65) Snowboarding Hurts

Friday morning my school headed out to LG Ski Resort somewhere Northeast of Seoul. The idea is for the kids to spend the weekend at the resort skiing, having fun, and hopefully learning some English. We had about six two-bedroom condos- the teachers were responsible for the fourteen or so kids in their respective rooms. I guess I forgot how hard it is to get a group of grade school boys to get to sleep. I vaguely remembered how hard it was at the summer camp I used to work at- but last night brought back some clear memories of that. The worst part was the actual sleeping- and I figured it probably would be. All the kids and John teacher slept on the floors, and I had the couch. John started snoring pretty quickly, and at some point in the night I heard whimpers, and then full on moans and cries from one of the rooms in our condo. This continued on sporadically throughout the night, and eventually I had to get up and check it out. I think it was just one of the boys having some bad dreams- I was able to figure out which one it was because he was tossing and turning, but still asleep. It was pretty eerie thing to hear anyways.

The previous day I tried snowboarding for the first time- and it hurts when you are not good at it. I remember being so baffled at how people could just fall down for no apparent reason when learning how to ski or board- but I quickly figured out why that happens. My butt, knees, and wrists took the brunt of the damage- and my pride didn’t make it out undamaged either. Eventually I started getting the hang of it, and could make it down the hill without falling, but then on the next run I would eat it pretty hard- especially if I got a little over confident. My best fall of the day was when a group of my kids saw me from the chair lift and shouted out to me as I was boarding down the hill. I looked up and shouted and waved back, and then took a head over heels spill. I could hear them giggling like crazy!


Probably one of the best parts of the trip was getting to spend more time with and getting to know some of my favorite students better. I love being able to just act like a big kid, and they sure know how to bring it out in me. We played tag in the hallways, had fun on the hill, joked, talked, threw snow and of course I had to toss them up in the air and then catch them. The tossing is something the kids at my old school were crazy about- and somehow or another it transferred over to this school- it is a lot of fun, except when you get the kid who is just a little too heavy for this game. Certainly not all the kids came- I think the total number was under 60- but that was enough. The weather we had was perfect. The first day was sunny and warm, and the second day was a bit cooler- but probably just because we were out in the morning.