Day 365: Every Twelve Seconds

Tonight was supposed to be a fun night with friends on the ski slopes, but it sure didn't turn out that way. Okay, the whole night wasn't a total loss, but it certainly had a rough start.

Tonight myself, Michael, Young-Seok, Nick, and Angele decided to do a little night skiing at one of the local ski hills located about 45 minutes south of the city. It was a smaller hill but still looked like a great place for a little winter fun. But by the end of the first run down the shit had already hit the fan.

Angele had decided to try skiing for the first time tonight but hated it instantly and had to walk down the icy slopes because she was too afraid to continue skiing. There was tension between Michael and Young-Seok. And then there was me getting run over - twice - and then later nearly passing out. Good times, eh?

As mentioned before, skiing in Korea is ridiculously crowded. There are just WAY TOO MANY people out on the slopes. And add the fact that the Koreans are not exactly the most graceful or athletic lot, and you've got a sure-fire recipe for disaster on the ski hills. Snowboarding is the big popular sport here, but as far as I can tell, none of them ever actually take any lessons. They just wake up and decide one day that they're gonna try boarding and so away they go on the slopes, having no clue as to what they're doing. They race down at Mach 9 with seemingly no concern for the safety of others. They have absolutely no control so they're constantly wiping out and crashing into each other. Seriously, we sat and watched and timed it once with one of the slopes. We observed that there was a wipeout somewhere on the slope on average once every twelve seconds! Holy Fuck! It's like trying to ski through a mine field!

So there I am going down my first run on the Bunny Hill, and don't forget that I've a novice skier myself who is overly-cautious and underly-confident as it is. I was about half way down when I heard the dreaded skidding sound behind me. A second later someone plowed into me from behind bringing the both of us down in a fury of flying snow. I was not injured, luckily, but was certainly pissed off. Well, accidents can happen, for sure, but what pissed me off is that the bastard boarder didn't even apologize! He just looked at me for a few seconds and then got up and continued on. I don't speak fluent Korean but I know well enough what an apology sounds like. And all I got was silence.

When I got to the bottom of the slope I saw Michael and Y-S standing next to the line for the chairlift. I was shuffling over to them when all of a sudden *another fucking out-of-control snowboarder* plowed into me. Down I went again. No injuries this time either, but also no apology again! Fuck! How rude! Two times in just one run down! This is not my idea of fun on the slopes!

It was at this time I began to feel extremely dizzy and was on the verge of passing out. A bit of a background on me - I'm pretty sure I'm hypoglycemic (I've only been self-diagnosed) which means that I have to eat at fairly regular intervals or I get bitchy and dizzy. And when I mean bitchy I mean B-I-T-C-H-Y (just ask my friends, they've got stories!) But sometimes I get really, really light-headed. Once in a while my blood sugar levels drop so low I just pass out. It's happened before, but not in a long time as I can usually identify the warning signs before it happens, or just make sure I eat something.

Well it must've been the combination of being hungry, a bit tired from having just exerted myself as I was skiing down the hill, and being angry for having been taken out twice by snowboarders. But for about ten minutes I came so close to passing out I didn't think I was going to make it. I couldn't stand up, most of my vision was a blur, and I was feeling horribly nauseated as everything was spinning around me and I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into a bottomless hole.

My friends didn't realize at first what was happening to me but then they noticed how pale and spaced out I was. Angele went and grabbed some pop for me to drink while I sat and tried to get my bearings again. The liquid and the sugar helped me almost instantly, and we decided that then was definitely a good time for dinner. We went and got something to eat and I felt a lot better after that.

I was still kinda tired and dizzy the rest of the night, but was still able to continue skiing. It was an okay night. I enjoyed being out in the fresh air, but again it was too crowded and I was feeling nervous. The slopes on this mountain are really narrow so skiing here is like taking a giant bucket of bowling balls and just tossing them down the hill watching them bounce off each other.

Hmmm...right sport for me, wrong country perhaps?