Hitting the slopes....hard. On my ass.

So if theres one thing I've noticed its that Koreans love their mountains. The hiking, the picnicking on them, and the skiing. After a week of fighting with websites in all Korean, we were successful in our endeavors!
Taylor told me in October he was would teach me to snowboard (and for those that know me, its something I've always always always wanted to do!) so me, him, Angela, Brad (the same one we picked up in an airport in Vietnam-funny how life works) and Brad's friend Farrah jumped on the free shuttle bus at 6am. This was rough, as the my coworkers and I received some sad news, and were up allll night drinking. Seriously, we had to pull Taylor out of the club at 5:30. It was intense. So we slept on the bus for the few hours, rolled into the resort, bumbled around, had some breakfast, bumbled around some more, before trying to figure out where to rent stuff. We got the name of a cheap place from a friend, but we forgot the number at home. We asked a staff where Canada rental was, and she said we needed to call them. After asking if we could walk (We were told it was easy), she said "well..its kind of hard to get there by walking" Taylor (one of the reasons I love this boy) said Real hard, or Korean hard to get there (She didn't understand). We decided to take our chances and walk anyway. after a slight mishap, 3 minutes later we had made it. Thanks Korea!

We got all the gear (snow pants, snow board, gloves and a lift ticket) for really cheap. We got shuttled up the mountain, and rented lockers, where we ran into other people we knew (Small world in the foreigner community-everybody knows everybody through somebody). Taylor, Brad and I rep'ed team snowboard and immediately went up the lift on the bunny slope. This was the biggest bunny slope I'd ever seen. After some flailing at the top, I was finally able to stand on the board and cruise a little bit, so that was heaps of fun. At one point Taylor was yelling at me after I was yelling about not being able to do it, so I got it, with a lot of help. After lunch, the boys decided to hit the big slopes, and I stayed on the bunny for a few more runs. After one of them I was convinced I had a broken wrist, thats how bad it hurt, but I kept trying, with heaps of lost confidence.
So Unfortunatly, the board won this time, but next time (probably in a few weeks) I'm going to master stopping. And maybe some turning, but I only ask for so much.

Snowboarding and Skiing is a little different here then in the states. First of all, there were a lot of people. A. LOT. Heaps of people, everywhere. It was hard to learn, as everybody was on the ground falling and I had to manuver around them, which usually resulted in me on the ground.
Also, there was no REAL snow. Every other time I've gone skiing, real snow may have been supplemented with fake snow, but this was about an inch and a half of some fake snow, which was not the best conditions, but it was okay.
I did like how much more accessable this was here. A free shuttle takes you to the mountains, and you get to rent and lift tickets and everything for about 50,000 won (read, 45 bucks). Thats a pretty great deal.
Finally, if we were in the states you would have bet dollars to donughts that I would have signed up for a class from a professional who taught me. This is impossible in Korea, as everything would have been in KOREAN. I mean, I bet I could have gotten someone with akward english, and with my akward Korean and with the fact that sometimes you don't need words, it would have worked out. But Taylor was ultra patient, and he got me to stand up and coast on a board, so thanks Tay!

Unfortunatly, my little camera is broken, so no pictures, but never fear, that problem is remedied, just wait.

Hope you had a great weekend
Patience and Faith,
ErinJ