Understandably unsure how our underappreciated and utterly unclear author can attempt to accelerate the accomplishment of another agonizingly overproduced introduction is beyond explanation. Forgive him for maybe this time he has something that will tickle your fancy, though of course not as interesting as anything found on Wikipedia or IMDB. Snow has blanketed this small Korean village known as Seoul and cold, dry temperatures squeeze all of the moisture from the writer’s kimchi-filled body. He has learned to appreciate certain things in life: namely lotion and humidity. Oh humidity, how this poor, wretched soul wishes for your soggy embrace and for you to wash across his hands and face and bring life once more to his destroyed and desiccated pores. The author has also lost many of his fantasies about deserts and tundra as he now assumes that those must be worse—he might even miss the mold. This cold and dirty city air has also not been good to his lungs, causing him to cough and hack as if he were just beaten up by a wookie.
Wookies luckily I didn’t have to face on my New Year’s vacation—though my friend Alex and I forwent shaving and looked an awful lot like those friendly sasquatch-like aliens that my brother, Sean, can do such a good impression of, by the end of it. So after inviting the entire office with an offer of ice fishing festival, I received only two bites, my friend Alex and my Korean coworker Elly who also managed to net her friend Hye Won into the trip. Oh boy do I like puns. So we loaded up on gear, booked a pension next to the festival, and reserved space on the ice to dip our fishing poles into fishing holes.
Elly volunteered to drive her SUV (which made it to the east coast of South Korea from Seoul in one tank of gas—buy Hyundai!) and we squeezed everything and everyone into our Millennium Falcon and once the iPod was hooked up, hit the hyper drive and sent it into light speed.
Pyeongchang was a beautiful place which is located in one of the snowiest areas in South Korea. It’s located on a river and is a major contender for winter Olympics—though from what I know was just passed up on for possibly a city in Russia? The air was clean, the snow was white, and the festival was vibrant and fun. You should go!
While we didn’t catch any trout we did try and try and try. Elderly Korean men who worked the festival would come over and grunt at me until I could grunt back enough for them to be convinced that I understood their initial grunts. Still didn’t help any. Grunting aside, we also did some ice sledding, snow sledding, and ATVs on ice and snow right on the river! That was my favorite part even though in Korea eight year olds were given their own ATVs in some cases and let loose out on the river with them—I know my mom the elementary special ed. teacher had just read this and freaked the hell out. Now even though we were racing 2nd graders it didn’t deter Alex and I from having fun out on the ice and snow.
We mostly cooked for ourselves in Pyeongchang, check the photos, delicious barbecue and frying pan mixes that were scrumptious. We did however get really close to over dosing on kimchi.
We also made detour to the east coast and a city called Sokcho. We visited a beautiful temple which was just short of Shangri-la beauty but located on a coastal cliff and not in the Himalayas of course. A giant statue of Buddha, amazing architecture, and many places to say your prayers were swirled into this mix of man and nature so expertly done. My photos won’t do it justice.
In Sokcho we visited the fish market and loaded up raw fish (hwea) and went to a hotel to eat them. We had raw halibut, squid, sea cucumber(?) and several other fish who didn’t happen to give me their names. The next day we packed up and got back to Seoul at about 1 o’clock and I dined on delicious mandoo (dumpling) soup with the women while Alex washed up for a date.
In other news: A few days ago all the women and girls started wearing pants! Apparently Korean women can only handle a few days of freezing weather in nothing but skirts and tights for so long before they need to “man-up” and put on some pants. It got down to -17C which is about -1F for all the haters.
Also according to Korean rules I am now 27 years old (I think) and everyone in Korea just celebrated another year with the new year. So I’ve been 26 since I got here and I was 25 for a total of a month and a half. I’ve grown so much in these few months…
Also I did other stuff but this is what you wanted to know and needed to know.
The end for now.
