Taebaek Snow Festival.

 

Cake Cup

I discovered this coffee shop slash bakery a few days ago. The coffee is not the best (still Bliss Coffee), but it is good, and however little the coffee is lacking in taste is made up for by the very low price and the setting.

Cake Cup is a charming little place that bakes and sells mini cakes, cup cakes and biscuits along with the standard hot drinks. I might be spoiled with South African prices, but paying more than R20, about US$2.50, for a single little cup cake seems a bit much for me. Then again, I might also just be ignorant of prices back in the RSA. Soon, however, i will taste one.

What follows is basically just a dump of photos that I took at Cake Cup. If only I had a very wide angle lens to capture the whole place in one shot.

Spot, the Stand-up Comedian

Spot, a student of mine, was telling me jokes just now.

Student: Dog, you know. Barn. What?

Me: Huh?

Student: Barn? You know?

Me: ...blah...blah… B-U-R-N? As in Fire?

Student: Yes? Hot dog!

Weird girl was asking me “What do you call a burning dog?” Funny.

Then she asked me if I knew (insert strange Korean word) from Star Wars. A quick action showed me she was talking about a Lightsaber, the light sword thing-a-ma-bob. So she asked: “What colour is a lightsaber?” Naturally I answered: “Red, blue or green.” Shaking her head she said “Orange!”

It only took her only a couple of seconds and a blank look on my face to realise that this was a joke that only worked in Korean. Apparently the world for “orange” is Juhwang(주황), and if you say this quickly it is the sound of a lightsaber extending. Once I got that part I was actually quite amusing.

Side note:

I looked up “Orange” and then “Orange Colour” on Google Translate. It gave me “오렌지 컬러” (Oraenjee Ceolleoh), basically just English with a Korean accent. Quite useless, actually.

At the Entrance

Solar Power

The view from my current apartment is just so much more interesting than from the previous one. That, and water does not freeze during the day.

Oops!

I'm really, REALLY sorry. In South Africa we don't have to check to see if the water in the toilet bowl is frozen.

How Beautiful?

The less flattering side of snow. Once everyone has woken up, gotten in their cars and went to work, we are left whit this brown mess on the roads. As the days go on that mess will spread outwards to the walking areas.

Slaves to the System

A boy came into the office today, apparently to join in his class’s share of the cleaning. Just to make sure I asked him why he was here and he replied: “Servant. Slave.” At least one student is honest about his feelings. =D

Snow Day. A REAL one this time.

Korea was hit by snow on Monday. I am not exactly sure which areas were hit, but Gyeonggi-do git it big time. People who have lived here in Icheon for a long time said that they have never seen so much snow in this city and I recently heard that it is the highest snowfall since 1937.

Taebaek Landscape

The lack of sun that made everything seem much desaturated, along with the white background from the weather, allowed me to get these spooky, lonely shots.

 

The bit of sun we saw at the start of the hike =D

 

Right at the top of the mountain, in front of the shrine to whomever (I cant find the information at the moment) is a bit of strange moonscape. Along with the white-out from the miserable weather it made for a strange view of seemingly lonely hikers.