12/31/2008: "[Korea] ... and a happy birthday to me!"

And what a 23rd birthday it was! I spent the day marking my 23rd year on this planet on the a ski slope in the mountains near Seoul in Korea with my two closest Korean friends. We drove there the night before, stayed at a resort near the slopes, and celebrated my birthday with a nice cheesecake at midnight! We had udon (Japanese-style) for dinner and watched Korean dramas on tv. Then we played card games until abot 2-3am. This is all great, except that I had to wake up at 7am to take a shower, wake everyone else, and prep breakfast.. but other than that, yeah, it was an awesome time!

You should note that I've spent a whole.. 10 hours or so in my entire life in the snow. Give or take 3 hours. The most I've done is been driven up to a mountain, said "Oh.. isn't that nice. Now can we please go? It's cold" and then gone back home. Done that a few times, actually. Waking up and hitting the slopes at 9am in the mountains in Korea in 14 degree weather (-10 Celsius) is a whole different beast. But that's but the start of me being out of my element. Take into consideration that I've never skiied before, and as if that wasn't enough, I went for the snowboard. Then consider that upon getting there, we learned that the snowboard classes took two hours, and started late, so we'd only have an hour to actually snowboard. We, naturally, opted to forgo the classes and guess how to snowboard.

Do I need to tell you that that's a bad idea?

Seriously..?

Right now I hurt in ways that I didn't know my body could hurt. I discovered whole new muscle groups I didn't even know about. And that's not from the strain.. oh no. It's from the falling. Let's just say that I got pretty good at going. Stopping? Never did figure that out. Fortunately (???) gravity knows how to stop you fast and did so frequently and with extreme prejudice. Alas, nothing's broken and my head's intact. I landed and rolled on my wrist, but it'll be okay in a day or so.

I should note, though, that I had a great time. I'd really like to do it again (though some lessons would probably be a good idea). I'm very thankful to have good friends like that to take me out to the ski slopes to spend the day together. Couldn't have hoped for a better birthday!

Today is New Year's Eve, which means 2008's coming to a close, 2009's around the corner, and I've got 2 days left in Korea. I went out to my friend's university and sat through a class on 'Research Methods' in Korean (oddly enough, I studied it last year in my psychology class) for 2 hours, then went with her to see "Yes Man" in the theater in English. A good movie, I'd say, though I don't think I could really go with that and say yes to everything (it probably would be good, though)! Now we're waiting a bit, then we're going to her church (she's leading the choir in the New Year's mass, so we're leaving really early) where we'll have mass from 10p-12a to ring in the new year, and we're sleeping overnight at the church with some other people. Never quite done that before, but.. why not?

I gotta get ready to head out, but when I get back I'll try to post some pictures and write up my annual memories of the past year (got a lot to talk about this year, I'd say!)

Hope all's going well, and everyone has a great new year!

See you in 2009..!


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On Thursday, January 1st, mina mina said:

Way to go Jason. What a great way to celebrate your birthday. Looking forward to seeing photos. Happy New Year !!!