Skiing!

Right, it is time to do some serious catching up. The last month has flown by and we've been ridiculously busy mostly with extra work (winter programme at school designed to give the kids a lot more work to do during their school "holidays"). But that is all over now so it's time to start cooking, gyming and blogging again.

So... after a few fabulous days with the girls in Seoul we headed for the slopes of Yongpyong. It started in a rather disorganised manner, with our contact from the travel agency being one ticket short for the coach. He ran off to find another one and we spent a tense ten minutes trying to delay a slightly irate coach driver with melodramatic facial expressions and wild arm gesturing. Anyway we were soon on our way. It took a little longer than expected because of traffic and I think we got off in the wrong place meaning that by the time we got to the resort we should've already been skiing away for half an hour. Luckily we managed to rearrange our passes for the evening ski session instead. We found the Olive hotel and were a little hesitant as it looked a little out of our league, however they didn't laugh us out and it turned out to be the right place, and very nice it was. We then slipped around the icy little ski village in search of food and ended up in a galbi (BBQ) place. We had a delicious lamb meal, and considering the lack of sheep in this country probably shouldn't have been too surprised when the bill came to over 100, 000 Won.
At 5:30 we were picked up from the hotel and taken to the ski shop to get fitted for our fetching ski gear. I think mine definitely won first prize for style; red jacket and camouflage trousers (not all that effective against white snow so it's lucky that no one was trying to shoot me). By the time we'd managed to find enough coins to get all our things into lockers it was already dark and the slopes were all lit up by floodlights. The temperature on the big sign was -12. Brrrrr.

With me, Amy and Liz having a whole week of skiing experience each and Alan and Ellie having none we felt it wise to start small. We walked up a tiny little slope, put on our skis and just tried moving across it horizontally. No one fell over but Alan did seem to be having trouble moving at all. So we got on the lift for the easiest slope and went for it. I was pleased to find out that skiing really is just like riding a bike, although I also found out that doing it and teaching it are two very different things. Alan and Ellie both ended up on the ground a number of times, which is only right on a first attempt. This resulted in Ellie removing her skis, walking the rest of the way down and deciding that skiing wasn't for her. Fair enough, anyone may have made the same decision if they had been able to forget about the money that had been spent. So, we went up and down a few more times and Alan started to see the fun in between the terror. The third time down I lost sight of Alan. I kept looking back over my shoulder but couldn't see him anywhere. I was getting a bit concerned that he may have had a bad fall but when I reached the bottom he was standing there waiting. He'd beaten the rest of us down. He admits that this had less to do with skill and more to do with a complete loss of control, resulting in him plummeting straight down and somehow managing to stay on his feet.

The next day we were all feeling pretty cocky about our new and renewed skiing skills and headed to the slopes with talk of blue runs and trips to the top of the mountain. Our confidence was quickly dashed as we found ourselves for some reason a lot shakier in the cold light of day, but we kept going and by lunchtime had done a few of the smaller blue runs with only a few falls between us (including both me and Amy falling over when nearly stationary on flat ground). The only real casualty of the day was Liz's ski pole, which she dropped from a ski lift (punishment for laughing at all the other unfortunate poles we'd seen).

However she did a great job going down with only one and we managed to soon retrieve the other. In the afternoon we headed up the main gondola to the top of the mountain.

At the top we were hit by incredibly strong winds. It was really beautiful but on closer inspection we found that the top of the ski run had become pure ice, making it a very real possibility that you could accidentally slide onto the black run... eek.

We decided to give it a go but the wind and ice made it nearly impossible to to control the skis. Alan decided that he was perhaps getting in a little too deep for his second day of skiing and took the gondola back down. After the first bit the slope got quite a bit better but there were still some hairy bits. We made it down happy and unscathed in about half an hour.

After all the excitement we went home to sleep in preparation for New Year's eve!