, although the first part is a bit steep. The chair is quick, and so is the ride down, about six minutes round-trip. Oh well. There is a park, but it appears to be closed. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to mess around in that. The tabletops are small, but the angle of the ramps look like they'd launch you pretty high. After a few laps on the "intermediate" trail I go back to the easy trail just for some variety, and stop halfway down to get some hot ramyen for 2K won, or $1.50. I love that things are so cheap here. Hot ramen mid-slope in the states would cost you at least $6. The easy trail turns out to still be quite easy so I do a few more laps on the intermediate trail and then go into the lodge to play a baseball game on my cell phone and eat a Snickers bar to pass the time in a more exciting fashion.
After meeting up with my roommates in the lodge towards the end of the evening, I take another run or two to close the night out and head up to our hotel. Like the hotel I stayed at in Busan, there is a closet full of mattresses to spread out on the floor, but unlike that hotel, there is also one room with a bed that the women take over. There are about nine of us in the room, which has a huge living room and kitchen, a small sleeping room room for us men, a balcony, the good-sized bedroom, and two bathrooms. We stay up pretty late eating food and talking and watching TV.
January 2nd:
It's somewhere around eight AM when I open my eyes. The previous night was spent between overheating, thanks to the heated floors, and trying to drown out the snoring guy next to me. I think it was Jae-bon. I close my eyes again and get up a bit later, not bothering with first tracks on 90 seconds of corduroy, although I must say, for being purely man-made, the snow is decent. I've dealt with much shittier conditions repeatedly in New England. I make it down to breakfast with Dong-hun and his girlfriend. There's nothing like rice and kimchi and soup for breakfast, but on the bright(ish) side, they did have bread and jam. I spend the remaining part of the morning doing laps on the intermediate trail, constantly looking at the rangers working in the park, hoping it's open the next run. It's not though. I ride up the lift with some random guy snowboarding, and when I say "Ahnyeong haseyo" he says, "Hi, I'm not Korean." Turns out he's from Hong Kong, on vacation, so I do a few laps with him on the trail and chat with him on the chair.
After lunch I take a few more laps and then head up to our hotel to relax for a bit with a couple of young teachers I am staying with. I do some reading and they head back out after awhile, but Dong-hun and his girlfriend Ji-hyang have come back so I hang out with them. I go out for another few runs before coming back in around 3:30PM and break out the cards I brought and teach Dong-hun and Ji-hyang how to play Golf. I dominate and thus they cook dinner for me instead of vice-versa. I get out for the evening session again, hoping the park will be open like one of the ski patrol people told me earlier in the day, but maybe something was lost in translation, because it's still not open. After more of the same I head to the lodge again to work on my baseball season and eventually get found by one of the young teachers I'm sharing the room with. She's pretty cute actually, except for some teeth issues. Anyway, we eventually go up to the room to retire the snowboards for the night with the intent of playing some pool. The pocketball table, as they call what we know as a regular pool table, is occupied, and so are all the other four-ball tables. These are tables with no pockets, and are used to play a game called four-ball which involves two red balls, a yellow ball, and a white ball. Alternating teams, white and yellow, try to hit both red balls on one shot without hitting the other team's ball. It's ridiculously hard. We visit the arcade instead. Later in the evening after I show the cute teacher and Seong-mo, another young teacher I am sharing the room with, how to play Golf, and beat them both, winning beer out of it, we go back to the arcade, and then see the pocketball table is free. Me and Yong-bum, my school's librarian, beat the cute teacher and Seong-mo two games out of three and are entitled to not paying. We get to bed around three AM, which seems to be nothing unusual for Koreans.
January 3rd:
Last day at the resort. The snowboarding has been by no means exciting, but it has still been a good time since the people I am staying with are fun. I get up sorta late, and don't get onto the snow until 10:30, agreeing to meet everyone in an hour to turn in my equipment. I do a couple laps with Jae-bon and Dong-hun. Dong-hun has spent most of the trip teaching his girlfriend how to ski so I haven't spent much time with him on the slope. It turns out that he is super good at skiing, at least as far as one can be good on such a mild hill. There is a slalom course that is closed off to the general public and I ask him if he has ever raced slalom. I am surprised and impressed to find out that four years ago he was Daegu city's amateur champion in the giant slalom. In a few days I find out that he is or was also a national bobsled athlete. Wow. That's not too common at all. Anwyay, I do a few laps by myself, after they take off. I take some time to make a round-trip video of the intermediate trail, from the bottom of the chairlift up to the top, and then back down again. Here it is:
Unfortunately, I don't do a very good job at catching the liftie dressed in a cow costume at the beginning. There are a few of these lifties in different animal costumes, presumably just for fun. I've seen some students wear them on special occasions, and they are hilariously cute. Seeing women in full body hampster and cow costumes makes the casual trip up and down well worth it. The run following the completion of this video, the park is finally open. I look at the time and see I have to meet everyone in twenty minutes to turn in my stuff. What luck.
My first run I hit the first jump with a straight grab to get a feel for it, then boardslide a rail and almost fall because it is so slow and I almost have my weight too far forward anticipating less friction. I hit the last jump with another straight grab. My next and last run, I get real crazy and throw a 180 grab down on the first jump, and see by the reactions of the Koreans sitting around in the park that it was clearly something impressive. I boardslide the rail again and hear some ooh's and ahh's disappearing behind me and decide to really blow them away with a 360 on the last jump, which I execute pretty poorly and skid out on the landing but don't entirely fall on. Still, I'm sure they were impressed by this way-gooks skills. I only wish I had more time to play around on the jumps and rails, or had someone really good with me who could blow their minds with some decent tricks.
I could push it and get one more lap in the park in, but I figure that it's 12:28 and I should be on time to meet everyone at 12:30. Of course, no one shows up till 12:50, meaning I could've taken three more runs in the park I waited for all weekend to open. Every minute they were late, I figured they would show up the next. I also figured I would hurt myself trying to do something stupid in the park if I felt rushed on another run, so by staying in the lodge I was really acting in my own self-interest. Oh well. Now it's lunch time, so we chow down before heading up to the hotel to pack our things and get back on the buses to Daegu. This time I score the center seat in the back row of the bus so I can stretch my legs out down the aisle as I sleep.
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