Snowed-in in Seoul

I woke up early on Monday morning because a car was being sent to pick me up from the Renaissance at 9am and take me to my school to meet the staff and then to move into my apartment! When I opened the window shades, I noticed it was snowing quite heavily. Nonetheless, I got ready, finished packing up my things and checked out. I waited in the lobby and about an hour later the driver arrived; the bellman packed my luggage into the car and away we went...or so I thought. The driver had called the school to let them know he had picked me up and was told the roads to Bucheon were impassable, so I should return to the hotel another night. Siiiiggghhhh...ok, I can stay in this nice hotel one more night.

It continued to snow all day, and I spent most of it watching cars trying to drive. It was quite the scene!! You see, it does not snow very much in Seoul, so to say the city is unprepared would be an understatement. In fact, headlines the next morning read,"Seoul battles heaviest snow in more than 70 years" or "Snowstorm in Seoul heaviest since 1937"; and, 1937, it just so happens, is the year they started recording snowfall, so wouldn't you know it, there are no snowplows(now I have heard, that they do exist, but I never saw one the entire day and the front-wheel drive cars were not equipped for the heaviest snowfall on record. From what I can tell, in terms of preparedness, this would be the equivalent of this kind of snow(about 10 inches in total) falling in Atlanta or Charlotte. Can y'all imagine? But, these Koreans, they do not take snow days...oh no...they simply leave their cars where ever them deem fit on the road and walk or take the subway to work. Then at the end of the day, they return to their cars. If the car is drivable now...great, if not...they leave it there until tomorrow or the next day. There are no tow trucks that come by and take your car, no policemen going around writing tickets...just a bunch of cars and trucks left where ever the driver desired. It is so strange to see. I attempted to capture the chaos, but the pictures just really don't do it justice. And the sidewalks...they are a whole other mess. There are no snowblowers, not even heavy duty shovels; the snow removal tools here consist of: handmade "shovels"(for lack of a better term),which is a flat piece of wood(plywood-like) nailed to a straight handle of the same wood; brooms, yes, your read that correctly...brooms; or the handy-dandy plastic shovel, which looks to be about the quality of the $5 Wal-mart ones.

lobby shot...boredom

fishtailing all over the place

cars just parked in the middle of the road

right after I took this, he parked with the rest of them

handy-dandy wood shovel

looks like the broom did it's job...this is the next day