Inje Ice Fishing Festival

This is long overdue, but it was an experience definitely worth revisiting. And sorry for the long post and excessive pictures, I couldn't help myself.

The Inje English Village crew (Aubyn, Darren and I) went during the first weekend to represent K-Water, AKA smile and pass out water and brochures about K-Water, and met up with other friends when we were off duty. We first met up for lunch where we ate delicious 빙어, which is basically smelt. This wasn't just any smelt, this was special smelt eaten only in the Winter, especially at the Inje Ice Fishing Festival, and this smelt was alive. Yes, you've read that right, it's not raw, it's a live, wriggly, slimy, tiny fish. And it tasted horrible! Hah, jokes! I didn't have big enough balls to stomach that, maybe someday. However, I did try the deep fried smelt, and that was delicious.

Fried  빙어

Live  빙어

I wasn't expecting much from the Ice Fishing Festival but WOW! Minnesota, land of the cold and snow, could learn a thing or two. Hailed as one of Korea's biggest Winter festivals, and conveniently located in my own backyard on the Soyangho Lake. There were so many things to do and so much to see! There was ice fishing (obviously), the novelty of eating live 빙어 (smelt), sledding, people paragliding off the mountain and landing on the ice, ice skating, four-wheeling on the ice, rides driven by snow mobiles throughout the festival grounds, ice soccer, and one of my favorites, an enchanted ice forest. The ice forest was a bunch of trees grouped together that were completely frozen and covered with ice, it looked like something from the Chronicles of Narnia.

I don't know what these were called, but they were a lot of fun, and there were families and children scooting around on these.

Snow Mobile rides!

Ice Fishing!

Ice Skating!

Paragliding!

Sledding!

Ice Soccer!

The Enchanted Ice Forest!

We were roaming around the ice soccer "fields" and a group of Koreans invited us to play ice soccer with them, we couldn't refuse. Ice soccer was a rush. Sliding around with the gut feeling that you're going to slip, the adrenaline of the game running through you, bonding with Koreans despite the language barrier. It was amazing! One of the guys from the other team took a hard fall and the game had to end.

Charlie on the swing

We moped around and ran into another group of Koreans who wanted to play a group of foreigners. Assa! I played goalie, and was surprised with how many goals I actually managed to stop. I think it was my abnormally large dinosaur feet that had something to do with that. Regardless, it was a very close game, so the spokesperson for the team said that the next goal wins, and the losing team will have to treat the winning team to makgeolli. Things got intense. The Koreans were zooming around the ice like crazy, shooting goals at me, luckily my amazon woman feet were blocking most of the goals, our team was zooming around as well and I didn't know what was happening. Next thing I know we got a goal! We win!

Beautiful Soyangho Lake

We all rejoined at the food tents where the Korean team we played fed us more smelt and makgeolli which warmed our numb fingers and toes. This experience of the ice fishing festival was unreal. Playing ice soccer and connecting with this group of Koreans, hanging out with some of my students and sliding around the ice together, and being a part of an event that's so family oriented and community based, and the fact that his event is the proud and joy of Inje, was amazing.

The Foreign Teachers (stolen from Facebook)