April 18th and 19th

Ok, ok so I know what you are all thinking. In most of my blogs I apologize for how long it has taken me to update and I always throw out the line, "The next one won’t take as long, I promise." As I am sorry for how long it takes me, I will no longer tease you by saying it wont be as long. It has been about a month and a half since I have updated and it has been an awesome month. We have done a lot and had tons of fun on the weekends. To start off, on the weekend of April 18th and 19th, there was a paintball trip planned for the weekend by the Dongtan Clan. The Dongtan Clan is a group on facebook that is made for foreign teachers who live in Dongtan or the surrounding cities as well. There are over 100 people in the group and about 25 of us went on the paintball weekend excursion. There was only about 5-6 people that I had actually met before so I knew I would be meeting a bunch of new people that live in the area. On Saturday, April 18th we all met in the morning at our Central Park and headed off to paintball. In Korea they call paintball, "Survivor" which actually makes sense. It was the first time I had been paintballing and oh my goodness, it was a blast! We were split into two teams and battled for about 2 hours. I have a bunch of pictures that you will be able to see. I was doing good and dodging shots the whole day. I think for the first hour and a half, I was not shot once. But I tell you in that last half and hour, I probably got shot like 10 times. I was shot on the top of my head I think twice and that was terrible. Once we finished and cleaned up, we all couldn't believe there was still more fun to be had. We didn’t think it was possible to top the paintball. I don’t think we have ever been so wrong.

One thing you realize about the other foreign teachers here, they are all looking to have a good time just as we are. After paintball, we went to lunch where we ate Korean BBQ, had plenty of beer and soju. At this point we are all starting to actually meet one another because during paintball it was a little tough as you are shooting others and dodging shots yourself. The group was really awesome and we could tell we were going to have a wild day/night at the resort we were heading to. Once we got to the resort, I think all of our eyes widened and our mouths dropped to the floor. The place was huge and beautiful. We got our rooms where there were three rooms and about 8-9 people in each room. There is only one bed if you are lucky because Korean resorts are more known to have lots of blankets and pads to sleep on the floor. I have been to three resorts so far in Korea and all three I have slept on the floor. The balcony of our room looked out to the backside of the resort and we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. There was a huge mountain/hill that we knew we would be on all day. We all met down in the lobby, went to the market in the resort and loaded up on lots of beer and soju. You were able to do two things on the mountain. You have to take up the chairlift to the top and you could either golf a par three 9 hole course the whole way down or you could ride the alpine slide down the mountain. We wanted to golf but it was very pricey and you got to remember, we are just poor teachers. Instead, we decided to take the chairlift up to do the slide. The slide was at the top of the mountain and you sat in this little sled looking seats that had a stick shift. The stick shift could be used to push forward to accelerate or pulled towards you for a brake. The brake was the least of anyone's worries. We actually did not to the slide right away because it was so gorgeous at the top and about 15 of us just hung out on top, drinking our beers and still getting to know one another. We finally took the slide down and it was so much better than I thought it would be. I actually took a video while I was on it and will have it uploaded for everyone to see what it was like. The slide went a lot faster than we expected. Many of us including myself had situations where we fell off our slide because it was going too fast. Had a couple wounds but they are all taken care of now. A girl that was with us, her sled actually flew off the path and she had to wait for the next person coming down and hop on her sled.

After doing the slide a couple times, the whole group met up in the lobby to then go bowling. This was very interesting because you had about 25 foreign teachers at a Korean resort (I wonder if we stood out?) who had been drinking all day and were going to attempt bowling. I like to think of myself as a pretty good bowler and let’s just say my score was about a 58 or so. I like to tell myself the lanes were too slick. To say the least, no one bowled well. After bowling, we all went to a huge cookout that the resort puts on and we BBQ'd and hung out with one another for a few hours. After dinner, the party resumed and we took it into one of the rooms where we hung out and played some games before we attempted to go to the Karaoke bar but were denied by the owners. It would have been a lot of fun and also really funny to see some people sing karaoke but it was probably better that we were denied. At this point, the group started to taper off and people were ready to call it a night. It had been a very long day and we couldn’t even believe that paintball was that same day. It felt as if it was yesterday. The next morning a few of us woke up to get breakfast and reminisce the day before and how much fun we had. It honestly was the best time I have had in Korea so far. Everything worked out smoothly; we met some amazing other people and cannot wait for the next Dongtan Clan trip to take place.

Again, sorry it took me so long to update you. There is still a few more blogs to catch you all up.