Yong Pyong

This past weekend was the Lunar New Year, and we had Monday and Tuesday off, so we went skiing at Yong Pyong Resort, which is where the 2018 winter Olympics are going to be.  We went with a group, I think it's called When in Korea, so they arranged the bus, the hostel, and gave us discounts for our lift tickets.  We went with Brady's friend Stefan, who lives in Seoul, and one of his work friends, then on the bus we met two girls who know the other foreign couple that we work with, so we hung out with them too.

Yong Pyong is a really nice resort.  I didn't realize Korea would have such good skiing, so I was a little surprised.  It's a fairly big mountain, and there are a lot of amenities there, like bowling, an arcade, an indoor water park, screen golf, and a sauna.  Screen golf is big in Korea.  I had never seen it before; you rent a room with a giant screen in it, and actual golf clubs and balls.  You can load any golf course on the game, and it will show up on the screen. Then you hit the ball at the screen, and it logs where it would go.  It's pretty popular here.  Also, there are a lot of saunas (or jjimjilbang) in Korea. They are large, gender-separated rooms with hot tubs of varying temperatures, showers, and a steam room. Anyway, I was impressed by the amenities at Yong Pyong, and also that it was relatively affordable.  There were some nice hotels there, but we stayed at a hostel which was around 10,000 won, or $8.50/night.  They could have easily put another pricey hotel there, but they didn't.  They probably will before the Olympics come.  There were also a lot of food options that weren't super overpriced, like they normally are at ski resorts.

We arrived Saturday around noon, and skied that afternoon.  Then we skied all day Sunday, and Monday afternoon and night. The nighttime skiing was really good, even though it was very very cold.  It was around 0 degrees Farenheit.  We had to buy bank robber ski masks because the wind was biting.  But nighttime was better because it was less crowded.  That was the only problem with the weekend, was that because everyone gets the holiday there was a bit of traffic, both on the roads and on the ski slopes.  And during the day there are a lot of people of varying ability levels skiing, so you have to ski really cautiously because other people may not be in control.

There were a lot of helpful signs at the resort that were in Korean and also had been translated into English.  Signs like "Warming up and stretching help you get have fewer injury."  And "Better know when stop last slope of day than hurt."  

After skiing we drank some beer and soju.  Soju is a very popular, very cheap Korean liquor.  It tastes like watered-down rubbing alcohol, but a little sweet.  That description makes it sounds worse than it actually is, but it's apt.  Soju was traditionally made from rice, as is makkali, (rhymes with broccoli) a Korean rice wine, but soju can be made from other starches too.  The story is that people were drinking so much makkali and soju that there was a rice shortage, so the government asked manufacturers to make soju with something other than rice, and push it more heavily than makkali.

Then Monday night after skiing we went bowling (and I won) then on Tuesday I hit the jjimjilbang, then we came back to Suwon.  Today we're back to school, and a bit tired, but it's only a three day week.  Kindergarten is back in session now (they had been on winter break) so Brady will be more busy, but I still only have Paul to tutor for the next two weeks.

Oh, and I was also supposed to tell you about Korea's innovative parking/driving techniques.  They're non-conformists.  Why parallel park, just because everyone else is, when you can park at an angle?  And if you are parallel parking, why go in the same direction as everyone else on that side of the street?  And it appears that red lights are just suggestions.  You'll see cars driving up on the sidewalk to get around traffic in the street.  The only time I've seen a cop do anything about it was when a woman had parked in the turning lane to run into a store.  They put their flashers on and she came running out, and drove away.

That's all for now.