Lunar New Year

This past weekend we had a three day weekend to celebrate Lunar New Year. A group of us, Janice and James from my school and their friends Geoff and Lori, Lucia and Eddie from the Jukjeon LCI and Fred and I, decided to head to Sokcho. We went there in the fall to celebrate Chuseok. We had a great time so we thought it would be fun to go again. This also gave us a chance to see the mountains covered in snow. We had no idea what we were getting into!

We left on Saturday morning at 7:20 and took the bus about 3 hours north-east to Sokcho. As we were arriving to the area, we were shocked by the amount of snow. We knew that Sokcho had a big winter storm but we thought that Korea's idea of a lot of snow would differ from ours. We were wrong! We all took different buses so once Janice, James and I got there we checked into the hostel and waited for the others. Another group of 4 people from our area met us for Saturday night. Once we were together, we headed for lunch. Fred met us after lunch around 2pm because he had a much longer trip than we did. We then went Waterpia. Waterpia is a great place filled with saunas, hot tubs, water slides and a wave pool. The best part is that over half of it is outside. We were able to sit in hot tubs while the snow was falling all around. It was so relaxing and fun. Around 8:30 we all went back to the hostel and ordered pizzas for dinner.

Walking around the national park in the DEEP snow!

At the top of the mountain

Walking around the temple

Buddha

On Sunday we woke up and headed to the mountain range in the national park. We first took the cable car to the top. The mountains were beautiful, covered in fresh white snow, however we could not see as far as we could in the fall. We hiked around for a little bit which was very hard considering that in most areas, the snow was almost to our shoulders! We then went down the mountain and walked around a temple and saw a huge Buddha. After, Eddie, Lucia, Fred and I headed to the fish market for dinner. We went to the same floating restaurant that we went to in the fall. We had stuffed squid and crab. It was so good and fresh. We were literally shown the crab as the lady pulled it from the tank in front of the restaurant to cook it for us. After walking around for a while we headed back to the hostel. We spent the night playing cards and relaxing.

Restaurant floating on the ocean at the fish market

This morning Fred left at 11:30 and we left at 1:30. It was such a nice weekend and very refreshing to get out of Suji. Tomorrow we have a rehearsal for our big Festival production which is on Saturday. Another weekend shortened due to work. I hope this week goes well. On Wednesday we are celebrating Mini's birthday so that will be a good distraction from Festival.