DOUBLE THE POWER ski plus tradtional village and seoul tower

Ok my blogger bot for some reason doesn't work so I'll just have to work my way around it......groans..........anyway, to all you people out there I bring u 2 episodes of mua life in korea just to make it up to u hahahahaWell yesterday i went ski-ing thanks to the superb organisation of weiqi(who spoke cantonese chinese japanese and english so everyone in our mixed outing grp could understand everything) and the korean language ability of Daiki(japanese) who was the oni member of our grp who could speak korean and weiqi's rmmate who did up arrangements and stuff. It was amazingly cheap totally only around lets see slightly lower then 50 dollars? . so all big thanks to the big 3. to make tings even better, it snowed as we were going there and it snowed as we were ski-ing and snow till today still amazes me no end. Snow, when u get to the end of it, is no more then white rain. but its is so beautiful when it falls from the sky........... kinda reminds me that everyone is capable of becoming something more beautiful should the circumstances be right. :) there's hope yet, ya? Anyway though i was no expert on ski-ing in the end of the day, i could get from up the slope to down the slope without falling too often lol and if the slope is not too deep, i actually could control where i wanan go somewhat and brake too. which is enough for me i guess...... :) i mean, what more can u want?img make a guess which lol.So much for ski-ing, now for today proper.

Today Me yuanchang weiqi went to korea traditional village where we show the traditional korean village......duh............ anyway it was like hmmmm interesting. we got there in time to watch them perform some sort of ceremony with dancing. the climax was a big big bonfire which was literally a pillar of fire. when the wind blew, the fire sort of shifted direction and u can guess, the crowd around the fire had to run away. lol. but.......it was pretty cool and fun too. although.........we sort of froze because we were under prepared for the cold weather. 4degrees? blah it was more then -10 thank u very much mr weather man.......After that we went to the seoul tower to catch a view of the korean night sky. it was fantastic. hmmmm hard to describe it though........hmmmmmm i'll let u guys see it for urself yah?guess thats it for today. see ya next time. :)

finally, 3 of us in one picture 

seoul night sky 

seoul tower 

Fire! Fire! 

Boy am i glad i don't have to play this game. this is traditional see saw in korea 

Footsteps in the snow........guess which is me...... 

hmmmm this is me and Yc in snow! 

Technical problems.

Due to an unanticipated technical problem with uploading photos, no updates will be available today. Please be patient while we attempt to fix the problem. Any inconvenience is greatly regreted.

BTW I skiied today. nananananana.........

Day 6 going to Ganghwado

Ok, today has been a long day for me and frankly speaking I wouldn't be able to blog as much as I would have liked. So a BIG sorry people. hahaha gotta rest early so i can ski tomorrow you see......

Anyway, today me Yuanchang and Weiqi decided to have an all singaporean outing to the island of ganghwado. which is basically an island at the mouth of the han river. its connected by a brige thing to the main land though. it once played a very important part in korean history though. but i'm not going to go into that. :) Firstly we had to take a bus at let see 8? and then a boat to our first tourist attraction an island on which there was some sort of a historical temple. Seagulls followed us on the boat. I guess partly because people were throwing prawn crackers to them. hmmmmm never thought seagulls would like prawn crackers though......... lol. anyway. once there we tracked up a horrendously high hill, sigh!!!!!!! to catch the sights there. after that we took a boat back the the main island. once there we basically walked 2.5km to a history hall. It was there that i got a picture of the Flag below. hahahaha. It told us about the history and important figures of the place.

after that, since the bicycle shops were closed, (which may be a blessing in disguise since i couldn't ride a bicycle anyway) we decided to take a taxi to the foot of manisum, a mountain to catch the sunset. I tell u it took us more then what?1.5 hours or more of upward climbing to get close to the summit! someone got very excited and kept insisting that the scenery at the foot of the mountain was from "summer scent" though......hmmmmm i really gotta check that out...... and it was what? 900 plus steps to the top? not to mention the frezzing uncondusive ice covered steps and snow. In addition, some places u had to go four by four when the steps disappeared into crops of rock and when it was too ice covered. I tell u i was quite surprised we made it at all? can u imagine? 3 singaporeans from a tropical island with no expreience and totally unprepared for mountain hiking cum climbing attempting to scale a ice and snow covered mountain in winter?!!!!!!! even the locals knew enough to get down as we were going up. but like they say, u r oni young once. It was a probably a totally dangerous and crazy thing to do lol. but the view was wonderful. the feeling of achievement even more so at the top. haha now i noe what does the route most difficult is often the route to go to the top. the oni problem now was....getting down.....groans. sliding down on my butt down what a few hundred stops was never my most favourite hobble. bt in a certain perverse way....... it was fun. hahahahaahhaha. it was a totally hard trip but we all made it. even weiqi. i was so surprised. she's probably the toughest girl i know. lol.

anyway it snowed when we went back. totally romantic and beautiful and amazing......look below for a more detailed description....... gtg ZZZZZzzzzzzz ciao guys! made it just in time before the day ended :)

Going on the boat to our island! 

