And so it continues

Right, well not a huge amount has happened since Christmas per se. For New Years I met up with my mate Kieran from the football team along with a few others and we went out to Hongdae (University district) for a few drinks and to ring in the fourth decade of my humble existance. As the new year was counted in, in traditional fashion from ten to one, I had time to reflect on the previous year....for exactly ten seconds which is hardly enough time to recollect an entire year. Instead of dwelling on this however I decided to do the next best thing, have a good time which, for want of a more in depth description of a random good night out, I did. A brief synopsis would be: a few beers, good music, pleasant company and a plethora of talking absolute shite.

On January 2nd myself and a few friends went to Yong Pyeong (approx. 3 hours south of Seoul) for a day's skiing. Everything was going as well as a day can be, having had around an hour's sleep the night before when semi-tragedy struck. My friend Kieran's girlfriend hit a pile of snow going down her second run and severely sprained her knee which meant she had to spend the rest of the day in the cafe. I on the other hand had a thoroughly enjoyable day embarassing myself and spending more time on my arse then on my skis (seriously, I fell more times that one day than my entire week skiing in Livigno!). It snowed heavily on the mountain for the whole day and for most of the day we were skiing on fresh powder which was great. It was just a shame that because of said snow it took us 6 hours to get back into Seoul.

The following Monday, having had no snow in a week in Seoul, we got a foot in a day. On that day I was sent home from school after half an hour because the roads were impassible (consider that that's pretty bad for a country that annually succumbs to a Siberian winter). In the photo of the jeep, that's a picture after 4 hours of snowfall. It wasn't all good news though because Saturday just gone (16th Jan.) I had to make up the classes the students misses (yup, 6 day week for the price of a 4 day weekend). The following Wednesday our director treated us to dinner in VIPS, a family resteraunt buffet. I remembered reading about the horrors of these places on the lonely planet and upon arrival I realised why. After booking the resteraunt over a week in advance, we still had to wait for and hour to be seated in a tiny room full of other Koreans in a similar situation.....I suppose the only good thing I can say is at least it was a good night once we were seated......I'll leave that up to your own interpretation.

The football was on a brief break over Christmas but we're getting back into it now having not only started midweek training again but also begun pre-season training so needless to say my unfit ass is in a whole lot of pain and discomfort, both physical and emotional (ok, well maybe not emotional) but it does feel great to be starting to get back into shape. One thing that does help ease the aches and pains of a hard day's training are the sauna's (just to clarify at this point, they're single sex) which have steam rooms, ice baths and piping hot jacuzzis to ease the muscle fatigue.....which is fantastic but the only weird thing about these saunas is, well, basically not only are bathing suits not optional, they're forbidden, which is a little bit strange. As the old moniker goes though, when in Rome...

So to summarise, the last few weeks have included loads of snow, some face-first skiing techniques, deciding never to eat in a Korean buffet again despite the fantastic food and birthday-suit saunas after intense sprinting drills. So far I can't really complain and now that I've gotten my alien registration visa I can finally relax and say that I've really settled in to this home away from home.