Christmas Skiing Trip to Yongpyong

Hey everyone,

As promised here is the skiing blog post from last weekend.  The picture on the left is of Nate and myself after we had finished our morning runs on Sunday in some brutal -17 Celsius weather.  All weekend long the weather (especially the wind) was not very kind and last weekend had to rank up there as some of the coldest skiing I've done in recent memory.  That being said, I'm glad that we decided to go; it's always nice to get away for the weekend and the discounts we got by going with the Discover Korea group were too good to pass up.  There was some snow on the mountain, but not nearly as much as either of us would've enjoyed.  The majority of the runs were covered in man-made snow, which turned to ice in the afternoon and froze again overnight, but it was still fun to get out there for the first time this season.  We left from Suwon after school on Friday and took an express bus out to Gangneung (강릉) out in Gangwon-do, which, if some of you more seasoned readers of this blog may remember, is where my Chuseok 2009 journey began.  We stayed overnight in Gangneung and caught the shuttle to Yongpyong (용평) Saturday morning, where we met up with the rest of the Discover Korea group.  Yongpyong is roughly 40 minutes from Gangneung, so it didn't take us that long to get there in the morning, which was nice, because it meant we got a full day of skiing in on Saturday.  Yongpyong is nearby Pyeongchang, the Korean city that is vying for the 2018 Winter Olympic bid.  There are 2018 Winter Olympic flags and signs up everywhere, but it's my opinion that if the IOC was worried about having enough snow at Whistler and Blackcomb last year, then there's very little chance that Pyeongchang could host the Winter Olympics.  Unfortunately it just doesn't snow enough here or consistently enough for the mountains to be able to guarantee snow for the skiing, snowboarding, and other sports.  Back to last weekend, renting ski equipment here is always a fun adventure because my build is so different from the typical Korean build.  It's always a challenge to see whether the rental shop will have ski boots in my size.  It didn't make much sense for me to bring my ski gear from home, especially if I'm only using it a few times a year, so rental equipment was the way to go.  Anyways, the rental staff found me a pair of 320mm ski boots, which I was able to squeeze into on the lowest setting, although my calves were happy to be done skiing on Sunday.  Skis were not a problem, but the rental staff were a little worried that because the bindings on my skis were on the highest setting, that if I fell, I'd be ejected pretty easily.  Thankfully, falling was something I didn't have to worry about.  The weather on Saturday was cold but manageable.  It hovered around -15 Celsius for most of the day with a great cold wind blowing across most of the mountain, but at least the sun was out.  After a few hours on the slopes we stopped in for some lunch.  Typically, my favorite ski snack/meal is a nice hearty bowl of chili, but unfortunately, there was no chili at any of the chalets so I chose the closest Korean equivalent: kimchi jjigae, which is basically kimchi stew with spices, some beef, and tofu (the bean part).  We got a good 3 1/2 hours on the slopes in the afternoon before we called it a day and met up with the rest of our group for a little Christmas dinner.  Our Christmas dinner consisted of pizza, chicken, and beer, which was all good and it was nice to meet some new people.  It turns out a few people from the Discover Korea group also live in Suwon.  One of the greatest pleasures post-skiing is to relax and rest up the sore muscles in the hot tub.  Luckily, as is only natural of a Korean ski resort, there was a sauna in one of the hotels right next to the mountain, so after dinner, most of us checked out the hot baths to give our muscles some rest and relaxation.  The mountain remains open for evening and night skiing, but we decided that it was too cold and we knew we we're going to try and hit the slopes again on Sunday morning.  After getting a good 3 hours in Sunday morning, Nate and I returned our equipment and caught the shuttle back to Gangneung, where we took an express bus back to Suwon, which took a little longer than usual because of Sunday afternoon traffic (unavoidable on any weekend). 

  

The last few days have been mostly a build up for me for my trip to Thailand.  I have most of my clothes and other things I need to pack out right now and once I finish this post I'll finish that.  Those of you that have seen me in the past few weeks know that my mane or Jew-fro has grown out a little bit and I think it's time to get it shorn a little bit before I embark to hot and humid Southeast Asia.  That's about it from this end, I've got my camera ready and I'm packing a notepad and some pens so I can keep of everything we do and see and give it back to you when I get back in two weeks.  I hope everyone has a great New Year!  Hopefully mine will be spent celebrating a Badger victory in Pasadena!  Here's a little something to get all those Badgers in the right spirit.

