Hiking Seoraksan: "What's taking these muggles so long?!"

In Korea, the word “san” refers to a mountain. It took me a little while (time frames aren’t necessary here people) to realize this. After it was brought to my attention, I realized I had been saying Seoraksan mountain…which means I had actually been saying Seorak mountain mountain. Silly me. The same goes for the word “do” meaning island (or province) and “gang” meaning river. So some advice, you don’t have to say Jejudo Island (Jeju island island), or Hangang river (Han river river). Or you could, and feel silly, like me. Do what you want.

Tangent, back on track. There are several mountains/mountain ranges in Korea, but the three tallest (that we can get to, because the tallest is quite inconvenient, being mostly in..uh..North Korea.) are called, in order, Hallsan (on Jejudo), Jirisan (south part of Korea) and Seoraksan (North East side). I hiked Hallsan last October without knowing these details when I visited Jejudo with Sarah and David.

The hiking group I’ve written about before decided to do a Seoraksan overnight bus trip the last weekend in February. Holly and I willingly joined in, once again, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. But that seems to be the norm in this country so…no biggie. The plan, was to meet at the bus station at 11:30pm Friday night, drive through the night, and hike to the top for a, hopefully, spectacular sunrise. Normally, from what I gathered along the way, most hikers start pretty early, hike to the top, sleep there, and then hike down the next day, making it a two day hike. Not us! NO! We decided to do it all in one day! Nuts!

Let me first start with my three biggest mistakes…I shouldn’t start with my mistakes, but they are necessary for the rest of the story. 1. 3 ½ hours of sleep (on a bus, even better), is NOT ENOUGH for a 14 hour hike. 2. Tennis shoes, no matter what you tell yourself, are not proper footwear for an icy, 14 hour winter hike. 3. Headlamps/a flashlight would be a very, very smart idea when starting at 3am for a 14 HOUR HIKE. In my defense on this one, there is usually a language barrier involving explanations on these hikes. Though it’s never proven to be a huge problem in the past, this particular issue could have been more clearly explained. I also could have USED MY BRAIN and thought about the implications of being at the top for the sunrise, which meant we would have been hiking in completely darkness. *head smack*

Ahem. Moving on. I darted out of work that Friday night, ran to Holly’s, grabbed our bags, and got on the subway to meet the crew in Yongsan where our chartered bus, and new friends, were waiting.

The first thing I saw when I walked down the bus aisle was a KU hat…Rockchalk! Another Kansan was here and after further discussion, we discovered that we actually had a mutual acquaintance. Amazing! We then picked a seat, listened to some interesting instructions from our fearless/funny/energetic/ sometimes frustrating group leader, Warren, and headed to the mountain.

When we arrived, we piled off the bus in a somewhat scattered manner and somehow ended up at the trailhead all together. Warren had gone to the ranger’s office to check on the trail status. When he returned, he informed us that much of the snow had melted off the rocks near the bottom of the trails because of the relatively warm weather the last couple of days. “Oh that’s good” I thought (thinking of my awesome choice of footwear) but it would have been smart of me to let him finish talking before I thought that. Why? Because then he said the very heavy fog was freezing on those uncovered rocks, making for some fairly treacherous footing situations. Optimism! That’s the key! Let’s go crew! And away we went!

It didn’t take us long to realize that there was a potential of losing each other on the ascent. A few other groups of Korean hikers were determined to make the top by sunrise as well, and they were intermingling with our group and getting us all SORTS of confused in the dark. So on our first break someone jokingly said, “We should make a bird call like “coo coo!” so that we know where everyone is in the dark.” Many people laughed at the silliness of this statement…but it soon proved to be a necessary part of our hike. If one group got too far ahead someone would just coo coo! And they would stop and wait for the group. Don’t judge. It worked OK?!

Soon we just accepted the fact that unless we tied ourselves together with ropes, we were going to get separated somewhat. At one point, I was hiking with three complete strangers, but they all had headlamps and were very helpful! In especially hazardous situations they pointed it down at my feet to assist me. Thanks guys.

The first three hours or so of the hike were pretty straight up. It was quite difficult. About an hour into the hike we had to put our “clamp-ons” or, spikes for our shoes, on because we were getting into the heavier snow. These spikes were helpful in the snow but when we would hike on the rocks again, they kind of got in the way. If you had any time to look up instead of at your feet, you would see the sparks when the spikes connected with these rocks.

