Life in Gangneung 강릉 Life in Korea 한국

Do you wanna build a snowman?! Damn you Frozen.

For those of you who haven’t seen Disney’s new animated movie, Frozen, you are lucky. Personally while the story was cute there was way too much singing for me. Unfortunately, if you are an English teacher in Korea this movie and its songs are pretty popular. My co-teacher wanted to do a lesson on the song, “Let it go,” lucky for us most of the students didn’t show up to school because of snow on Friday, and the teacher’s also showed up late.

For those who don’t know…it’s been snowing. And snowing….and snowing…for days…for four days. It started last Thursday night and it has not stopped. These are some lovely pictures of the snow this morning, it’s now Monday. And it is still snowing. So lucky for me the stupid Frozen song got stuck in my head…curses.

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This is when the shoveled path ended and my trek to school began, it isn’t too far.  However when the snow begins to fall we all turn to children inside. SNOW!!!! Is it snowing?! OMG SNOW!!!!! Everyone stare out the window…oooooooooo.  We get excited like little kids at the fluffy glistening winter wonderland in front of us. Sometimes we have ideas to build a snowman, go sledding, make snow angels or have a snowball fight.

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Sometimes….we have a screw loose. I decided that it would be great fun to not follow the snow footprints already made but trek across the snow covered soccer field. Brilliant! Brilliant my ass it took me over ten minutes huffing and puffing. I came out feeling like I had an asthma attack and thought I had just run a mile. Snow is deceiving. Oh it isn’t so deep…when it’s up to the middle of your thigh its not such a bright idea to trek through snow.

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What the entrance to the school currently looks like. I went to school and of course like I thought nobody was there…except the gym teacher. He told me to go home as the students weren’t coming to school today. Not only are the students not coming, but the buses aren’t running. Hooray! A snow day!!! Why did I trek across this snow?!

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I just received a kakao message from my co-teacher. Come to school late. All the teachers from Gangneung got on a bus at 8:25 and should be arriving sometime after 9. There goes my bloody snowday. I haven’t seen a real plow since I’ve been here. I’ve only seen farmer plows. The students aren’t coming to school…why the hell are we?? Sometimes things don’t make sense.

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A little bonus for all those out there. I’m one of the lucky few whose ondal doesn’t function in their apartment and can’t be fixed( I’m supposing this is a fuck up from combining two apartments into one.)  So I have this lovely little heat fan to keep me warm. Isn’t it lovely? Don’t you feel all toasty and cozy looking at it?

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As of yesterday there was 54 cm of snow where my smallest school is, however, I don’t know the local total here. All I can guess is that it is close to two feet most likely. It’s a lot of snow. So  off to school I go …again! I’ll enjoy looking at the snow all day…perhaps it will even surprise me by continuing to snow until tomorrow…perhaps.

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