Nonsan Cultural Trip

Last weekend we had our long anticipated, yet much dreaded cultural trip. A cultural trip is when the Local Office of Education takes all of its specific TaLK scholars on a weekend excursion. In other cities, TaLK scholars have been going on trips to Jeju Island, Busan, and other significant cultural sites of Korea to eat, drink, and relax on the government's money. Nonsan's trip was a bit of a surprise, mainly because we didn't think we were going to get one and had to beg our mentor teachers to take action. They let us vote on an activity, and somehow everyone voted on a snowboarding trip (I blame the male population).
However, when we finally received our Two-Days-and-One-Night itinerary, all of us wished that we had never complained in the first place and had just happily accepted the lack of forced group activity. Our schedule was chock-full of museums, parks, and temples (honestly, temples are nice and all, but they all look the same), complete with a 9 p.m. curfew (yeah right) and an 8 a.m. breakfast call (actually better than orientation). Finally, we were told that snowboarding was not an option, as it is "too dangerous," so we would be skiing instead. Personally, I didn't care either way, as I have never done either and naturally assumed I would be equally bad at both sports. Also, sliding down a huge mountain on your feet sounds dangerous to me no matter what you're strapped to. The men, however, were outraged and threatened to boycott the trip if they weren't allowed to snowboard. They are all liars though, because everyone showed up at 8:30 Friday morning.

Friday morning we also had our first real snowstorm in Nonsan, so that cheered everyone up considerably. The temple and park visits were a lot more fun with snowball fights and snowmen.

The temple behind my apartment.

Tiny Buddha.

Trying to clear the path for our bus.

By the time lunch rolled around, the supervisor was considering cancelling the ski trip, because it was snowing so much we weren't sure if we would be able to get out of Nonsan. Lunch was really good, we had beef soup with lots of side dishes, of course.

The snow stopped a little after lunch, and the roads cleared up enough for us to head out to Muju Ski Resort.
Before we left, they warned us that we shouldn't expect much from the ski resort, as it is really old and cheap, but it wasn't so bad. Very small and without beds, but this is pretty typical for Korea. At least our rooms had heated floors.

My co-teacher and roomie, Yihoon, modeling our cozy room.

Finally, around 6 it was time for our first ski lesson.

Anna, Linda, and me.

Skiing was pretty hard, but we all had fun. The next day we just played around in the snow. We took a gondola to the top of the mountain.

At the top of the mountain.

With Linda and Merry.

After we left the mountain we went to O-World, which is the zoo/ amusement park in Daejeon. It wasn't very exciting because it was cold and the animals looked annoyed. We wrapped up our second day with Pizza Hut and a bus ride back to Nonsan. Overall, the trip was a lot more fun than we expected, although it was definitely a lot more togetherness than necessary.