In the first several hours of darkness we walked over several rivers, and I only know this because I could hear them, scaled some rocks with ropes, lost the trail a few times and thought maybe a canister of oxygen would have been a good idea. Good thing these mountains weren’t that high above sea level. Sheesh.

When it started to get lighter outside, we noticed that the fog was also getting thinner. Could we be near the top!? “In 20 min.” said Warren. This meant another 45 at least. We spotted the top around 6:40, right around the time we came all the way out of the clouds. It was magnificent. It was like a blanket underneath. We stopped to take pictures and realized it would be even better at the top, so even though I felt like I couldn’t lift my legs ANYMORE, I pushed on, and made it. The view was even better. The clouds looked like you could just jump into them and land in fluffy cotton. They slowly flowed over and into the valleys around the area. It was very peaceful. But also very cold, so after spending about 45 minutes there, we headed another 20 minutes to a shelter on the ridge to rest, eat and get more water.

The way down was demanding on the knees. This was made better (and more fun) at times by the snow. You could just sit down, and slide several feet on your bum. You had to be careful of course, for one of these things could happen if you got careless: 1. hit a tree 2. Hit another hiker 3. Fly off the mountain (haha, but seriously) 4. Hit a big bump and break your…rear end 5. Wind up in a river 6. Miss your trail.

We were less careful in getting separated around hour 12, with 2 left to go. We wanted to be done, so some groups split off to try and shave off some time. I ended up with three other guys. One, named Yoon, had just finished working in Australia for a year, so he spoke English very well. After unsuccessfully trying to pass a group of slower Koreans, we became a little frustrated that they wouldn’t stop to let us go by on the very narrow path. Yoon surprised me by exclaiming, “What’s taking these Muggles so long!?” which made me laugh very hard. A Harry Potter reference. Awesome.

So after 14 hours, we made it to the bottom, and stumbled onto the bus. Very sore, but very worth it. A three hour bus ride and a two hour subway ride later, Holly and I walked into the apartment, and passed out. It was a great weekend. The pictures are below!

More stories soon! Sorry that one was so long. Eeks.

Love.

Clouds on the mountain.

Sunrise! Beautiful!

clamp-ons for the snow.


The fog! And a rope we used to climb up steep parts.

Not too long before Sunrise...


A waterfall!

Some of the brave at the very top!

Stories, just stories.

Hello again my lovely readers! Hey guess what…I hit my 6 month mark on the 16^th of March! Woo! It’s downhill from here kids…

I think I’ll keep up my pattern of extreme motivation in writing my blogs for two days and then slack off for the rest of the month, what do you think? (rhetorical, haha) So I’ll be posting two blogs fairly close to each other. The first will be just little tidbits that I’ve found interesting/funny/appalling/ and just downright..well…Korean. While the second consists of the things I’ve been doing the past…month…yikes.

- Weddings: I am fortunate enough to gather a wealth of information from many of my students because I have to find SOMETHING to talk about for several hours a day with adults. If anything else, I’m becoming more talented at stretching a short conversation into a longer one. I get really tired of talking. Haha. Anyway, one such conversation was about weddings in Korea. Weddings are a big deal in every country, but in Korea, it may be the equivalence to a popularity contest. Weddings are almost more important to the parents than to the actual bride and groom. The parents invite ALL of their friends and acquaintances. The guest lists can be outrageous in number, the more people, the more impressive. What’s interesting is, if a set of parents don’t have very many guests, they actually HIRE people to come to the wedding. Say WHAT?! This isn’t really common, but amazed me nonetheless. Guests bring money as gifts and all of the money goes to the parents. Good luck kids for having any money to start yours lives with, it’s going to your mom and dad. Haha.

- Dog story told to me in class: “I wanted a dog when I was a kid. One day, I found one on the street and I took it home to ask my parents if I could keep it.” ~Mickey

“Oh, did they let you?” ~ Me

“My dad ate it.”~ Mickey

“Uhhh….I…umm….Let’s move on to the next question.”~Me

- Korean time: referred to several times since I arrived in Korea. I didn’t understand what it was at first…but basically…it’s a way of saying that Korean’s are almost always late. They joke about it…which is good. In a “bad habit” conversation once, several of my students said their bad habit was being late, and that they have tried to break that habit…but then they laugh…I can only assume it’s an impossible habit to break. I don’t judge, I was on Korean time before I even came to Korea.

