Singin' and Snowin' the time away

The weeks are flying by! I've spent four weeks in Korea already... where has the last month gone??  

Everything is still going well... I'm really enjoying life here! I feel like I'm settling into a bit more of a routine now too, which is good , and I'm really enjoying living by myself (which I was a bit worried about before coming here)- I've even found myself getting a little crafty with some painting and origami (some of which I have even made into fridge magnets! NERD!!) 

After the new year break last week the kids at school were totally ferrel on Monday and Tuesday, which made this week feel a little longer than it was... and a lot more difficult work-wise.  Really, at times, I struggled to get the kids to even sit down let alone open a book and actually learn something. It was so draining and I felt like I was having to be the 'mean teacher' the whole time... there were no stickers given out and no games played in class. I even made some boys write lines (hahaha!!).  Being a hard-ass in the classroom didn't feel so good, but the tough love thing did pay off in the end and the kids were absolutely gorgeous for the rest of the week! I guess there's a very fine balance between fun teacher and push-over and I think I was starting to slide into the latter - which wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't actually have to teach them something. Ah, it's a steep learning curve I'm on, but it's definitely getting easier with every day.

Anyway, turns out that this learning curve is thirsty work, so friday night we headed out to Now Bar followed by a spot of Noraebang action.  Yes, you're probably noticing a pattern developing that involves Now Bar and karaoke on Fridays... I have no rebuttal to this - it's just what we seem to do on Fridays! Something about blowing off steam and singing cheesy songs (badly) with a bunch of other foreigners is strangely alluring for some reason...

Me with Jeff, Tania and Ellen - These are my co-workers. They're awesome. 

Noraebang time!!  Ellen and I peruse the song list.  As usual, we open with "Obla di obla dah" (We think we're pretty good at it... although, I wouldn't really know because you can't hear yourself sing in these places - it's just everyone around you that has to endure your howling).

Oh, geeze...  I don't even know what we were singing, but it looks like it would've sounded real bad.

Jeff, Ellen and I have adapted a few hand gestures which we use to communicate our drinking intentions to each other... 

We drank and noraebanged late into the night but skipped the usual Mandu stop on the way home in favour of a few hours of much needed sleep as we'd arranged to go snowboarding the following morning.... yeah, it's smart to go out drinking the night before strenuous and potentially bone-breaking physical activity...  

On Saturday morning, six bleary eyed foreigners headed to the nearby slopes- this was my first time snowboarding, and it was fun fun fun!  Only half an hour away from home and cheap too - $10 for snowboard hire and $40 for lift passes! Sweet! Although, I might add, that I am so sore today I can hardly move... every single muscle in my body is killing me and I'm covered in bruises from stacking it down the mountain a few times (read several hundred times).  Sitting down is particularly painful as my butt is somewhat tender after countless falls on my behind.  Entirely worth it though!

I was trying to get a snap of a couple in matching outfits, but unfortunately they skied away (in perfect unison of course) before I got the chance... shame.  A good photo of the slopes though!

Oh, hahaha, yeah, I'm all laughs and smiles on the lift up to the top with Ellen and Kit - this was, of course, before I attempted to actually stand and move on a snowboard.  I wasn't so smiley after my butt collided with rock hard ice several times.

I already needed a rest - and I was only at the TOP of the first run!  Trying to stay vertical was so tiring that that the prospect of navigating a negative gradient was positively exhausting!

Eeek!  That's a scary sight for a first timer!

My first snowboarding experience was a little like my first day as a teacher... once again I was thrown in the deep end.  No ski school or flat ground instructions for me!  Jeff and the boys (all with a fair bit of snowboarding experience behind them), thought this was an appropriate starting point for me. I pretty much fell over every meter of the run the first time I tried it, but it definitely got easier and by the end I was making it all the way down with only one or two stacks along the way!

Oh, we were having so much fun! But an outing for Ellen and I isn't really an outing without an attack from Dumb and Dumber... so of course, we accidently got on the wrong ski lift.  Rather than taking us half way up the mountain to runs that we could actually tackle, it took us to the very TOP of the mountain... the place where all the really experienced snow-bunnies go.  There is a reason they go there and we inexperienced people don't... because up there is a triple diamond/black run.   Great.  We only realised what we'd done when we were about a quarter of the way up the mountain, but it was too late to get off the lift.  

We got off at the top and looked down and I nearly shat myself. It was veeeeerrryyyy steep.  Like when I say steep, I mean that there was a section that was pretty much a vertical drop... we couldn't go back down on the lift and it was too steep to try and walk down, so we did what any other person would do in our situation (if any other person was dumb enough to get themselves into that situation, that is)... we slid down on our butts.  It was seriously scary - aside from being ridiculously steep it was also icy which meant that there were several times when we couldn't even stop our graceful butt slide.  There were definitely moments when I wondered if we were going to slip too fast and turn into giant snowballs rolling, with increasing speed, down the mountain  like in the cartoons, but because we survived I can say that bits of 'death mountain' were actually kinda fun (well, sort of... like in a "I think I may die, so let's make the most of it and pretend I'm having fun when I go" kinda way).

Ellen, butt-sliding down the mountain of death...

Aside from the near death experience, we had such an awesome day!  I'll definitely be trying to get to the mountains a bit next season (apparently the slopes close soon... which means it must get warmer soon too - whoop whoop!!!)