Hitting the Slopes.

Saturday, Samantha and I agreed to be in front of our apartments at 6:20 a.m. for Sa Beom Nim's wife to pick us up for skiing with some of the other taekwondo students from An Il (안일), our gym. Maybe this sounds like a really bad idea, but actually I adore skiing so much, I woke up sans alarm at 4 like some over eager 7 year old on Christmas day.

Only a handful of kids from our studio went, but Sa Beom Nim got together with some of the other TKD studios in the area to hire a bus for the occasion. A kid from one of the other studios is one of Samantha's students at Oedae, so I was immediately greeted with a cheery, "Hello Diana Teacher!" Henney is quite a cute young man, and not a bit shy about using English outside of the academy. Whereas Eric (Sa Beom Nim's son) who is very good at English barely spoke five words to us all day.

But he's awfully cute, isn't he?
The resort we went to was small and most of the other people on the mountain were taekwondo or hapkido gyms, so Samantha and I were the only foreigners for most of the day (we saw a white guy late in the afternoon, but we're not sure he was with one of the gyms).

Funny thing about being the only white person skiing is that when people shout "Hello!" from the lifts, you know they are shouting at you. Which is just dandy. Unless you just fell on your 엉덩이 and feel like a moron. Sigh.

Sa Beom Nim tricked Samantha into trying the intermediate hill, but she was awesome at it, so it was great. He took plenty of photos of our stylish foreign skiing skills:

Aren't I spectacular?

I totally have my own magazine spread: Waeguks Ski... where I look pensively upon the dusty Korean slopes. Or something.

I was very proud of myself for trying my first "advanced" hill--though it was sort of more like halfway between intermediate and advanced.

Although staring at the task from the top of the hill made me a bit pensive... and skeptical.

In the end, I rocked it! One of the other TKD masters who rode the bus with us grabbed me and tried to give me lessons. Which was kind of sweet. But I was tired. Very tired.

So Samantha and I got lazy at the end... Ah laziness!

On the bus ride home, I was more conscious than I had been in the morning and so I tried to chat in Korean with one of Sa Beom Nim's friends. He was a funny guy. He called me an ajumma, the Korean word for auntie used to refer to older married women known for their unattractiveness.

Hilarious man. Really. I'm still laughing my 26--er, excuse me--28 year old behind off.

Just kidding. The day was completely fantastic. I'm so happy! Thanks to Sa Beom Nim's wife for the pictures.