Today’s adventure described herein was the trip Sandy and I took to the Bears Town Resort 50min away from Seoul
We decided to take this trip when we both found out that we would have Friday 07 Jan off from our winter teaching. I, in fact, had an entire week off of teaching, so I was defiantly up for it.
Why did I get the week off you may ask? Well, on Monday I arrive at Imgo Middle school prepared to impart my language on the sectors of students that I would be teaching. With my lessons set to start at 10:00 I get to the bus stop to get to school at 08:40, so that I would have time to make sure I was prepared. By taking this bus I would be at school just after 09:00 so I would have more than enough time to ready the class. 08:40 comes and goes and for one reason or another I am not on any busses heading towards Imgo. So I decide to stick it out and sit at the bus stop for the next 40min waiting for the next bus going my way.
It arrives so I hop on, expecting to arrive at school around at about 09:45. Not as much time as I had wanted but it was workable. Oh and I would be able to thaw my hands and face as it was -1 on this day , so I will arrive to school a little icy.
SUDDENLY I RUSH TO PRESS THE BUZZER TO GET OFF THE BUS – it is going the wrong way!!! Before I am too far off the beat and track I jump off the bus and figure if I start walking in the right direction I could jump on the next bus that comes past/I could grab the next empty taxi.
Long story short – I walked the 8 Km’s to school from the point where I got off the bus, in -1 degree temps, because as it happens, for the entire 50min that it took me to get to school, no bus or taxi came past. I arrive 10min late – at 10:10. I am shown to a class of 5 - 3rd grade girls and asked to teach and I will get to speak to Mrs Yoon (my 1 great co-teacher, (I have 2 useless ones as well)) when she is done teaching her class. After the girls had a little giggle at the 10min it took me to thaw my lips so that I could actually talk properly, we had a discussion about restaurants which became the lesson.
When finished, I go to the teachers office and (now this is why I had the rest of the past week off) am told that Winter camp for this week is cancelled because the Principle is nervous about students travelling because of the recent Foot and Mouth outbreak that recently struck Yeongcheon farm animals. I get to stay home.
Taking advantage of this, I had already booked a trip up to Seoul as I was going on a tour of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) (Basically a 4km wide stretch of land that that separates North and South Korea), I tag along on Sandy’s adventure of going snowboarding on the Friday.
Sandy had yet to go skiing or boarding, so she was desperate to take some of her free time to do that, so we left Yeongcheon at 07:12 on the Friday morning and got to Seoul at about 10:00, where after some confusion we caught a bus to the Bears Town resort to enjoy our day on the slopes. Aside from the train ride to Seoul, the whole experience was relatively cheap and we got a good 3 hours on the slopes.
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| I had to unpack my whole bag, in the middle of the subway station, to find my Seoul Subway card |
Rather than talk in intimate detail about the slopes and such here is a video about the day – sit back, relax and enjoy the pics and music.
That evening we headed back into Seoul found a motel and grabbed Pizza at a place called “Mr Pizza” which... ended up being a slightly tense meal due to their salad bar regulations but dessert mellowed the environment out and back at the motel for the night we settled into some good old fashioned TV watching. Sandy had found Discovery channel so we watched “Man vs Wild” where Bear Grylls...
...was teaching us how to survive in the Sahara desert. Good day all around, it was off to bed and early to rise as the next day I would be embarking on my Tour to the DMZ (Described in my next post)!!!
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