-Olympics: I know they were several weeks ago, I’m SORRY, OKAY?! Kim Yuna, before the Olympics people in other countries’ response was “who?” when someone said (attempted to pronounce) her name, but as you now know; she’s the 2010 Gold Medalist in Women’s figure skating. Koreans LOVE LOVE LOVE her. No joke. Like…immortality level, love. Her picture was everywhere before the Olympics even started and she has so many sponsorships, I would be willing to bet that her salary has a near equivalence to Bill Gates’ (I don’t really know). Honestly, I felt pretty sorry for the girl. Koreans tend to develop an intense reverence for specific individuals who have the potential for greatness and success. There isn’t anything wrong with that, because Americans do it too, but when they put all of their hope in a 17 year old girl, she has to feel some sort of pressure. The last time they put their hope in someone was in 1998 when Female golfer Se Ri Pak won the U.S. Women’s Open, and golf became one of the most popular sports in Korea. Now, ice skating has become extremely popular with the rise of Kim Yuna and their extremely successful speed skating team. But, if Kim Yuna came home without the gold, she had the potential of losing millions of dollars in Sponsorships. Wow. Saying that, I admired the calm that she portrayed throughout her whole, and spectacular I might add, Olympic performance. It could be safe to say that she was pretty confident she would win.

As I highly enjoy watching the Olympics every two years, I was a little disappointed that it was difficult finding an English station to watch them. But I made due with listening to the Korean commentators. On the day of the Figure Skating semi-finals Holly and I were at the gym. We both decided that we wanted to watch the top five perform on the big screen upstairs in the main area, so when the time came, we dropped our weights and ran upstairs. What we found was amazing, there were about 30 Koreans gathered around the TVs., anxiously awaiting Kim Yuna’s turn. We watched in amusement while they cheered, gasped and clapped for all the other contestants, except her rival from Japan, she received…silence. Lol. Sad. Then Kim came on, and they were mesmerized. It was an amazing thing to experience, with the yells of excitement and everyone sucking in their breath while they waited for her to complete her flawless jumps. We couldn’t wait to watch it again in the final performance. So at the end of the week, we raced upstairs again, the only two foreigners in a sea of Koreans, but we cheered her on with them when she won, almost 17 points ahead of the silver medalist and set a world record. Amazing.

Also amazing is the rule that Korea has about winning gold medals in the Olympics. This rule only applies to the males of course, because they ALL have mandatory military service for two years. The rule? If you win a gold medal, you don’t have to go to military. So all the gold medals won this year, were an accomplishment for not only these men’s country, but also meant so much more. It meant that their mandatory (and usually dreaded) military service was negated. So, more than just a gold medal? I’ll say.

- Smiling on the subway…and other stories: Subway rides on the Seoul subway system can sometimes be unpleasant. Usually it’s quiet, and always a bit awkward. People are serious and seemingly always in a bad mood. They are usually doing one of the following things: watching something on a portable player, listening to music, reading, sleeping, or staring at someone (like, say, the foreigners). Sometimes you’ll be fortunate enough to get on a train with someone friendly or happy. I always enjoy those people. My favorite is when you spot an individual who’s watching a particularly funny show, and they will just be laughing to themselves. It’s great to watch them just crack up randomly, while everyone else continues with their humdrum attitudes.

I witnessed one day, a boy fall asleep next to his mother. As sleeping in an upright position tends to team up with gravity, his mouth kept falling open. This, apparently, was of great concern to his mother, because she kept reaching over and pinching his mouth shut with her fingers. Very, very strange.

A man, was asleep, with a newspaper tucked behind his head, and over his face. Hmmm.

On a particularly long ride, Holly and I watched (started out sneaky but we gave up and just obviously watched his screen, he laughed) a planet Earth documentary with a Korean next to us who had a dvd player. Soon, three or four more people were involved in the watching, after they saw our expressions (appalled AND disgusted) when a bug ate another bug...or something equally gross, they were curious. I laughed.

I rode from Dangogye (end of the blue line) to Oido (other end of the blue line) last weekend, unintentionally. 50 stops. I never want to do that again. Ever.

