Walking in a Winter Wonderland

I have to say, I had a great Saturday. I woke up and talked with Joleen and the phone for a short while. Then, I made my way to Pyeongtaek Station to meet up with Jaclyn and Will. I was harrassed by an old Korean guy at the station while waiting for the others to arrive, but that was just one short blip in the goodness of the day. We then boarded the subway and made our way to Suwon where we met up with Andy, Eva, and Lindsay. We ate at Jackie Chan's restaurant. It was pretty good. I had a chicken curry dish and some egg roles. Then...(drumroll please)...we all went to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire! Huzzah! It came out December 1st here. We had bought our tickets days in advance and still got seated in the 2nd row (assigned seating). But it wasn't too bad because there was quite a bit of space between the screen and the first row. Although I did have a sore neck by the end of the movie. Koreans love Harry Potter just like the rest of the world. The tickets were about $7, so not too shabby at all. I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was probably my favorite of them all, thus far.

So a bit after the movie Will and I made out way back to Pyeongtaek. We then decided to make it movie day, so we went to Just Like Heaven (I think that's what it's called) with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. I thought it was surprisingly good. It was funny. Plus, the tickets at the Pyeongtaek theater are only $5. How can you go wrong with that? The movie finished at about 12:45am. As we walk outside we see...(drumroll please)...



SNOW!!!!! That's right, snow!!! There was about an inch of accumulation on the ground and it was still coming down pretty heavily. It was exciting beyond words. We were told that it snows very little here (like maybe an inch or 2 all winter). Plus, I'm always completely ignorant of the weather forecast here, so it came as a complete surprise. All the Koreans leaving were freaking out and running to their cars to get out of it while Will and I proceeded to have a snowball fight. As we had no mittens or anything, my hands about froze off. Then Will set off a car alarm by getting snow off the hood. Oops, sorry! We then walked around for a while. We went through a park and decided to make a snowman. The snow wasn't the stickiest...we basically had to use the heat from our hands to melt the snow together. I pretty much lost all functionability of my hands. To add to that, I was wearing tennis shoes that are composed entirely of a mesh-like material. So my feet were soaking wet and freezing. I honestly thought my big toes would have to be cut off. But we prevailed with the snowman making (and confused a Korean couple along the way). It was pretty small, but it was the best we could do. And it was pretty damn cute if I say so myself. I guess the total snowfall was around 3 inches? Earlier I had asked one of my classes if they had ever made a snowman, and none of them had! Crazy!

This morning I was able to download a bunch of classic Christmas Cartoons (How Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, Charlie Brown's Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Now I'm all set to have a Christmas marathon in the coming weeks. So anyway, that was my weekend excitement. SNOW!!!!!!!!