A Snowy Day in Suwon.....

....MARKING my final day of vacation before having return to the classroom tomorrow was one of the biggest hauls of snow which the city I live in has ever seen (according to the news and Hans who said it was 'By far the most snow he'd ever seen in Korea!)

I had planned to spend the day doing something but sit inside all day and once I looked out of my window this morning and saw that the streets, cars and houses in the surrounding area were covered with snow I had a perfect excuse to go out and take some pictures of the chaos which was taking place.

The last bout of snow we got, just before New Year was probably about 3 or 4cms and before that when we visited the folk village, we'd experienced a couple of inches. Today was closer to a foot of snow, and as I live on a hill you can imagine the kinds of fun people were having trying to walk or drive up it!

Heading away from the snow coverered cars on the street where we live it was evident that Korean's don't do a whole lot to make sure their roads are free of snow when it gets heavy as the vehicles travelling down the main road were having a tough time of getting anywhere it seemed.
I decided that the best place to view the snow would be on the walls of Hwaseong Fortress walls. I had wanted to go into Seoul but after seeing that cars couldn't make it down the road without wheelspinning, I'm not too sure I'd be comfortable on a subway train on snow coverered tracks!

Instead of walking the usual way to get to the wall I headed up another path which is shortcut to the top of the walls and obviously what I found was a hell of a lot of snow! Most of it was relatively untouched so it was quite difficult to see where steps were, and it was also quite difficult to keep my footing as I chose to wore the most ungripped pair of trainers on the planet!

I took a path to the top of the fortress and saw quite a few people out doing the same as me, taking pictures, and being just generally interested in how deep the snow was. Obviously there was the regular amount of kids on the street throwing snowballs and several of them trying to sled down hills, though of all the people I saw, I'm pretty sure that none of them posessed a physical sled!

I walked to the top of the fortress wall and took some decent pictures (though a little foggy) of the great view from the top before walking around another part of the wall to Namun which is about thirty minutes away from where I live on foot. The snow in and around that area of the wall was very much untouched and I think there may have been more than a foot in some parts which had been exposed to the snow all day.

By this point it was starting to great fairly cold so I took my trip in a circle walking back on the walls towards my house before heading home to get some much needed warmth. Not that I felt like I was missing out, but I have now probably experienced the same amount of snow as back home, though I feel that they are more used to such abrasive conditions here. I thought I'd post a few pictures on my blog so you could see how snowy it was but as ever if you want to look at the rest of them you can go here and see everything I've been up to.

As I mentiontioned back at work tomorrow so I will hopefully get some kind of rhythm back into typing my blog out on the weekend now that Christmas and New Year are over with. It's been a relaxing start to 2010 and I hope that remains the case on my first working day back at school.

Ben x
Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
Elmer G Letterman