Ice Fishing & the Gators!!!

Korea gets cold! I'm sure you've noticed the excessive amount of snow in my last few posts, and it hasn't ended yet. Before I tell you about my trip to sunny, hot Thailand and Cambodia, I want to back track and tell you about some Korea stuff. So my friend Rebekah G. and I signed up for this trip we saw online to an ice fishing festival a couple hours east of Seoul in Hwacheon city, Gangwon-Do. Can't say I ever thought I would go ice fishing in my life! So there was a big bus of foreigners and we spent a Saturday at this ice festival. We went fishing of course (we never actually caught anything but the press people wanted to take photos of Rebekah and I so they out fish on our hook for pictures!) They also had some really amazing snow and ice sculptures (the blue and green photos are from inside an igloo thing.), sledding, ice skating, and ice soccer. The main event however, was bare hand fishing. They had a special foreigner challenge, so any foreigner that wanted to (and I did!) could go into ths big cold pool of water and try to catch trout with their bare hands. It was SOOOO cold. It hurt so bad to just stand in the water. I unfortunately came up empty handed again and actually stayed in the water for maybe a minute tops as it was just too cold.


The following weekend I went on another snowy adventure. A friend that I went on the road trip with asked me if I wanted to join him and a group of 7 of his Korean friends (he is Korean American so he speaks English and Korean) to go skiing. We left on Saturday morning, stopped by another snow festival for a bit and then made it to Phoenix Park ski resort. Saturday we just hung out, ate, and drank. I have to say this was the first time I've ever hung out with just a Korean group, usually it has been a mix of Koreans and foreigners. Though I honestly did not understand a thing that was going on during the 5 hour conversation we had sitting around in the hotel, it was still fun and they were really cool to me. They tried every so often to say stuff in English, but then it usually just ended up in a fit of laughter. (Koreans always laught when they try to speak English... I think because they are embarrassed) Sunday we went skiing all day before heading back home that night. Glad I got a chance to ski at least once while here and it was fun to meet some new people. (sorry there aren't many pictures from skiing)


These next few pictures are some snowy ones from around Incheon that fit into this whole winter theme; just in case you didn't believe me when I said it's cold!


And lastly, UF is NATIONAL CHAMPIONS... AGAIN! Rebekah J and I really wanted to watch the football game so we could cheer on the Gators, but the thing was it played at 10am on a Friday here in Korea and we both had work. Hmm, BUT because it is winter break for the students, neither of us actaully had any classes that day, we just had to be at the school. There was only one way to be able to watch the game and that was to call in sick. I know they say, "Don't cry wolf," but this was important. So, I called in sick to school that morning and Rebekah and I went into Seoul to watch the game on a big screen TV on the military base (the one place we knew it would be playing). And I must say it was totally worth skipping work for because we won! It was sad not to be in Gainesville for the celebration, but the next best thing was watching it with a UF friend and seeing us win on the other side of the world! (notice we even wore Gator gear!)