Lunar New Year: February 8-12, 2013

Happy Lunar New Year! This is a major holiday for Koreans. My co-teachers (all female) have told me they celebrate by getting together with their families, first their in-laws and then with their side of the family. The holiday is mostly spent cooking, eating, and spending time with family. The new year for us meant we got a long weekend!

We were a group of ten, all foreign English teachers, that decided to take this opportunity to get out of the city and go on a mini ski trip. On early Saturday morning, we took the subway to Seoul to catch a free shuttle to Bear's Town Ski Resort, located around an hour outside of Seoul. This past week temperatures dropped to around -15 C, but luckily on Saturday it was sunny and only around -5 C, which made for a great day of skiing. Bear's Town Resort isn't very big, I would say comparable to Mt. St. Louis Moonstone, but either way it was nice to be back on the hill. Niseko, Japan is obviously on another level of skiing, and we thought it isn't really fair to compare these two mountains. The way we looked at it was that Saturday was a fun day with friends where we got to get out of Incheon and explore another area of Korea.

After a day of skiing, we went to relax in the condo we rented that overlooked the hill. We went out for a Korean dinner, and then headed back to the condo to celebrate and bring in the new year. On Sunday morning, we made "bacon" and eggs for breakfast. One of our friends went out to buy the groceries for breakfast, she asked for bacon, and what she bought really did look like bacon, but sadly it wasn't. After breakfast, we took a bus back to Incheon. It was a great mini vacation!

On Monday, Ian and I didn't have school so we spent the day relaxing. After skyping with my family and a few friends, we walked to Bupyeong. We bought a few things for Thailand, and walked around the market. I love exploring what the market has to offer, because you can always find such exotic things. After passing a bike with a bunch of fish heads tied to the handle bars, a vendor selling beondegi (boiled or steamed silkworm pupae that are seasoned and eaten as a snack), and a whole assortment of seafood, Ian and I made our only purchase - strawberries. Fruit is normally very expensive in Korea, so we were very excited to see strawberries for 3,500 W (~3$ CAN).

This week at work is pretty quiet. Ian's students have already graduated and so he is deskwarming. My students are still at school, but many of my classes have been canceled, so I have a lot of deskwarming ahead of me as well. Ian has a teacher's retreat this Thursday, but he doesn't have more details than that. We are both just so excited for our trip to Thailand - 11 days!

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Base of Bear's Town Ski Resort

Most of the group. From left to right (me, Ian, Maddy, Jen, Patrick, John, Adam)

The boys on the chairlift (John, Ian, Maddy, Adam).

Isabelle, me, Leana, and Patrick

Leana, Isabelle, and me

Ian going off a jump.

On Monday, while walking around Bupyeong Market this is what we found - several fish heads tied to the bike's handles.  I don't know who would want to ride this ride around.

We always find interesting things walking around this market.

A vendor was selling beondegi (boiled or steamed silkworm pupae that are seasoned and eaten as a snack). We passed on this option.

Fish for sale! I liked the way they tie and sell them in rows.

Seafood market

After walking around the market, we made our only purchase of the day - strawberries!

This is in the Bupyeong Underground Shopping Mall. It is massive, always busy, and although we have been living here for over five months, we still get lost at times.