What I'm listening to right now: "Day Tripper" by the Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwmtNk_Yb2Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxJzADik5TA 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K03W8UAlRgw

The Great December Rundown

Hi everyone,

Greetings from my chilly classroom!
I can't believe how quickly the month of December has flown by!  I was looking at my past posts and I realized I haven't written anything new since the Manila tournament, which seems like a while ago, and I guess it's been about a month.  It's amazing how fast time flies by when you're busy and occupied day in and day out.  Anyways I'll try and give everyone a brief but informative description of the past few weeks, but I think I might have to break this up into two parts.

The pictures above and below were taken during my Advanced class' cooking class at the beginning of the month.  It was a special activity my co-teacher and I planned to give the students a little break after their test in my class and before their test in their regular classes.  Each group of students made their own spaghetti and it was pretty interesting to see some of the ingredients that each group brought.  The mother of one of the students gave her daughter American cheese to put on the pasta instead of parmesan (why, i don't know).  In fact none of the groups used parmesan cheese (it's pretty hard to find, especially around my school); all the other groups used mozzarella cheese, or as the students called it, "pizza cheese."  And, of course, each group had some sweet Korean pickles to go along with their meal.  When each group was finished cooking, I came around and sampled some from each group and most of them were pretty good, although I don't think I'd recommend American cheese ever.  I know the kids enjoyed it, which is really what mattered and they learned some new vocabulary words and practiced words they already knew.  All together it was an afternoon well spent.

The following weekend my school had a teacher's trip planned so we all met at school Saturday morning and departed for our day-long adventure in Seoul.  Our first stop was part of the old Seoul Fortress, which in recent years has been restored and is open to public to hike.  We hiked a decent portion of the old fortress wall in pretty chilly weather and most of the teachers were glad to be done and moving on to lunch when we finished.  We had lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant that served a very old fashioned Korean meal that consisted of many side dishes and a few different main dishes.  There was kimchi (of course!), kimchi and seafood pancakes, fish, spicy octopus, bulgogi, japchae, a few different kinds of vegetables, an assortment of rice cakes, and of course, soju!  It was a delicious meal and afterwards, we made our way to Seoul World Cup Stadium where we were going to see a traditional Korean holiday musical performance.  If I had to compare the performance to something, I think it would be like the holiday pantomimes in the UK.  There was singing and dancing and a storyline, but it all seemed like it was sort of a farce or more like a lampoon.  The only problem with the performance was it was done entirely in Korean so I couldn't really understand anything, aside from changes in the plot based on scenery or costume changes.  Otherwise it was pretty enjoyable (even if I did sneak in a little nap time as well).  The next day the few members of the tribe from Ultimate and some other frisbee players (including are wonderful hosts Clay and Jackie) got together for a Hannukah brunch.  Needless to say the camaraderie and food were both excellent.  There were homemade latkes, bagels, cream cheese, lox, sufganiyot, and homemade applesauce.  It was a great time and I'm glad both years I've been here I've been able to celebrate Hannukah in some capacity.  The food is the best part of the celebration; well, food, friends, and family.    

View of part of Seoul from the top
of the Fortress Wall

Performers from the Korean holiday musical

The students had their final tests on December 16th, so the last week of school was a difficult stretch to get through because they were tired and didn't really feel motivated to learn and I don't blame them.  Thankfully now we both have some time off before I come back to teach winter camp.  This past weekend I went skiing with Nate at Yongpyong, the largest ski resort in Korea, but I'll write more about that in a separate post.  In short, it was a very fun, cold, but enjoyable weekend.  Right now I'm looking out my window in my classroom and it's started to snow a little bit, but it doesn't look like anything that'll stick on the ground.  In other news, I'm getting pretty excited for my trip to Thailand.  I leave this Thursday (Dec. 30th) and will be there until Jan. 9th.  We're arriving in Bangkok, flying to Phuket the next day, then we are in Phuket for a few days, Ko Phi Phi for a few days and back to Bangkok to finish off the trip.  I'm excited for the food, the weather, the relaxation, pretty much all of the trip.  Nate and I also booked tickets to go to Hong Kong over the Chinese New Year (which is the first week of February), which I'm pretty excited about, so much dim sum waiting for me.  That's about all the news from this end.  For everyone celebrating Christmas, I hope you had a good celebration!  To everyone on vacation or about to be on vacation, I hope you enjoy yourselves, I know I'm going to!  Oh, and how could I forget, GO BADGERS!!!

