Jinbo & Andong Ice Festival

Ben and I both had an extra vacation day that we weren't using for our upcoming Philippines/Malaysia trip so we took off the Monday from school and had a long weekend. Originally the plan was to go up to Jinbo for one night and then we would go on to Taebek,  home of the Taebek snow festival, but that all changed.

We found some things to do in Jinbo while we were there. We went for a walk down to the river. It was frozen over, so we made our own ice festival there, and called it Jinbo Ice Festival...

We slid rocks along the ice and tried to hit other ones for points. I lost. I wouldn't think of Ben as competitive, but he doesn't lose very often at things. I also don't lose very often, but I am finding myself losing much more often since I met this guy... (We played poker a few weeks ago with a group of 10 and we came in first and second- don't want to say who came in second...;)

The highlight of our Jinbo Ice festival, was when Ben carried a large rock to the top of the bridge and threw it off to see if the ice would crack. It didn't. The rock lodged itself inside the ice. Oh small town life. The things you do for a little entertainment...

When we finally managed to persuade ourselves to go to Andong to get the bus to Taebek, it was too late. The bus was sold out and the next one was not for 8 hours and would have not given us enough time there...soooooo, we stayed in Andong.

Ben had heard of an Andong ice festival, but it was not advertised very much. We managed to get enough information for various people and took a bus to the location. (it was a bit out of town)

There we found a river that was frozen with hundreds- maybe thousands of Koreans standing/sliding/gliding/falling on the ice! There were metal ice sleds that you could rent and scoot yourself around on the ice. I couldn't believe it but they gave everyone (including toddlers) wooden sticks with nails coming out of the end to stab the ice to propel you forward! I was expecting to see a bloody massacre and whole in feet everywhere, but I didn't see any blood!!!???

We did see a couple of remote control cars pulling kids in sleds on the ice...lazy parents!

There was also ice fishing at this ice festival. Many people were squatting down around these tiny holes in the ice trying to catch their prize. I was so interested in what they were actually catching, but come to find out- they were catching fish the size of minnows! So they were just squatting there for hours to catch minnows, to catch more fish maybe?? I don't know...

Okay, we had to try out the ice sled... It was a must! With both of us working together we could go pretty fast. Ben got to the point where he could spin up around pretty fast. With more time I think we could have gotten pretty efficient with our travel! :)