Dear Seoul, you just brought "cold" to a whole new level. This is not okay.

My toes are freezing, my nose is running, my eyes are tearing, and I can't help hoping all my fingers are still attached by the end of the day.

I repeat, "This is not okay."

Yes, Mom. I have adequate attire for this season. The weather is just, seriously, this cold.

Today, we met up with future Taylor students from Seoul. They will be studying English as a Second Language (ESL) at Taylor in the Spring. The students took us to a bartering market, a fantastic restaurant (where I dominated in chopstick skills) and, then, to an amusement park. '

The amusement park's ticket window was located near the kids' part of the park, which gave us all a scare, especially the guys. We saw many cartoons and glittered decorations, surrounded by a number of princess pink and baby blue shades. Fearful of having to spend four hours in a kiddie park, the guys excitement immediately turned to worry.

"I don't know about this," one guy said, "there is pink - everywhere . . . lots of pink."

The Korean students laughed and assured us that there would be fun rides. Our group discussed it one more time and could not think of anything else to do in the four hour time period. Thus, we decided to go. We later learned that the park had a number of indoor and outdoor rides for people our age.

Our first choice was the Giant Drop, which, at the time, we did not register that it was an outdoor ride. Scurrying along, we followed our student "tour guides." We followed them all the way to a door that led to the outside park, where most of the fun rides were. Bad idea. We stood in line for 30 min., shivering and thinking this is probably not the smartest idea we've ever had. The ride's title was Giant Drop. It raised people really high in the air and then quickly dropped them back down near to the ground. The adrenaline rush was appealing, but the high altitude and dropping-wind effect was not.  However, for some reason, we decided to go on the ride. We were in this together. Our Korean friends shared their scarves and hats with us, saying they were sorry they didn't know we would be this cold. Laughing, we said it was okay and knew this would be a great experience to talk about later.

As minutes passed, the workers by the Giant Drop said that the ride would not be running anymore, due to the wind. They gave us a special ticket in return for our long wait. We used this free ticket to go on an indoor fast ride. Great idea. It was definitely fast, gave us an adrenaline rush and made us more excited for the rides to follow. However, this fast roller coaster was entitled "The French Revolution." I have no idea why they named it that.

"The Viking Ship," another fun ride, involved a big boat swinging back and forth, while getting higher and faster each time. When the boat first moved, it did not go high at all, but my friend, who was sitting across from me on the other side of the boat hit a soprano-pitched  scream, causing all the girls around him to scream too. I immediately started laughing, knowing he was not scared at all. As the boat got higher, the girls continued to scream. My friend joined in, over-exaggerating his "fear" of height and waving his hand in the air. I think it was the facial expressions of everyone around him that made me laugh. I enjoyed the ride and was still laughing when it was over. This was probably one of the funniest rides I went on.

Below is a picture of the ice rink in Lotte World, the amusement park we enjoyed.