My second ski trip.

Here's Dibby when we first got to the top of the mountain. It was soo beautiful (even though the pic is too far away. I was scared to get closer to the edge without being completely prepared to go down!). I might enjoy skiing more if it weren't so crowded everywhere. The other people ruin everything.

We went out (at least tried to) with two girls that we met on the trip. This was our dinner - we had Domino's Pizza! It was my first time to have pizza from an American chain out here, and it was really tasty. It's pretty much the same, except they have some particularly unusual options for toppings. The one I remember the most was crab and pasta. We stuck with toppings we knew.

This was me after skiing. Haha. It's the only picture I have of proof, and it's really not much proof of me even skiing. It'll have to do.

This weekend I went on a mini-vacation with Adventure Korea. I have been skiing only once before, about 8 years ago, and I did not like it all. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give it another try, since I would be around a lot of foreigners and it would also be a potential opportunity to meet new people.

This is a tour group that you can sign up for online; they have a lot of different things planned for foreigners on the weekends here in South Korea. For me, it is the best way to travel, because it's much cheaper and you can go with a big group of people from all over the world that speak English.

My friend Justin came along, and he is an experienced skier. Once we arrived, we decided to go to the top and take the "easy" way down so I could get the hang of it. I should have known better. We took a blue down first, and it was such a challenge. Ahh, I just felt like I was fighting with my entire body the whole way. I made it down alive, only falling a couple of times. Once we got to the green areas I felt like a pro. I was going pretty fast and weaving and dodging people. That was a lot of fun.

We went back up and came down another route with blues and greens and I didn't fall once. But the next round, we took a difficult blue and I hated it. I ate snow hard and twisted my knee. It can be sooo scary! I didn't want to put weight on my knee on that steep of a slope so I ended up sliding down the mountain part-way, (which was just as scary as skiing down if not even moreso. I had absolutely no control, and I don't handle that well.) and then finishing off the greens slowly. 

I am so glad that I gave skiing another try, but it is definitely not for me. It is so much work for so little reward. At least this time I actually skied quite a bit, but my entire body is just on overload the entire time. It's so painful! If I were to ever go back, I would stick to the greens for sure. I am usually extremely competitive in sports (I guess that's why I've busted it hard both times...), but skiing just isn't worth it to me. I am definitely not a cold weather person, and to be in the cold and then be in pain for hours has no appeal to me.

But, we did meet a few really cool people. The group was more separated than I anticipated. They put us in a hostel, which I have never done before and was excited/curious about. It ended up being a really cool place to stay. There were four bunk beds in each room, so they put us in groups of 8. It was so strange deciding who to stay with since no one knew each other. It felt like a weird high school "pick a group" situation where someone is always going to feel awkward and left out. Our room worked out really well luckily. Everyone was just chill and normal (I've found these qualities to be particularly rare in foreigners in South Korea). But, we never met anyone from the other rooms. I think a lot of people on the trip were really serious about skiing, whereas I just went to check it out and hopefully meet new people. 

They let you ski until 4 am at this resort! I've never heard of anything like that. Justin went on a night ski, but he was the only one of us that wanted to go out again. We went in search of the other waeguken (foreigners) to see what was happening. There was absolutely no one to be found. It was so strange to me, because I feel like I could go on a ski trip in the states and have an amazing time without ever going on the mountain. There's so much else going on. Here, everyone was just really into skiing. We found a couple of really expensive restaurants and bars which weren't particularly appealing (even if they were there was no one in them). They had a karaoke bar that we didn't find until after it closed, a noraebang (singing room) and a bowling alley. We didn't see a single foreigner in any of these places. It was so strange. Plus, half of the people in our room had gone to the sauna so they went to sleep really early. We finally gave up and called it a night, but there were still people coming in just starting to ski. It must have been around 2 am by that point. It seems so unsafe to ski like that!

This weekend was definitely a Korea experience. They are so pro drinking and partying out here it always surprises me, but then one place where it is okay to do those things in America, they don't have anything like that. It was very interesting.