Snowboarding Take Two and Children At Play

  Skiing on the coldest day of the year was probably a bad idea, but we did it anyway.  Actually, most of us, including me, did it unknowingly.  We went skiing this past Saturday to Sunday at the same ski resort that we went to earlier this winter.  There were more runs open this time, which was nice, but the conditions were not good.  It was windy as all get out and there just wasn't enough snow.  We were able to get to the top of the mountain this time, and, while it was very beautiful, I don't know if I've ever been colder than I was going up that ski lift.  The wind was glacial.  We estimated it to be at least -50 with the wind.  It was cold.  And the slopes were all solid snow - it wasn't ice, but it was as hard as ice and almost as slippery.  This made it very difficult to stay up on a snowboard - at least for me.  If you read my previous blog on snowboarding, you'll know that falling is largely part of the snowboarding experience for me.  Except that last time we went snowboarding, the snow was thick and much softer.  So I only came away with a sore tail bone from countless falls.  But this weekend, it only took one fall to bruise-up my knee.  And because of that, I just didn't have the same confidence in myself, and this made it much harder to cope with the conditions.  On Sunday I did switch to skis, and that made a huge difference.  I felt a lot more comfortable on skis and I had a couple very good trips down the hill.
  But despite the less than perfect conditions, our group made the most of it.  We stayed in a single large room with no beds (many Koreans prefer to sleep on a mat) and played a lot of cards.  The lodge/hotel also had a very nice Jinjebang (Korean spa - see Vietnam post).  So we had a good trip overall.
  When we got back to Pohang, Natasha, Dan, and I went to the new and, as far as I know, only Indian curry restaurant in town (Pohang does have a lack of foreign food restaurants).  It reminded me of the Indian place near our house in Scarborough.  It was good.

  But in this blog I also want to talk about a Korean phenomena that I've only hinted at earlier.  This past Friday I was out at dinner with my co-teachers talking about Korean oddities as usual, and one of us said, "I never see children outdoors playing on the playgrounds."  And it struck me then that I don't either.  In fact, except for the spontaneous snowball fight with the 2 boys mentioned in my previous blog, I don't know if I have ever seen a child playing outside in Pohang - ever.  There are playgrounds around, but they're always empty.  One might say that this is because Korean children spend a lot of time in school - and they do - but for the past month the public schools have been on vacation, and I still haven't seen children outside 'being children'.  The predominant cause for this, we believe, is that when children are not in school, they are studying their buts off, even late into the night.  One co-teacher mentioned that a child had told them that he or she is not allowed to go to bed until all the lights in the surrounding apartment buildings are off, because otherwise it means that someone else is studying longer.  Crazy eh?  Now, I'm sure that this is an extreme example, but it is a fact that there are astounding expectations placed on Korean children - or at least the ones I'm associated with - no matter what their age is.  Play doesn't seem to be very highly valued in this culture.  And it's somewhat sad.  I'd say that the ability to play is far more important than anything you can learn in school. 

Thanks for reading.
Michael