One of the Korean teachers at our school, Rachel, invited us to go skiing with her, and we quickly took her up on the offer. It is one of those things that we wanted to do but probably wouldn't have got round to if someone hadn't been kind enough to sort it out for us so we were very grateful! I have never been before so Alex agreed to teach me... more on that later! She found a very good deal on the internet; ₩44,000 for a round trip on a bus, ski lift pass and lunch. We would also need to pay ₩14,000 for ski hire, and ₩15,000 for clothing hire. Rachel lent me her sister's skiing clothes, so luckily only Alex needed to hire clothing, so the whole trip cost us just under £40 which is incredibly cheap.
The bus left from Dunsan, the main downtown area of Daejeon around a 20 minute taxi ride from our place at 6am, so we set the alarm for a painful 4.30am! It was absolutely freezing when we got up, around -10
°C, so we quickly got dressed, putting on lots of warm layers and our warmest coats, scarves and gloves. It was still pitch black and we were worried we wouldn't be able to get a taxi, but luckily one arrived pretty much straight away. We were rather early to meet Rachel, so we waited in an underpass which was a tiny bit warmer than outside. Several party-goers still merry from their night out and very unsuitably dressed in high heels and thin jackets had the same idea as us, and were staring at us as if we were the crazy ones in our thick jackets, ski gloves and sensible shoes! After a short wait we met Rachel, got on the bus and slept for most of the 3 hour journey.
When we got off the coach at Welli Hilli Park, it was still extremely cold even though the sun had risen. I was starting to get worried that we would be freezing all day, but we knew that after we got going we would soon warm up. So off Alex and I went to the baby slope, me having trouble walking in skis for the first time. We had to walk up, and after one fairly successful try, Alex was very encouragingly telling me how well I was doing and that I was ready for the beginner slope. I think he just couldn't be bothered to walk up the baby slope again. We had a lot of fun skiing on a few different slopes all morning; I only fell down a few times! However, around midday we hit a problem. We went inside to go to the loo and left our skis outside, as everyone else does. But when we came back, my skis were gone. We looked around for ages trying to see if someone else had picked them up by accident and put them down somewhere else but this didn't seem to be the case, so all w could do was to wait for Rachel to meet us for lunch and ask for her help. She was so lovely translating for us and talking to countless members of staff; it seems that we are extremely unlucky as apparently it has never happened before, and all the staff were completely shocked and at a loss as to what to do. Eventually they told us that they would wait a couple of days to see if they turned up, but if not we would have to pay ₩180,000. To make matters worse, they were refusing to let me borrow some more skis for the rest of the day, but luckily Rachel talked them round so we could enjoy the rest of our day. We had a great time despite the money we might be losing playing on our minds a little bit, and got on the coach exhausted at around 5pm.
Rachel very kindly called us in the morning to tell us that the ski staff had called her and said that the skis had been found abandoned outside somewhere. I still don't understand why someone stole my skis when I was wearing the boots and they didn't even take the poles, but we didn't have to pay any money in the end, so we're happy. We had a fantastic day and we have booked to go again already, and this time no equipment will be leaving my sight!
