Korean Ice Fishing

19 DEC 09

This weekend would prove to be one of the more interesting weekends that I have had in quite a long time... Tonight was the SOSABUL Moto Para Club meeting to determine who the new Captain would be. After arriving at Mr. Park's house we headed downtown Anseong to the beef house. Koreans have a very interesting way of eating dinner. If you have ever been to a traditional Korean restaurant then you will know what i am talking about. Dishes of every size and color are spread out along a table, and in the middle there is usually a round hole that fiery hot charcoal is set into in which a grill is placed over top and slabs of juicy beef are thrown on. Throw in lots and lots of SOJU and you have yourself a party. We sat around discussing our future escapades that will occur when we go to Thailand on Jan 8th. I cant wait for that, Mr. Park kept on and on about how that was all he could think about lately. After eating we went to the parking lot to find it a flurry of a snowstorm. Mandagee, whom i will describe in a minute, thought it would be funny to start a snow ball fight, so there we were, late at night in front of a restaurant, a bunch of grown men throwing snow balls at each other, Then Mandagee, who is always challenging me with various Korean style games thought it necessary to challenge me at a little snow wrestling, in which he was sorely beaten. It was cold and time to head back to Mr. Park's house... After arriving Mr. Park was a little inebriated so he just past out, but the night was still young and we went to the tool room to party a little bit more. Koreans are funny about eating, I don’t understand how they can eat so much and be so skinny... We just finished sitting at a restaurant for the past two hours eating and drinking and guess who shows up with yet more food and more drink (soju), Mr. Lee. Now Mr. Lee is quite a character, he always has a smile on his face and thinks he is a Korean gangster. But when you talk to him you know he just has a kind heart and is always willing to help out in anyway possible. Back to Mandagee, this was the original man that I saw flying over a year ago. His first words to me were, "My name is Mandagee, you are my f. r. i. e. n. d." LOL This guy is one of the funniest persons I have ever met in my life. Every once in a while i will get a random video call from him in which every time he says, "Hello, my name is Mandagee, nice to meet you" After a long night it was time to hit the sack, wait i mean the floor. Mr. Park is a flying fanatic, if you ever went to his house you would know it. He literally lives in a barn where he has constructed two very nice rooms, with the remaining part of his barn dedicated to building and working on our sport of powered paragliding. Its really quite amazing. We all piled into his guest room and went to sleep on a very nicely heated floor. In the morning, the very early morning Mandagee and Mr. Yun thought it would be a good idea to wake up before the sun had a chance to peak over the horizon and go flying. They tried to get all of us to go but realized that they were the only two up for the fun and left. About 20 minutes past and they were back inside and back asleep, the temp outside was a frigid -05!! After a good rest we got up and had some breakfast, I was told that today was going to be a special day because we were going Ice fishing. I had never been ice fishing and thought that this would be a great experience and was ready! We all loaded up in a few trucks and drove off to a nearby pond that sat next to a rice patty. In the back of one of the trucks sat the Korean's tools of choice for such a task, a few buckets, a chainsaw, and a water pump. I wasn’t sure what they intended on doing at first but it soon became very apparent. The plan was simple; cut a hole in the ice to get to the water, pump the water out, search for fish, and that is what we did. If you can just picture a nice clean white pond, so beautiful and serene, and then picture it after a few Koreans have maimed and destroyed it, it was really a sight to see, everyone was full of laughs and muddy, as it became quite messy digging through the mud searching for these mud fish and slipping on the ice. After a few hours of this we had filled up a couple buckets with mudfish, some other kind of fish, and frogs; while destroying two ponds and flooding a couple of rice patties! We gathered our things and our prized ice fishing trophies and ventured back to the house. It was time to see how they were going to clean these fish... I was astonished to see the only cleaning that was going to occur was washing the mud off. Then it was simply heat up some corn oil and throw it in, yes even the frogs. That was where I drew the line, not only did I not eat any of my share of the hunt, my dog Walle wouldn’t even go near the piece that I gave him after smelling it!