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Week 5 (March 27th to April 2nd) |
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Sunday March 27th, It's snowboarding day! I mentioned to Gina a couple of weeks ago that I was interested in learning to snowboard (I've never been. In fact, I've only been on skis a couple times). She jumped right on it, and did some research-- it turns out that because it's the end of the season, it's really really REALLY cheap to go. The shuttle bus was free because it was the last weekend. Our lift ticket and equipment rental together was 33,000 won ($30)! The only catch�the bus left at 6 am. This made for some amusement, as Evan had invited his friend Sean up from Busan to be our snowboard instructor (read: MY snowboard instructor; I'm not exactly known for my athletic abilities!). Evan and Sean had a big Saturday on the town, which made for an entertaining Sunday morning!
The bus took us about three hours north, which put us in the northeastern province. Most of the land between Daegu and the ski resort belongs to national and provincial parks, so it was really pretty�the mountains got higher and sharper the farther we travelled. Also, I noticed many more traditional houses, and very few apartment buildings. However, I must confess that I slept for most of the trip, so I
can't say I remember much of what we passed. The snowboarding itself was fun, but pretty painful. I wasn't as bad as I thought I would be, but I fell-- a lot! Sean says that I did really well for my first time, but tell that to my knees. I had one
particularly bad fall on my second run down the mountain. This fall resulted in me messing up my ankle pretty good-- I now have a sprained left ankle! That's the worst of it, I suppose, but everything hurts like you would not believe. Also, we're all
pretty sunburned. It was a really beautiful day, really warm. A lot of people were going down the mountain in t-shirts! Funny how it didn't occur to any of us to bring sunscreen . . . So the verdict on snowboarding: fun, but the pain that comes after may not be worth it!
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Monday March 28th I am in so much pain! Everything hurts so much from snowboarding that I could barely get out of bed. My ankle is pretty messed up, but I think that it's just badly bruised. But if it doesn't get better by tomorrow, I'm going to have to make my first trip to the doctor. Also, I have another head cold-- I'm coughing and sneezing again. So far, Korea has been a misadventure of bad health for me. It's very polluted here, and it shows. You can practically see it in the air. All of the grossness in the air makes it hard for me to breathe a lot of the time, and I find myself using my inhaler a lot now, whereas before I almost never used it. I hope that my body gets used to being here in Korea soon, cause it would really be nice to be able to talk to people without hacking up a lung in
the process!
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Tuesday March 29th, I finally got my passport and my alien registration card today, which means that I'm no longer broke, as I was able to cash my traveller's cheques. The great news-- I lived for a full month on just $400, while still being able to go out and shop
and go snowboarding, so I just be able to save a ton of money here
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Thursday March 31st, Things are crazy around work right now. Not only do we have to do monthly lesson plans for April for all of our classes, but we have to do report cards for all of our morning students. Now all of this wouldn't have been so bad if someone had told me about it last week, but I was just informed about both things TODAY! Our school is definitly lacking in organizational skills. If I had known before, I would have done it before, and then we wouldn't all be panicking at the last minute |
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Saturday April 2nd, Today was my first real shopping day downtown. Sue's niece Joy took me out for the day and showed me where I can get the best clothes, the best jewelry, the best cosmetics, etcetera. I bought 4 shirts, a pair of earrings, eyeshadow and a bar of
natural vanilla soap, and I only spent 50, 000 won! In Canada, one of the shirts that I bought would have been at least $100, so I was ecstatic that I got so much for so little money. There are so many clothes shops filled with incredible clothing-- I was in heaven! I've always had a bit of a shopping problem, but if it's this cheap to buy great clothes, I'm going to come home with 10 suitcases filled only with clothing! All of the clothes downtown are very trendy and well made, so all of the women you see downtown are really well dressed all of the time. Interesting also is that most stores don't have sizes�everything is free size, and most places don't have dressing
rooms, so you just kind of have to hold it up and hope that it fits. I don't know what the exchange policies are, but it seems like no one gives out receipts either, so maybe if it doesn't fit, you're just stuck with it. However, one of the shirts that I bought today was only 3000 won ($3), so if it didn't fit, I think I would have survived! In any case, being in Korea is certainly going to feed my shopping
addiction!
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