Here's a little video of the cooking class:

What I'm listening to: "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfXswFmSzM

What I'm reading:  Trinity by Leon Uris

Thrilla in Manila: Manila Spirits 2010

 Hey all,

I want to start off by saying that the lack of pictures in this post is mostly due to the fact that I didn't really have my camera with me during the day because I was out on the field and when I did have my camera, it wasn't really the most opportune moments to snap some photos.  With that being said, the quick trip to the Philippines was excellent.  We got into Manila a little before midnight on Friday night and caught the shuttle bus bound for Clark that the tournament organizers arranged for us.  Clark Field is roughly 2 hours away from Manila so we didn't arrive at the tournament site until after 2 am Saturday morning and we had to be at the fields for 8 am, so it was a quick night of sleep.  Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of time for sight-seeing on this trip, but from what I saw and have heard about Manila, it's not the nicest city.  I'm interested in all the history that has taken place there but modern-day Manila is very cramped and packed in.  There are malls everywhere and lots of traffic, but I guess that's a given in any big city.  Clark Field is an interesting place.  Up until 1992 it was a U.S. Air Force compound but has since been converted into a resort and family camp area.  Our accommodations were pretty nice.  We split 2 villas between our team (or at least the Korea half of our team) which meant that each person got their own bed (a rarity at Ultimate tournaments) and the villas also had a nice living room and dining room area.

Back to the actual tournament...We had our first game Saturday at 8 am and while we were warming up, we got to meet the other half of our team who came from Singapore.  I had no idea what to expect from them, but they all played really well and were a definite asset for our team over the course of the weekend.  Our team played alright on Saturday; we had moments where everything was clicking and other moments when things completely broke down.  But, this is to be expected from a team that really hadn't played together at all.  The weather was pretty decent all weekend long, in the high 70s Fahrenheit and very humid, but a welcome change from the cold front that blew in back in Korea at the end of last week.  After the games on Saturday there was a tournament party and originally our team had intentions of attending, but after a day of play and the late night on Friday, only half of us made it out.  I was not one of them and felt quite refreshed Sunday morning after the 9 hours of sleep Saturday night (a rarity on a normal weekend!).  Sunday we won our first game and moved into semifinal game for 9nals (Ninals) against Beijing.  Unfortunately we got off to a rough start that we couldn't recover from.  Overall I believe we finished 13 out of 32 teams, which was disappointing, but gives all of us some motivation to work harder over the winter in preparation for the spring season.  The tournament itself was a lot of fun and I'm glad I went, it was nice to get away to somewhere warm for the weekend, especially after being in the news all week.  It was also great to see Shira Klane, a friend from Madison and Minneapolis, who is currently working in Vietnam.  She played for the women's Ultimate team at Wisconsin and picked up with a team based out of Cambodia for Spirits.  I know that Dave, Shira, and I took a picture for everyone back home, but Shira has it on her camera, so when she posts it, I will put it up here as well.  The return journey to Seoul was pain-free and before leaving the Manila airport, the requisite dried mangoes were purchased and brought back to snack on, hopefully they last a long time.

In other news, I know some people are probably wondering what the real deal with last week's artillery exchange at Yeongpyong-do and the following diplomatic gestures is all about.  To tell you the truth, it's all a little confusing as to why it happened and what will happen next, but rest assured, I'm safe and sound here in Suwon and just hoping that diplomacy is able to work all this out.  I know American (and Canadian) news outlets tend to sensationalize world news like this and I've seen articles that have blown the event out of proportion, but day to day life here hasn't changed at all.  I think I wrote in an earlier post that I'm going to Thailand for my winter vacation with my friend Judy.  Well, we finally booked our tickets and we'll be going from December 30th-January 9th.  We'll be in Bangkok for 3-4 days and are trying to decide what island or islands to stay on.  We're deciding between Ko Phi Phi, Ko Samui, and Ko Pha-ngan, so if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please let me know.  I can't believe it's already December and I'll be going on this trip soon.  It's almost time to add more pages to my passport!  Also, in music news, Eric Clapton comes to Seoul February 20th, one more concert I'm probably going to have to see.

Congrats to the Badgers for pretty much securing the Rose Bowl bid, can't tell you how much I'd love to be there!  Let's see if maybe they can sneak into the national title picture after this weekend.  I'll leave you with another action shot from the weekend and the usual links.  Happy Hanukkah to everyone at home, enjoy the latkes and sufganiyot.  I think we might try and get a Hanukkah brunch together here next weekend.

Scoring a goal and trying not to run over my teammate.

What I'm listening to: "Sweet & Lovely" by Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, At Carnegie Hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLujHZMeqw
I'm sure everyone will enjoy this:
http://dosdose.com/game/13/where_in_the_world_is_carmen_sandiego/