Germs, germs on the subway! AHH! A man sneezed, without covering his mouth, and it ended up all over the window. Oh my yuck!

One Saturday morning we got on the subway with an older woman. Later that night, we got back on the subway to go home...with the same woman. What are the odds...THE ODDS!?! Same time, same train, same car, same stop. Bizarre!

-“Tetris Event”: Lately, every time I walk into the office here at work, everyone is glued to the computer. Why I ask? It’s a Tetris event! And what does this mean? Well, after they finish the particular level they are on (because there is no pause button), they explain that a cheese company called Bellcube, has the game of Tetris on their website and if you get a high enough score, you win something. Something worthwhile? I didn’t get the chance to ask, because the next level had started.

One day, Cindy had been playing for 20 minutes, and was particularly proud of how far she had gotten. Then Mr. Kim called her phone to ask something. She successfully answered her phone AND put the long purple block in its place to create a full line, but then her concentration broke, thus ruining her game. She became angry, yelled something in Korean at Mr. Kim, hung up the phone, shouted “I hate him!” and restarted her game, in a very angry manner I must say.

Another day, the middle school boys who come here after school walked in while she was playing this very addictive game. They were being noisy, which wasn’t abnormal for them, and seeing that Cindy was preoccupied, I went out to try and see if I could get them to be quieter, without knowing any Korean, fat chance. Then I saw that they weren’t being their normal loud selves, they were actually in a fist fight, yikes. I started to say “Stop it! Guys!” and then realized how little that would do, so I went back to the office and said, “Uh, Cindy? They are…like…punching each other.” The first thing she did was quickly glance at the screen that shows all the cameras to see what was going on. There are 4 cameras here: main lobby, back classrooms, T.V. room, and in front of the elevator. She saw that they were fighting, and then she saw that Mr. Kim was just getting off the elevator with the other kids. Can you imagine what happened next? She said, “Mr. Kim will take care of it” and continued her game. It was funny. Usually she runs out of the room waving a metal curtain rod to threaten them within an inch of their lives. But right now, Tetris had her undivided attention. Oh Korea.

Love!

How to make a pizza....

OK! This blog contains an array of thoughts…have fun (good luck) following along, yeah?

- So…if you hang around foreign teachers long enough here in Korea, you’ll hear them begin to discuss the very interesting/messed up things they teach the children/adults of Korea. The authors of these books are usually English speakers who spent some sort of time in Korea and think they know what they are doing. But actually don’t. haha! One friend had an example that went something like this:

Lol, oh my.

Recently, two examples in my book caught me completely off guard and I fumbled around trying to pick my scattered thoughts up off the floor and explain what they meant. Here they are:

1. A. How long have your children known about the birds and the bees?

B. they’ve known about the birds and the bees since they were 9. (Say WHAT?!)

2. A. How long have Dan and Jan been nervous?

B. They’ve been nervous since they got married a few hours ago. (I..just…don’t even know why someone would put this in here. Is it some sort of JOKE?!)

- There are several students that attend our school who all work for a bread company called Samlip. One started coming, told his friends, and now there are about 10. I have one of the bosses in my free talking class, and the other day, he was lecturing his co-workers about how “Kaley has good pronunciation, so take this opportunity to learn English because you cannot understand English speakers this well usually.” Uhh…..thanks?

