This Post is Dedicated to My Mother...

Because I blame her for the way I am.

Went skiing again this weekend. This time we went to a place called Muju and the slopes were way better and there were a lot more of them. Friday night we had a low key night because we had to be up early and on the bus to Muju. Our friend Marcel came down from Incheon and spent the night going from pub to pub with us, and then we met Mary in the morning after a not-so-delicious McDonald's breakfast. Originally from our gang of people it was just going to be Tom and I because everybody else had other commitments or ways to spend their hard earned money, but after a few pitchers of beer we managed to convince Richard that he should come with us and give skiing a try, despite his resentment to all things outdoors or involving athletic ability. We had a quick stop at HomePlus to get him proper snow gear and after that we were off.

We arrived around noon and found out the skiing prices were quite expensive, but oh well, we were already there. I got lucky and a Korean man came up to me and asked me if I wanted a discount, I don't know whether it was because I was blond, foreign, or otherwise, but I said sure. He bought the slope and rental pass at his member price and sold it to me for a little more, which worked out well for both of us because I saved about twenty dollars.

Now if you remember my tales from our last ski weekend I was quite horrible and spent most of the day falling down and was quite bitter by the end of the day. Once we were all suited up we got on the first lift and those with more experience tried to give Richard some helpful tips. After we got off the lift (or fell off the lift in Richard's case) we were standing at the top looking down and I was remembering just how bad I was and wondering why I thought it was a good idea to come again. Oh well, too late now. I pushed off and started slowly down the slope. I stopped myself a little ways down to talk to Mary and Marcel and asked him what I was doing wrong to make my skis always cross. He said to lean harder on each leg when I was shifting weight.

I thought to myself, I can do that. And turns out, I could! It was like in that tiny bit of advice anything I had once known about skiing came back to me and for the rest of the day I was able to turn, stop, and move about on skis without problems, so much so that I only fell once the entire day!

Now to get to the title of this post, last time I was skiing I spent most of the time thinking "Oh god I'm gonna die!" "I'm gonna kill myself," ""Watch out for that tree!" and "Oh *&#@!" but this time because I was quite confident in my own ability my mind was free for other thinking and my thoughts went something like this: "These other people might not know how to ski either and crash into me and kill me," "That person is going way too fast," "Snowboarders are dangerous," and other thoughts of how I might be hurt or injured... so thanks mom, all your years of neuroticism towards Beth and I did not go unheard, in fact I think it was your voice in my thoughts I was hearing ;)

Actually for me, the purpose of this weekend was to practice for next weekend because it is Lunar New Years and Tom, Trey, Richard and I are heading off for a weekend trip arranged by a foreigner's travel group where we will be partaking in skiing and all sorts of other wintery activities and I wanted to get the practising out the way so I could enjoy myself more, and now I am really looking forward to it!

And although this is getting incredibly lengthy, if you've read this far you will probably stick around for another paragraph, the weirdest thing I saw this weekend was when Marcel pulled out a kiwi from his pocket to eat. He just bit into it like an apple, skin and all! I kinda made a face and he said that he had read that all the nutrience of a kiwi was in the skin and just on the edge of the skin, as with most fruit, so he figured he should eat it, and said it didn't taste that bad. He offered me a bite but I declined imagining the texture of that furry fruit to be quite awful, but the first thing I did when I got home yesterday was went out and bought kiwi, washed one and bit into it. And it didn't taste any different than when you peel it, plus I felt healthier (though that is probably in my head), and now I think about all that time and energy wasted peeling kiwi in the past; from now on, I eat my kiwis with skin.