Christmas Eve
On Christmas eve we decided to go snowboarding, we had originally planned to go for the whole weekend but all the resort hotels were fully booked. Koreans dont really celebrate Chritmas so for them it's just a long weekend which would explain why it was so busy. We had an early start on Sunday, about 6.30 am this was so that we could get into to Seoul to catch the resort bus. The resort we went to is called Bears Town, which is mainly a begginers resort. This was perfect for us as none of us had been in a long time and we had a virgin snowboarder in tow, Sam.
Once we got there we got sorted with the rental gear, blunt boards and smelly boots all wishing we had our own kit with us.
First we took Sam to this small slope (when I say slope I really mean a little patch of snow that kids sledge on) but it was a great place to strap Sam in for the first time. After a few wobbles he was off and we were all really impressed with him, he'd managed to show up all our first attempt on a board. So seeing as Sam was so confident and talent we decided to take him up on a proper slope.
Video of Sam's first run http://www.mediamax.com/katrinaleanne/Hosted/MOV01965.MPG
The beginers slope
Now when we were queing we realised that no one was strapped into their board. For anyone that doesn't board your supposed to strap your front foot into the board so that when you get off the chair lift at the other end you can glide off smoothly. Well that is the myth I don't recall seeing any of gliding at any point just trying to maneuver ourselves out of the way of the other one, with unlady like effort. So we follow the trend and carry our boards on. When we get to the top, we lift the bar up and then the Korean lifty starts yelling at us. Luckily for us one of the few words he knew in English was run! Other wise we would of been hit from behind with the swinging chair lift, which is very painful as I found out a bit later.
Emily and I were a bit nervous not only because it had been a while since we'd been boarding but we have also had a few falls the last couple of times weve been. Jenna sets off first and we take it slow and steady behind her, with Sam still in figuring out mode behind us. After a few more runs confidence grew and we headed up to the black slope. A black slope is supposed to be quite difficult but this resort didn't have any red runs so we agreed this would probably be a red slope if you were in Europe. As I was saying earlier chair lifts do hurt, I found this out whilst getting off the lift with Emily. We raise the bar preparing to get off and the next minute I find Emily lying at my feet with no where to go and a Korean man yelling run. I couldn't really do anything and before I knew it I had been hit in the backside by the chair lift, nearly collapsed over Emily who was in a heap tangled in her board and all we could do was laugh.
The slope was nice but a bit to small for us and although it was too warm for real snow to settle it was a nice soft landing thanks to the fake snow. One last thing I have to coment on before finishing this post is that since weve been here we have noticed that young Korean couples often wear the same outfits, jackets, hats etc. But nothing could have prepared us for the slopes of Korea, they had eveything matching, hats, jackets, whole ski suits even boards and it wasn't just a few there were hundreds of them.
The three us doing the Korean victory sign
We all had a really good day and once we'd taken some Chritmas photo's in the snow and listened to Christmas music sang in Korean it really did feel like the holiday season.
- Posted by k_millington on 06/01/2007.
- k_millington's site
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