Korea Life Blog - Snow!


UPDATE:

Be sure to check here for a long awaited update to the Goeje-do story. It's a short update, but at least it's a (re)start. I need to rewrite the rest from my notebook. Look for more updates there on a somewhat irregular basis. Sorry for the aged delay. I'll finish it sooner or later.



I was shocked to look out my window late last night and see this. While I've been in Korea most of the past 3 years, I've only seen snow here twice before. Even though it get cold, damn cold, it doesn't snow often in the southern half of the country where I used to live. The time I saw it in Pusan, they were reporting it to be the first snowfall in 15 years. People were all over taking pictures, making snowmen, snow-angels, throwing snowballs at deokboki ajummas, etc. I guess it's nothing special in the north. Nobody even said anything about it today. Wasn't that just about the best feeling you ever had as a kid - hearing on the radio that your school district was closed for a snowday. A part of me hoped to see it scroll across the screen here in Nowhere-dong: All Hagwons Closed. Hah, yeah right. Even if they got snow like back home, I find it hard to conceive of them shutting down a school for the day, especially a hagwon. Even if only one kid showed up, there would be class.




I feel bad for the cats. It's damn cold. How can they live out there? You can see their dish is full of snow. Yum! (Later I went out, emptied it, and filled it with tuna, don't worry.)



Well, I got excited by the first snowfall, what can I say. I ran outside and took some pics. To my surprise my camera takes pretty nice pictures of falling snow. Had I known, I would have walked around and gotten better ones than these, but it was late and I was tired. Coming from NY this is nothing, but I still liked it. I also just saw on the news the entire North East in the US has gotten hit hard by a heavy snowstorm, so I'm sure these pictures look kind of pathetic.



Another shot out front. If I had stood a little more to the right and centered on that old-style roof and left out the vehicle, this would have been a nice picture. Damn. Oh well, next time.



One last exciting shot for you. The funny part is how the cars are all double parked. There's 3 in the row on the left. Must be fun in the morning or having to get out in the night. It's hard to tell from this shot, but the driveway is to the left and it's extremely narrow between the buildings. Most Koreans are accustomed to these situations however. I was surprised before to see how relatively easy it was for one of my friends to maneuver her car through here.