Hwacheon Ice Festival

Let me start this blog by saying I hate being cold.  (In fact, I'm writing this blog under a blanket because I'm freezing right now.  The current outside temperature is 17 degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind chill is -4 today.  Fabulous!)  That being said, though, I love doing unusual things that I've never done before.  I love this even more than I hate being cold, so when I heard about the Hwacheon Ice Festival, I knew we just had to go.  Hwacheon is a little town in the mountains three hours northeast of Seoul.  Because of its location, it's one of the first places in Korea to freeze.  Every year after the river freezes over they hold this giant festival on the frozen lake.  It's awesome!

We arrived Sunday night for the evening festivities.  The entire town was decorated for the event.  It was stunning.  

The blue lights above moved in a wave to simulate the river.  There were colored fish hanging from it so it actually looked like fish swimming in a river.  Pretty cool.

 The lights are shining on the frozen waterfalls in the distance.

 They were actually serving food in these little huts.

 After walking around the town, we decided to go to the ice sculpture exhibit.  For any of you who have been to the traveling exhibit ICE in the United States, it was just like that (except only $4!).  The detail in the sculptures was amazing!  

This is a sculpture of the Terracotta Warriors.

Here's Pete warming himself by the fire.  Too bad it didn't work!

 We each had to take a turn standing by our Chinese Zodiac year.

Ali is the year of the Dragon.

Ryan is the year of horse.

Emma is the year of the dog.

 I'm the year of the rabbit.

 And Pete's the year of the tiger.

After enjoying the evening in Hwacheon, we headed to the nearby city of Chuncheon to stay in a traditional Korean hotel.  Because Koreans heat their houses by running hot water through pipes in the floor, they used to place mats directly on the floors to sleep.  Many people in Korea still sleep this way today.  We wanted to have this experience too!  Here's a few pictures of the room.  There's absolutely nothing to sit on.  Just the floor.

These are the mats we were given to sleep on.  For some reason I thought they would be thick and soft.  They're not!

Spending the night in a traditional Korean hotel was one of the things on my list to do while living here.  Now that I've done it though, I will never do it again!  The floor was hard and I was too close to the heat.  I guess I'm just a bed sleeper.  :)

The next morning we got up early and were surprised by a huge snowstorm.  Luckily we didn't have too far to drive to get back into Hwacheon.  Because of the snow, though, we didn't take our good camera.  We just used the cameras on our phones.  And to be honest, there were a lot of pictures I didn't take because I didn't want to take off my gloves to make my phone work!  My finger warmth won out over making memories.  Oh well. 

Here were some more amazing ice sculptures down by the river.

Our first stop was ice fishing.  The fishing poles they gave us looked like fly swatters.  It took me a second to realize this was the fishing pole.

 As with every picture we have of Emma in Asia, there are always at few locals who want to help her!  These volunteers loved Emma and were thrilled to help her catch some fish. 

 There were several holes cut through the ice.  You had to watch your step to make sure your foot didn't go in one.

 Here's Ali catching her first fish!

 The kids were amazing fisherman!  They just kept yanking the fish right out of the holes.

 Here's Pete's first fish.

 This is my one and only fish.  Apparently I shouldn't quit my day job.

Total we caught 18 fish in about 30 minutes.  The strangest part about fishing for these trout was we didn't even use bait.  You'd drop your line all the way to the bottom of the river, then give it a good yank upward.  The hook would get caught in whatever fish happened to be swimming by at the moment.  Sometimes you wouldn't even catch them by the mouth.  Ryan caught a few by sticking the hook in the side of the fish.  It was a surprisingly effective way of fishing.  

So, somehow we missed these giant signs posted in English all around the fishing area.  Notice Ali's bag.  She caught 6 fish alone.  Oops!  

After fishing we headed over to the cooking station where we had our fish fried.  As you can see from the sign you could choose either "Spicy Source" or "Soy Source".  We choose both Spicy and Soy Sources.  :)

 I wasn't sure if the kids would enjoy them.  Emma, of course, placed herself as far from the fish as possible. She didn't want to be anywhere near them and thought this was one of the most disgusting things she had ever seen!

 Ali and Ryan, however, dug right in.  I was shocked!  The fish was very mild and as Ryan said, "It tastes like chicken."  It really did though.  It was delicious.    

After living here for a few months now, I'm starting to get used to eating fish that are looking at me. :)

The rest of the day we spent doing fun activities.

 One thing I love about Korea is they don't have all the safety regulations we have.  Here we drove ATVs on the ice.  There wasn't a waiver to sign saying we won't sue them if we roll it.  There wasn't a video before we went explaining how to drive it.  There wasn't an age limit to drive.  Ryan would have been allowed, but I overruled that one.  All you had to do was wear a helmet.

Ali loved getting behind the wheel! 

  We had a blast driving these things on the ice.  You could do awesome donuts.  I think this was my favorite activity.  Because we went on a US school holiday, and with the snow, there weren't many people here.  They let us drive as long as we wanted.  By the time we were finished, we couldn't feel our cheeks!

We also went tubing down this giant slide.

 They also had go carts to drive on the ice.  

 This time I let Ryan drive by himself.

We finished up by heading to the snow section.  When we originally heard about the Ice Festival, we looked it up online.  As mentioned before, Korean and English are incredibly different from each other, so often times, you get some very funny translations.  The Ice Festival website was one of those!  Here's the link if you want to read it:  http://www.narafestival.com/07_global/?f_code=02_03&lang=eng

One of our favorites was, "Let's run with iron sticks in hands!"  This sounded like a very bad idea.  We found what this meant.  There were sleds you could sit on and push yourself around the ice with iron rods.  Ahhh, much safer than it sounded.  

Another we couldn't figure out was, " Very small snowman in straw hat in real winter."  We weren't quite sure what to expect from this.  We were picturing a bunch of tiny snowmen in straw hats.  Well, we were close.  They had this machine where they would build you your own "tiny snowman."  

You could then decorate it.  Not with straw hats, but with drinking straws.  Ohhhh!  Apparently no one else read the English translation of "straw hats" so other people used their straws to make arms and such.  We, though, knew the proper use of the straws and had to make an awesome straw hat!

Our day ended when the kids found a great hill to slide down.

 A few of the Korean volunteers noticed them and thought it looked fun.  They came over to join the kids.  

Pretty soon they were sliding down the hill with kids and trying to run back up it with them.

Of course, they didn't speak much English, and our kids don't speak Korean.  It didn't matter though.  Before we knew it they were having a giant snowball fight and wrestling match.  

The kids had a blast with them.  They probably played together for almost an hour.  I love that it doesn't matter what language you speak or what country you're from.  Anyone can be friends.