Sea gulls followed us as we took a boat to our island!  

To all you good looking pp out there! 

More summer scent 

hmmmm Obviously someone thought that it looked like a scene from summer scent. what do u think. 

Izzn't it amazing? It was so cold that the lake solidified in most parts of the stream, but the duckies still survived!

hmmmmmm took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere. there was a nice bench in a nice patch fo snow though. so me and yc took a pic together. 

Braving the ICE!!!!!!!!!! Take a look. and dun tell me it was easy! 

Another summit pick. U know why i was sorta like on all fours? cause If i tried to stand up, chances are I would end up sliding down halfway down the mountain........the ropes behind are used to pull urself up.... infact it was so squeezy the 3 of us can't even take a pic together 

Sliding out way down................... groans. numb bottoms and painful........... not as cool as it looks I tell u..... 

I'm on the top of the WORLD!!!!!! 

The view from the top was fantastic. It is something that u can never never never imagine from this picture! sigh. I wish all of u were here :) 

Finally found a way to get a pic together! 

The moon came out as we made our way down! 

More snow pictures! 

It started to snow! 

Thats me and yuanchang trying to act cool when it was cold enough already....ok....lame...i know....It started to snow on our way to school! fasinating. lol. Never seen anything like it. just like cotton wool from the heavens. We all all very excited. I mean what can be more happy then seeing snow as you're walking home? hmmmm not too clear in this pic though. But its sorta like seeing cotton wool fall from the heavens. each fleck was like hmmmm sorta cool when it touched ur skin. but only for a fleeting moment and then i would melt away. but like a kiss lingering for a moment, fleetingly, teasing but a moment to remember....hahah guess u guys will have to expreience it for yourselves. Tough luck.

Day 5 Going to the house of God. First CG in korea.

Today was one of the most significant days of my life. Why? Well not only was it the first time i'm going to church in korea, but it is also the first time I was venturing out by myself in the Land of the morning calm. Yes you heard me haha. I thank The Lord that I was not lost today. anyway back to the topic. Today, Jihae invited me to her church. so i actually took a bus myself to a bus-stop that was about 30 min away from my school's bus stop. If you think its easy, consider the fact that the bus stop i took the bus from was not a normal bus stop it was actually situated in the middle of a road divider. YES! imagine that lol. It blew my mine away. I had to excercise some imagination in order to find it even though jihae provided me some every detailed instructions. Then, using my very very limited korean, I attempted to ask the bus driver if it was going to "am centre" which is the cancer centre. which is the busstop jihae is picking me up from.

Korean lesson 1:

"Am centre gaa yo?" Going to am centre?

Well the bus driver waved me on board. actually i think i din pay enough fare. but the bus driver gave up trying to explain it to me. din occured to me till much later. lol.

Service was fantastic. The pressence of God truely transcended all boundaries. even though i couldn't really understand since the entire praise and worship was in korean, i recognised 2 of the songs sung. one was hmmmm oh no.....i think i forgot....groans....... nvm i'll tell you once i rem....... anyway today we learned about an adventure with faith. yupyup taken from matt chapt 17 about a boy's healing. Ji hae was kind enough to help me with the translation. The pastor was kind enough to introduce me to the service too :) i was like oh wow. me? After that i went cg. it was different no doubt in the sense that it was carried out in sort of a discussion where everyone would sure about what they have learned in the service and also a topic which we would discuss about. One of it was people we admired and trust. hmmm well I shared about my cg and bro gy. haha see, i din forget about u guys. anyway one thing to note. in korea, the worship comes before the praise so thats different too. but all in all it was a great great church and cg. HanSoMang community church in Mandudong in the satelite town of seoul Ilsan. so go there some day. ps. the auditorium is in the basement too!

JiHae's brother took me out for dinner as Jihae was busy. had a great time talking to him. he has studied in the US for liek 7 yrs? hmmmm long time eh? and is thinking of coming to singapore to study. so we analysised the merits of ntu nus smu and sim. no prizes for guessing which university i recommanded... :P

When i went back to my hall from my university's busstop, the cold nearly killed me. ok maybe thats going too far...but brrrrrrr u have no idea what sub zero temperature feels like. it was like what?-8?-10 plus? with a cold wind, it leeches the strength out of u. and during the 15-20 min walk, i nearly gave up several times. I would never ever want to wish upon anyone a fate as to freeze to death....... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Played GO or weiqi(the game dun confuse it with my schoolmate) with Max. He has this idea that all asians are masters of this game. I was like duh..........no...I'm not.n the end the score was like 48-18 in my favour so.....ahahah erm maybe we're all gifted in some sense eh? lol. p.s ( south park. all blacks can play bass guitar and have one in their basement) reminded me of that episode.....lol. anyway. gonna go out early to explore with a few others tomolo. maybe moving out of seoul finally. wish me luck!

Korean beauties :P Jihae on the left, and a cell grp member on the right. I took a picture with them. show u another time once jihae sends it to me.