Snowboarding!

Hiya guys! As normal life is busy but I have found some free time, so here we go!

Fail:
I was trying to go on a snowboarding trip for a while with my church members but we weren't having any luck because of the massive amounts of snow we were getting. Funny right, too much snow to snowboard. The problem was getting to the mountains. Nobody wanted to drive through 27cm of snow. Yeah, that was just one of the few snow storms we had. It seems I chose to come in the winter with the most snow and cold ever. Well, I did come asking for some snow since I haven't seen much of it in my life. And it has been really fun. Here I and most other people don't drive and the snow isn't a problem. (i could live without the -20 degree C though, its not normally that cold, it was just for a week)

Woohoo:
So anyways during the beginning of January I was a little bummed because the holidays were over and my friends are in Seoul so I cant see them as much as I would like but then I came to work and my coworker Nari invited me night time snowboarding later that week! yeah how awesome is that!!! Nari is a Korean English teacher who I have spent some time with before, but not much. I was sooooo happy that even though my students were being total brats, that day and the next it didn't even matter. I just smiled the whole time because I was happy.


So Thursday I worked most the day then later I went to a going away party for a friend going back to America. It was fun but I got to sleep later than I should have. Next I woke up Friday and hurried to work and taught for 8 hours then ran home shoved some food in my mouth and grabbed my bags to hop on the subway to meet Nari.

My favorite people:
First I met Nari's friend Nikki who is really nice then Nari was driving and picked us up and then we picked up one more of Nari's friends named Hyeong-ju. Also super nice but she was tired from work so she went to sleep. It was a long long drive but i wasn't tired so I stayed up and talked with Nari and Nikki. They are both English teachers who lived in Australia for a while so conversation was easy.


Finally we arrived and about a mile away from the snowboarding resort we stopped to get our rentals. It is cool in Korea you rent everything. I rented my blue jacket and snowboarding pants. The funny thing is it is mandatory that you wear hip and knee pads under your pants. I didn't complain ^_^ I think they saved me. So snowboards, lift pass and all that was under 50$! really cheap!

So we headed over to the snow boarding resort and it was really nice. It was actually really difficult to park even though it was 1am but we left that to Nari as we went and claimed our boards. So we had time for some pictures.

The slopes:
I wish we could have taken some pictures of the slopes but no such luck. But I will tell you about some funny things. So there are employee's watching the lifts of course but here they are more like amusement park employees. They wave at you and act way overly happy to see you and greet you every time. I thought it was funny. One time under my whole mask and hat they realized I was a foreigner and they stopped talking Korean and said, "Uuuuwoh! Hello!" Yeah it makes for a fun atmosphere.

I haven't snowboarded since I was a little kid and I didn't remember how to very well so I was a little slow to start. Well I mean my ability was, I would go down the hill quite fast but my amount of control was pretty limited which I realized when I almost killed some poor korean girl I never met before. It wasn't a bad or hard collusion at all and I made sure I took the impact not her but it was still a difficult situation since I don't know how to say much to her. I made sure she was okay but I think she was more frightened that I was a foreigner than anything. Anyways I am glad that she was okay. Snowboards are super easy to loose control of since you cant move your feet :/

I didn't see it but apparently someone took down Nari too so she had a headache most the night from it. So after an hour I became much more confident in my ability and could do heel side turns just fine but toe side was still difficult but I was figuring it out. Nari and Nikki were still learning so they were sticking together most the time.

After about half the time I was trying to keep up with Hyeong-ju. She is quite good and goes often. She is super nice but I couldn't communicate with her too well.

The Cold:
SO it was REALLY COLD! But we came prepared so when we were down on the ground it wasn't so bad at all. We had masks and hats and the only thing showing was our eyes. But I felt bad because Nari lent me an extra mask she had that was the same as hers just different color. So we looked like a couple and the worst part was in the cold the snot just falls right out. So i totally snotted up her mask. ^_^ She said it didn't matter and wouldn't let me wash it after. Too nice huh?

So the lift was the worst! Soooooo cold! On the ground there isn't any wind but on the lift way up high there was lots and lots of wind. By the end of the ride I couldn't feel my hands normally but fortunately at the top of the lift was a snack place selling hot food and drinks. Stupid me forgot my wallet in the car so Nari would buy and my hands would survive.


Idiot Dustin:
So we decided to start a snow fight but I haven't really done that since I was a little kid and the snow was hard to pack together because it was too powdery. But we did it. Of course the first good snowball I make, what do I do? This is where the idiot part comes in. So i see Nikki kinda running through the snow maybe 10 feet away and I launch a pretty big powdery snow ball at her... and it hits her right in her face when her mask was down :( :( :( T_T T_T T_T

So she was in an awesome amount of snow ball to the face pain and I couldn't do anything to help her because I caused it. T_T

Ah well she forgave me, these people are too nice to me.

Poor Nikki: (long before the snowball)


Lastly:
So we snowboarded through the night until 5am (oh starting to feel tired). Most this part is a complete blur because I was beyond tired. I don't know how Nari was able to stay awake because the whole long drive back to Seoul i was falling in and out of sleep. I really wanted to stay awake and talk to Nari so she wouldn't feel sleepy but I couldn't.
Thanks Nari!


We stopped for some 헤종국 which the literal translation is 'hang over soup' because it is supposed to give you energy and it totally did which was good because I had to go work for another 6 hours. Nari was beyond nice, she knew I was going to be late for work and she drove all the way to my workplace in Ilsan! So after being nice enough to drive all the way to snowboarding and back when she was tired she made and extra trip to Ilsan for me so I could be at work on time. Fortunately I have a pretty easy day on Saturday but I still fell asleep a few times for a brief moments while grading papers or things like that. One paper had a half written grade on it then a line of my pen going right off the side of the paper from me falling asleep while writing a grade on it. ^^

So I have spent a good deal of time the past few weeks with Nari, Nikki and Hyeong-Ju and they are really really great people! I have been praying to find some more friends who I can hang out with and now I am beyond content.

There are more pictures on my facebook if your interested. Just look in my photo albums.