Keeping Warm in Winter

Hi everyone!

Happy New Year! I'm writing to you from the cozy living room of Steve and Mary's, smack dab in the middle of Seoul. Unfortunately, I had a full draft written earlier this week but forgot to copy it onto my USB, so I have to start from scratch here, just to update you on how my winter has been before I embark on my tropical vacation. (sorry)

I hope this finds you all still working on your New Year's resolutions (it's only the third week in January, after all...) and recovering from the recent Midwestern heat wave - it must have been quite alarming for you all to have forty degree weather in January. It was even warmer in Minnesota than in Korea for a few days! But now I hear the temps have dropped back down to normal, so you can continue on in your winter mode while recovering from the holidays as usual.

My winter mode, post-Christmas, has been almost entirely focused on teaching winter camps. I had two winter camps at my two different schools, four hours a day, for four weeks straight. Ten days at one school, seven days at the other school. Needless to say, I got pretty burned out, and was ecstatic yesterday afternoon when I finally finished the final day of camp. Sometimes I feel as though I shouldn't complain about winter camps, as I get to go home early each day, and the camp atmosphere is much more laid back than regular school. After all, there are no books, no curriculum, and no tests...but it's still four hours of school a day during vacation. My poor kids. I felt more sorry for them than for myself.

However, my co-teacher and I tried to make camp as fun as we could for the kids. We did little mini-lessons each day, complete with vocabulary and word-related activities and projects, but we also did a lot of games and had 'talk time,' as the most important emphasis of camp was to improve English speaking. We brought the kids treats each day, had a cookie making day, took a field trip to the movie theater after camp was over, and on our 'snow day' we ventured out in the cold to attempt to make a snowman. Unfortunately, the snow wasn't sticky enough, so our snowman has a height issue, but we still enjoyed making it. He, or she, I should say, was aptly named 'Sunshine' by one of my boys.

Although I enjoyed bonding with my students, it was nice to have my afternoons free. To keep myself occupied and alleviate my trip anxiety, I implemented a swimming pool, coffee shop, and gym routine each day, alternated with some lunch and coffee dates with friends. On the weekends I tried to both break the monotony and take advantage of my Friday afternoons off by doing some traveling.

The first weekend in January, I headed up north to a little town called Hwacheon, about six hours north of my city. What was in Hwacheon? Well, it turns out Hwacheon is the host of one of the biggest winter festivals in the world, coming in at number four, after Canada, China, and (Russia?) The main attraction at the three week long winter festival is ice fishing, specifically for the abundant supply of mountain trout that runs in its freshwater mountain river. Though I didn't have much interest in ice fishing, I decided a winter festival would be neat to see, and it would be a nice mini-vacation. Website here.

So, after taking a five hour bus to Chuncheon, the northern provincial capital, I stayed the night in a quiet, cheap motel room. The next day, a nice, sunny Saturday morning, I took a bus about an hour north to reach the festival. My first thought was 'where is all the snow and ice?' The river was freely running, the hillsides were brown, and there was no snow in sight. It wasn't even that cold! However, as I followed the crowd of people from the bus terminal through the town to enter the festival site, I realized there must have been some magical snow-making and ice-freezing action going on, because all of a sudden I was surrounded by snow sculptures and slipping on the ice underneath my feet.

The complex was centered around about a quarter mile stretch of the river, and both banks were lined with snow, activity booths, and food booths. When I first arrived, I decided to walk the entire perimeter and scope things out to decide what to do. I walked past a little skating area, a sledding hill, a snow scupture display, a snowmobiling area, cross country ski trails, a larger skating rink, and of course, the ice fishing areas. Once you paid a fee you could enter the area, pick a hole, and jig away.

Wow. I was blown away, and was excited at the prospect of designing my plan for the day so that I could do as much as possible. However, before I could even finish walking around the perimeter, I saw a Korean couple eyeing me from afar, and sure enough they came over to talk to me. It turned out they were from Daejeon, a city a few hours away, and they came to the festival with about ten other Koreans and foreigners. Upon seeing that I was alone, they invited me to join them and their group for ice fishing. I decided I might as well give ice fishing a try, since that seemed to be the thing to do, and it would be nice to have some company.

They ended up adopting me for the entire rest of the day, and for the evening as well, when they offered to take me back to Daejeon, so I could catch a much shorter bus home the next day. We all had fun ice fishing, then grilling our catch at outdoor grills provided at the festival site, and then the leader of the group treated us all to a delicious fish soup dinner. We fished for the better part of the afternoon - I caught two keepers. It was fun to meet and chat with an entirely new group of people, and they were happy to include me in everything they did. Festival success.

For my second weekend of adventure, I stayed close to home and did a couple of little day trips. On Friday afternoon I ventured down to Jangheung to see Sara, as she was leaving for Nepal the next day. We went for a nice little winter hike in the Jangheung mountains, then had a yummy Korean dinner before relaxing at her place, where I watched her proceed to stuff about half the contents of her apartment into a giant backpack that was literally half her height. Her trip involves volunteering in Nepali orphanage, while staying with a host family, and then will conclude with a two week trek to Everest Base Camp. Here she is during our lovely hike.

The next day I saw her off at the bus station, then went on another day trip to Jeonju with my fellow Mankatoan friend Sam. I swam with him way back in elementary school, and we've kept in touch throughout the years - now he's teaching at a school about an hour away from me. We left around one, and had a fun afternoon walking around, exploring, and catching up. It was my second time to Jeonju, and I enjoyed it just as much.

Finally I reached my final week of teaching camp! This past week I spent cleaning, organizing, packing, and getting ready for my departure...though I still felt like it took forever to reach Friday! Now I'll be spending three days here in Seoul, hanging out with Steve and Mary, as well as exploring a few new areas and maybe checking out some museums. I'm flying out Monday afternoon, and will be meeting up with my best friend from university along the way during my trip. We weren't sure if it would work out, but as she just finished her student teaching and has some vacation time, and because it's been a year and a half since we've seen each other, we were able to make it work to spend some quality beach time together. I can't wait to see her and catch up, as well as explore some new places, of course.

Last, Happy Lunar New Year to you all - it is now officially the Year of the Black Dragon, all you fellow 1988ers, so obviously it's going to be a good year. I'll be sure to update you all when I get back from my trip - until then I hope you stay warm and enjoy the winter weather! Take care, love you and miss you all!