Ski Trip..Part 1

Skiing is...well, a task.  A task that no one actually prepared me for, in EVERY sense of the experience. Lets go back to the beginning....Tarita found this website, adventurekorea.com, which is pretty cool.  It is a company that finds exciting/adventurous/educational trips for foreiners who reside in South Korea. We paid 125,000won ($125) for bus fare to the city and back (from seoul), a room for the night, a ski lift pass, and ski rental. It was a pretty good deal. So we transfer our money and all that, and I go to her side of town Friday night so that we could leave at 5am the next morning.

The bus for the ski resort left from Seoul, which is a 1.5 hour bus ride from our house. So basically, we had to leave a the crack of dawn to get to Seoul to get to the bus that would take us  to the ski resort.  We wake up and take a taxi to the bus terminal, but um, its closed. We look around, no one is there, its 5:30 am and we have an 8am bus to catch in Seoul. And we still dont speak enough Korean to ask a thorough question. Luckily, there is one Korean taxi driver who spoke enough English to ask us where we were trying to go..and he points us in a direction and says, in Korean, walk 1 block up, make a left, and walk 3 blocks to another bus station (which I translated through one super great game of gestures).  We made it there, but the first bus didnt leave until 6, though we were told 5am. Either way, we made it from one bus, onto another, for a 3.5 hour bus ride with strangers.

Now you know how I am with please, thank you, and excuse me, and if you don't know, I will tell you. I HATE it when people cannot extend these common courtesies my way, or in the direction of others (being here in S.K., no one says anything of the sorts, even to each other. [well, they say please and thank you, but excuse me, if it DOES exist, is obsolete and it usually consists of someone nudging you until you move]  So Koreans get a pass.).

If you are from America, or even speak ENGLISH for that matter, you are EXPECTED to 1. cover your mouth when you sneeze, 2. say please and thank you, and 3. say excuse me if you dont want me to catch a MAJOR attitude with you. So what is the first thing that happens as I go to put my bag under the bus?  A ninja knocks into me to put theirs in, and walks away like they didnt see me/feel my whole life being moved by them.  So me being me, I say... "Um, well EXCUSE YOU TOO."  And then there is the usual response of, "Oh, I'm sorry, I... (lies because you KNOW you were rude and bumped me and now you are playing the "afraid of the black girl game)".  So Im like, ok, what ev, and take my place next to Tarita on the bus. She got on first to make sure we would have seats next to each other, and we lucked up on seats in the very back {side eye to myself} in the larger, elevated seats.

They have no arm rests because there is one long row of 4 seats instead of the two and two division of the aisle, but they are more comfy. Tarita takes the window seat, and I take the second-to-the-middle seat. And what is the first thing this girl does? Bumps my life into yesterday and doesnt say a word. So me being me...you already know what was going to happen. But Tarita was like..."Lindsay, stop, we have a 4 hour bus ride," and Im still not really caring, so I'm like, "but all I needed was an excuse me" but I drop it because she is right.

So now I'm crunchy cus I want to tell this girl off, and I'm having all types of moments like, "did she just do that because she feels like she is elite and doesn't have to acknowledge the presence of me" (because me and Tarita were having a conversation about racially motivated stereotypes ...another long story). But we just drop it. We get on the road, and the girl and her other friend decide that they just want to get it CRACKIN on the bus. By this, I mean they pull out a large Hite beer and a bottle of soju, and they just start conversing with us. Turns out, they were pretty nice, ditzy but nice. And then, they were drunk.

As we are riding, I see this boy that is Justin D. Myles' doppelganger, so I'm staring at him completely weirded out and our Korean guide who speaks pretty good English has everyone introduce themselves, and then he asks a question.  "Ok, hello! Who wants to have ski lessons?" Tarita, I, and numerous other people raise their hand.  "And who wants snow board lessons?" Another group raises their hands.  "Ok, well, unfortunately, we normally have a skier with us, but today, we have two snowboarders, so, we cannot have ski lessons."  And Tarita and I signed up for ski equipment. 

So drunk chick is like, "Oh, its easy! Pizza to to stop!" meaning make an "A" of sorts with your skis. "Yeah, but be careful," says the German chick, "because I had a friend who thought he would be ok without knowing how to stop and he ended up tearing the ligaments in his knee."  Oh, ok, thank you Drunk German Woman. 

The rest of the ride there is more or less uneventful, save a few drunk comments from the 2 women next to us, and then the occasional comment from other white people such as "My family has this, like, genetic Asian trait.  High cheek bones...AND dark hair! I see Asian guys, like, 'Is that my uncle?'" And I am sorry to say, this is VERBATIM of the guy sitting in front of us who was a pretty attractive white guy, I was compelled to write it down for accuracy's sake.