The Hwacheon Ice Festival

Catch a live fish with my bare hands, check!..

The last weekend in January, we decided to take a Sunday trip to the Hwacheon Ice Festival. Little did I know what this day had in store for me. I think in the future I will look back on this year and have many crazy stories that begin with"This one time, in Korea..." 

Kaylee, 7 of her co-workers, and I woke up early and took a 2 hour bus ride to Hwacheon, not really knowing what to expect when we got there. The festival had all kinds of fun activities, all ice related. There was sledding, ice fishing, tubing, zip lining, igloos, ice mazes, ice scultures, and much more. The highlight of the day was definitely when the whole group decided to attempt bare hand fishing. We probably shouldn't have watched the group before us do this; their painfully freezing looking faces only made me rethink my decision more. But, we did it! Not only was it in freezing cold water, but it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to snatch up a live fish with your bare hands. 

Since Koreans are the nicest people ever, a complete stranger gladly took one of our cameras to document this once in a lifeline event (beacuse none of us are stupid enough to try this again! Kidding... kind of). The water was so cold, my legs turned purple after less than a minute. Once I grabbed a fish, I bolted for the hot tubs to thaw myself out. We all sat in the hot tub for as long as we could, shocked at what we had just done. We all took pictures kissing the fish and proudly posing with our soon to be lunch. Sadly, (and ironically) the camera we used to take all of these pictures was lost later that night. We ended up catching 3 or 4 fish between the 9 of us. A super friendly Korean girl gave us 10 more fish, so we gladly accepted, cook, and ate our fish for lunch. (Yes, really).  

Here are some of the photos from my camera. 

The group!

Fish everywhere!

Ice tunnel.

*Notice the man in the hello kitty hat on the left..

Ice fishing.

Ice bicycle.

Snow castle.

Sculptures.

This little blue bear was spinning donuts. 

Sledding.

Lining up before they all jump into this
freezing pool filled with fish. 

Wimps! ;)

The technique is to tuck in your shirt, and store the fish inside
 your shirt freeing up your hands to grab more.

The girls - Unaware at this point how cold we are
going to be in the next 5 minutes.

Getting nervous ...

Why am I doing this again?

My catch! He was a slippery little sucker.

Success!

We definitely worked hard for our lunch.

Korea, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to experience
so many things I never thought i'd have the chance to do.

I can't put into words how fun this day trip was. Someone who can, and quite thoroughly, is my friend Lindsay. Click here to see her blog post about this weekend day trip.