Skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~
Skiing on Mt. Taebaek was a blast. All said and done the group who went numbered over 30, which was quite the scary thing to the resort employees, who fear large groups of foreigners. I have pictures - you'll know me because I am the one with the homage-to-the-80's/what-the-hell-was-she-thinking headband (it was on sale and I was out of time). The silver strips on the front make me shine like something holy (but with sinfully bad fashion sense) in several of the photos. Getting the big size for my skiwear was just as frustrating as anticipated, and I ended up wearing a suit with super-long legs just to get the girth I needed. I kept saying 'big size, big size - man size!' and gesturing with my hands, but the guy kept handing me smaller stuff. Finally I got frustrated and hunted down my own stuff. We got there too late in the day to make getting a day pass worth it, so we got night and morning skiing passes instead. Night skiing is a trip but it was so nifty! We stayed in really nice rooms at a swanky newly remodeled hotel, squeezing 12 people into our specific suite as it was the biggest. Somehow it worked out that of the three rooms we were the 'moderately loud' room, and the 'loud' room was between our suite and the 'quiet' room. I know a lot more about making a little bedding go a long way now. ;)
The ski area was odd - they had the lodge at the bottom with gondolas that went to the top and a chairlift that let out in an intermediate area, plus another lodge a gondola ride away at the bottom of the mountain that had a lift that went to the halfway lodge midway up the mountain (where I got a hot chocolate and churro to my surprise and joy), and a restaurant at the top (you'll know the top from the haze of falling snow in the pictures). The weirdest thing was that the bunny hill was at the top of the mountain with a green run you could take all the way down. I only went to the top twice in both of our ski days because I was coaching the beginners, but it was worth it. The ski area is HUGE. I saw at least two other chairlifts not in service, and countless runs that they were seeding with snow as it's still the off-season. You'd never guess that by the number of people on the slopes, including countless snowboarders. Apparently that's really really 'in' here.
At one point I found myself sharing a gondola with 5 other Americans, which was just weird. I've gotten so used to running with crowds of mixed nationality that it actually made me a little homesick to talk about the states. Who'd have thunk it? o.O
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'Stina's birthday was on the 6th. I commented on her last entry (again) and read through the posts on it, old and new, to see if other people still leave notes to her, possibly hoping for that small tie to send their messages to find her out there in the ether. I'd never realized that she was going to college in Tacoma. Imagine that, I've visited the part of the country she lived and died in and didn't even realize it. That's a macabre 6° of separation. Even though we weren't the closest, I really respected her. I thought about her on the ski trip, thinking that she would have fit right in with the crowd of mixed personalities and nationalities and temperaments, the crowd all questing and curious enough to live in another country. It's hard to realize that she'll never be one of these people, now.
I wish her luck in her new incarnation, wherever it may be.
The ski area was odd - they had the lodge at the bottom with gondolas that went to the top and a chairlift that let out in an intermediate area, plus another lodge a gondola ride away at the bottom of the mountain that had a lift that went to the halfway lodge midway up the mountain (where I got a hot chocolate and churro to my surprise and joy), and a restaurant at the top (you'll know the top from the haze of falling snow in the pictures). The weirdest thing was that the bunny hill was at the top of the mountain with a green run you could take all the way down. I only went to the top twice in both of our ski days because I was coaching the beginners, but it was worth it. The ski area is HUGE. I saw at least two other chairlifts not in service, and countless runs that they were seeding with snow as it's still the off-season. You'd never guess that by the number of people on the slopes, including countless snowboarders. Apparently that's really really 'in' here.
At one point I found myself sharing a gondola with 5 other Americans, which was just weird. I've gotten so used to running with crowds of mixed nationality that it actually made me a little homesick to talk about the states. Who'd have thunk it? o.O
____________________________________
'Stina's birthday was on the 6th. I commented on her last entry (again) and read through the posts on it, old and new, to see if other people still leave notes to her, possibly hoping for that small tie to send their messages to find her out there in the ether. I'd never realized that she was going to college in Tacoma. Imagine that, I've visited the part of the country she lived and died in and didn't even realize it. That's a macabre 6° of separation. Even though we weren't the closest, I really respected her. I thought about her on the ski trip, thinking that she would have fit right in with the crowd of mixed personalities and nationalities and temperaments, the crowd all questing and curious enough to live in another country. It's hard to realize that she'll never be one of these people, now.
I wish her luck in her new incarnation, wherever it may be.