Lunar New Year Holiday!

This was a particularly cruisey holiday, I had nothing planned, other than spending some quality time with my laptop, ps3 and puppy. I actually really felt like I needed a bit of downtime, my Winter vacation was really busy so I was looking forward to just doing nothing, which is exactly what I did for most of the week. Went out for a few quiet drinkies on the Tuesday night, after my school so kindly gave me half of Monday and all of Tuesday off work, and then met up with Rosie and her friend Lee who was over from England for lunch the next day. We decided to head all the way into Byeongjeom for "Dino meat" - which is an all-you-can-eat Galbi place - and the food there is amazing.

 I don't think I have ever left that restaurant without feeling a little sick from eating too much! The roads were ridiculously quiet and the taxi had us there in no time... I think I can speak for all of us when I say we were really excited to get there and all starving and so were thoroughly depressed when we discovered that it was closed! Most things seemed to stay open over the holiday but there were quite a few places that were closed on the Wednesday which was the official New Years Day. Either way we continued on down the road to a Galbi restaurant that was open and had a nice enough lunch! Followed by coffee and Roti which seems to have become a little bit of an obsession for me.

 Thursday I headed in to Seoul for the day, again to meet up with Rosie and Lee who were doing a bit of sightseeing, there were quite a few people on the train, big family groups carting around children and gifts. Korean children are particularly cute but there were one or two that I suspected may have been being given away as the gifts! The train seemed to take a lot longer than usual, roughly an hour and a half, which is a bit longer than normal and made to feel much longer by the Korean soldier squished in next to me who kept falling asleep on me. I made it to Seoul station in one piece and jumped off the train heading for the nearest exit, only to discover that the nearest exit bought me out somewhere I had never been before, I had been in Seoul 2 minutes and I was completely lost already!

 With a dying cell phone battery (really should have thought to charge it before I left) I called Rosie to find out where they were, the directions were a tad unique... something along the lines of "look for a KEB bank and a big white thing, near a roundabout, at the starbucks"... I adore you Rosie but really? For those of you who haven't been to Seoul there are about a million KEB banks, maybe half a million starbucks, I never saw the white thing so I couldn't tell you what that was all about, and it turns out there is more than one big roundabout!

 It took us roughly an hour to locate each other, realising the above facts along the way, and eventually meeting up in front of the main post office. We shopped around for a while, wandering through the markets, there was some big sale on in Myeongdong which was fun to check out. Then we decided to go and have a look at the "dog cafe" which was truly bizarre, it was a regular cafe except that there were half a dozen dogs and puppies roaming about freely, being patted by the guests. I guess if thats the only way you can spend time with a dog then it works...maybe...I was a little confused by the idea! It was on the fourth floor of a building, we discovered it was there when we saw a person dressed up in a dog costume, next to a sign in the middle of the market.

 We were followed up the stairs by a large group of foreigners, turned out there was quiet a bit of interest in what it was, though the people directly behind us were a fairly obnoxious group of Americans (sorry to my American friends but these were the people who give you guys a bad name!) who insisted on talking very loudly about how a dog cafe must serve dog meat, and they wonder how its cooked. Made worse by the fact that they then asked the Korean hostess much the same question... After the dog Cafe and another stroll around the market we headed off to Itaewon for a bite to eat and a drink or two, we started with the drink at a place called Gecko's, they were actually serving gluh wine (pretty average...) which I had to try!

 Then we decided on a change of venue and headed to Scrooge's for a bite to eat - I had been to scrooges before, but only for the rubgy, not for a meal. We tucked in to some Chilli Cheese Fries and Nachoes, which were fantastic, and then I established just how terrible I am at darts - with a glass of wine in hand. Not that the wine had anything to do with how terrible I am at darts! It would have been very easy to party on at that point but my poor little puppy had been at home on his own for 10 hours, the longest I have ever been away from him, so I decided to call it a night. I also decided to catch the KTX home instead of te normal subway, which meant I was actually in my apartment within an hour of leaving Seoul central, and you get an assigned seat with a little desk so its a much more pleasant way to travel - and at the cost of 4,000won (roughly $2.50 aus) it's really not a lot to pay! Spent most of the next day updating my blog (which had started to fall terribly behind) and re-writing the first couple of chapters of my book...followed by a weekend of ps3 with friends, good food, and more writing. All-in-all it was a great little break and I am unbelievably glad that I only have to teach for a day and a half this week and the rest of the time is desk-warming and graduation ceremonies!

Number 117. Learn to Snowboard

On the 5th of December I had my first experience snowboarding! We got up around 5am and got ready, heading out into the morning before it had even started to get light, trying not to slip on the icy ground while carrying all the snowboarding gear. We went to Suwon first, where we were to catch the ski resort bus to Jisan, and grabbed a bite to eat along the way – we knew we would be spending at least a few hours n the bus. We got to the ski field and hustled to get ready… everyone I was with had season passes and their own snowboards so I was the only one who needed to get a day pass and hire boot and a board. As soon as we were ready we jumped on a chair lift and headed up the bunny slope (still looked fairly huge to me at this point…). I haven’t been skiing in 10 years, and I have never been snowboarding, so sheer terror is probably the best way to describe what I was feeling when we hit the top of the first slope. I had assistance attaching the boots to the board, which was also a scary, having your feet strapped to something and unable to move is unnerving at first – I’m guessing it just takes some time to get used to. Then I tried to stand up. Then I tried to stand up again…and again… and realized I was going to be spending a substantial portion of my day sitting on the snow and probably head home with some spectacular bruising! The first run was a nightmare, I was a quivering mess by the time I eventually got to the bottom, I seriously considered taking the board off and walking down but my pride wouldn’t allow me to give up that easily. My stomach and arm muscles were killing me from trying to hoist myself upright while still leaning backwards so I didn’t go flying down the slope accidentally, I was trying really hard not to cry from sheer frustration at the fact that I couldn’t seem to pick it up in the first 5 minutes, for those of you who know me well you would know that I assume there is something very wrong with me if I can’t master a new skill in 30 seconds (which I am well aware is ridiculous!). I had also become incredibly grumpy and was unbelievably relieved when my companions suggested lunch. After lunch I sent them off on a run and relaxed after giving myself a stern talking to, they were back fairly quickly and I decided to give it another go, after all my pride wouldn’t let me stop after just one run…and my snowboarding pants are so cute they really needed to be worn! We went for a steeper slope this time around…which I thought was a really bad idea given how much trouble I had on the bunny slope but my companions insisted that it was easier to stand up on a steep slope…so I pulled myself together and climbed onto the chairlift. It was great! It was so much easier to stand up and I felt like I was starting to figure it out, the balance thing was getting easier, and I wasn’t falling as often! I made it down a couple of runs with only 1 or two falls – the one time I was certain I was going to make it without falling I was taken out by a girl who apologized about 15 times in English. By the end of the day I was incredibly sore and tired but feeling very satisfied that I had given it a real go and I wasn’t a complete waste of space on the snow! As soon as we got back we headed to the “all you can eat” Galbi place and ate till we were like balloons trying to get through the door on the way out, went home and fell asleep within about 10 minutes!

I have been once or twice since then - I am still terrible - but I can stand up a little better now. I may well go back to skiing though!