- Mr. Kim and his wife went to the west coast recently. Before they left, he promised to bring me back some oysters. I had no idea how I was going to eat them but I don’t pass up free food, alright?! So, thinking I would be receiving three or four oysters, I was completely unprepared for the large SACK that he handed my way the next Monday. Wha…how….can….do….eh? He said, “steam them, but wash them first.” Hmmm…..I then carried them home like the Santa Claus of the sea and dumped them into my sink. I stared in amazement at the dirt and clumped together oysters that I needed to separate and clean. Do you know how oysters are grown? I’m sure you do…but just in case, and to drive the details of the wreckage in my sink home, I’ll tell you. The seed (or spat, if we are getting technical) is placed just above the bottom of the brackish water, which is why the west coast is good for oyster farming, and not, swimming…ew. After the oysters have fully matured (taking several years) they pull up the oysters and detach them from racks, bags or cages, whichever that particular farmer used. What does this mean? Well…it means that our oysters, were still connected to the strips of plastic that they grew on. Do you know how difficult it is to detach them from what they grew on? Dang near impossible to remove…so I stopped trying to pry them off after the first oyster’s razor sharp shell tried to slice my hand off. (a tad over exaggerated, I must admit) As I was sifting through the mess, attempting to find a few that might have fallen off the plastic, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, some movement. I had to ask myself…now…why would there be something moving in here? I am not an individual that screams when becoming frightened, but I have no problem admitting that when I glanced over and saw what I thought was a large, malevolent, nasty, abhorrent, appalling, dreadful, ghastly, hideous, repulsive, vile, long legged, spider (I hate spiders, can you tell?) I yelled and jumped several feet away from the sink, sending dirty oyster water all over my counter and floor (…longest sentence ever). After a closer inspection, I realized it was only a small crab that had the misfortune of choosing the wrong crowd to hang out with in the sea. After spotting seven or eight more crabs, and not being able to get over the fact that they still looked like spiders, I decided that my four oysters were enough, and placed everything else back in the bag. After steaming the oysters, the next task was trying to get them open. I think they are supposed to pop open if you steam them correctly…but that’s just a guess. One was open and I can now say I’ve eaten a Korean Oyster (not bad), but just one, because the others proved impossible to get into as well. Yikes.

- The word nauseous needed to be explained in class. I said, “It’s when you feel sick, like you could throw up.” A student then said, “Ohh! Like you could make a pizza!” and pantomimed the throw-up action, complete with the throw-up landing on the floor in the shape of a pizza. A very good comparison, which I now use on occasion, as in “Oh that’s gross, I think I’m going to go make a pizza.”

- My sister left me a 10 minute skype voicemail. It was fantastic! About halfway through, I forgot I wasn’t actually talking to her, and began to respond to it…before remembering I was talking to a machine. Thanks Hope East. :)

- Yongsan. It’s a suburb of Seoul, with a very nice theater. Outside the theater, is a very nice Crepe stand. And by very nice, I mean fantastically delicious, and that’s an extreme understatement. I ordered a chocolate banana crepe and watched in amazement as it was made. I must come clean and say that a Coldstone Creamery was spotted before the crepe stand…therefore, a snack of ice cream came before the crepe. And though the phrase “fat cow” was thrown around (in a joking manner?) I did not care in the least, because I was eating a piece of sunshine dust. (NOT Marjory Stewart Baxter…)

- Riding on the subway is always an interesting affair. As we live on the end of the line, we can usually nab a seat before the next few stations when they fill up…but we’ve never been on a totally empty train before. Once, after we first met, Holly said to me, “Kaley, someday, the train will be empty, and you’re going to hang from the bar by your knees.” I was in agreement with this awesome plan, of course! That day finally came when we were headed for our hike. We had an amazing time acting like we were 12 years old. Here are some pictures:

- As I don’t drive a vehicle here, I don’t pay much attention to the rules of parking a car and where they can be parked, but even I can’t ignore the fact that many cars double park. How do the other cars get out? Do people get angry? What is GOING ON?! I soon found out two things: 1. people place their phone numbers in the window so if they are in the way, they just call the stranger up and ask them to move, or my personal favorite: 2. They leave their car in neutral…so it can BE PUSHED OUT OF THE WAY. How crazy is THAT?!

- Think of Korea. Think of the word Earthquake. Do they go together? No, but you better believe we had one. I was sitting in class, tutoring Mr. Kim’s wife, when the building started to…well, I guess, rumble, is how I will describe it. It lasted for about 8 seconds and Cindy and I just looked at each other in confusion. I then worded out loud the obvious question that I knew we were both thinking…”what was THAT?!” but her response was NOT what I expected…. “Maybe Mr. Kim jumped?” A crack at Mr. Kim’s weight…oh my. Haha. Mr. Kim then came in and told us that the Korean news website was saying it was a 3.0 earthquake that was felt all the way into Seoul…but actually originated from pretty much where we were standing. Siheung was the epicenter…weird.

- This next paragraph is about my bike wreck…but first, I’d like to preface this story with a disclaimer: It may seem like I have many accidents here in Korea….but you don’t need to worry…I’m always this clumsy, I’ve just never blogged about them before. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to bring my clumsiness to everyone’s attention, it’s just who I am, but most of you know this I think. Moving on…Last Thursday it snowed, but it was a very wet, heavy snow that pretty much turned to slush right away. When it snows, I don’t ride my bike, because, that’s just asking for trouble. On Friday, the snow had all but melted away, and as I was leaving work, I decided that I might need my bike for the weekend so I grabbed it. As I headed for Holly’s to eat breakfast, I started to go down a ramp onto the parking lot, but a car was blocking the ramp, so I just went off the curb instead. What I didn’t see…was that tricky black ice, sneakily awaiting my back tire to connect with the ground at an angle mathematically perfect to complete the equation of “slippage to the tenth power”. Before I knew it, I was flat on my face, and I felt like I was Calvin when his bike attacks him in the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon. I then arrived at the universal decision that sometimes plagues us as human beings, you know, the laugh or cry one? I’d rather laugh…and laugh I did…for about 10 minutes straight. As I picked up my bike and walked it the rest of the way to the apartment, I heard someone from 9 stories up exclaim, “Are you OK?!” Turns out, Holly happened to be on her porch at the exact moment I rounded the corner, and had seen the whole thing. I shouted, between laughing fits, “did you SEE THAT?!” Well of course she had. Which made it even more hilarious. The damage? A lovely bruise where the handle had hit my leg, bruised hands and knee, a bent bike pedal that now clicks on the back bar and a memory that make me laugh every time I think about it. Thanks Korea.

- I went skiing again last weekend…two times in one year…I could get used to that. It was the same resort as last time, but a different group of people. It was so fun! I tried more runs this time, and found out that a black diamond here isn’t like a black diamond in Colorado, but challenging for me nonetheless. The slopes were so steep, that when I fell, I usually didn’t stop sliding (on my back, head first) for at least 50 ft. Luckily, my skis stayed on so I didn’t have to try and chase after them. Though, for the first time ever, I was that one person who dropped their ski pole off a lift…SHOOT! It was close enough to the beginning that it could be retrieved but I still felt like an idiot. Holly and I met a great couple named Pete and Kelly, who we will be hanging out with more here in Korea. Pete had never skied before and took to it swimmingly. Holly did great too, especially since she hasn’t been in 6 years. I thought about throwing her down a black diamond with me…but…she would hear none of it. The weather was beautiful. It snowed the first day, covering all the trees with wonder, and was a perfect temperature the 2^nd day. Here are some pictures from this trip:

Love!

Stairs for giants...

A few weekends ago we went hiking. Having said that, let me back up and fully explain the details that preceded the hike. A couple months after I arrived in Korea, I was notified of a facebook group that goes on hikes throughout the year. I joined the group and then, because winter was coming and no one was setting up any hikes, I forgot that I had joined. When I received a notification from the group two weeks ago I thought “what is this? Oh yeah, that hiking group.” Intrigued, I checked out the details. This is exactly (no really, exactly) what was written about it:

theme:
- urban hike and trekking
- 12km(around 8 miles), 6~7hours
- novice, everybody can join and enjoy trekking. if you want to walk, then you can make it.
- walk along the fortress from Dongdaemoon(east gate) to Namdaemoon(South gate)
- some part of trails will be road, pedestrian crossing
- 3mountains Naksan, Bukaksan, Inwangsan - mountain(most of part are well arranged and some part with stairs or fences)
- you don't need any hiking gears but hiking boots and pants would be good.

It looked fun and Holly and I decided it was a good way to spend the weekend; (semi-colon used correctly? I’m thinking, no.) free leisure activitiesssss….I’m in. So early Saturday morning found us packing a bag and heading to the station for our two hour subway ride to the meeting point. When we got there, our guide, Warren, who we had never met before, greeted us with an excited hello and a warm hug. There were only about 6 people there when we arrived but soon our ranks grew to about 30, with an array of different nationalities. Our friend Laura met us there as well. Warren, full of energy, said “Ok, let’s all get in a group and STRETCH!” We all looked at each other and said…”uh, stretch?! We aren’t stretching.” …We should have stretched. Piece of advice, when Warren says stretch…he’s not messing around, do it. *serious nod* Then we were on our way like the Travelocity gnome! “I’m on my wayyyy.” Get it? No? Ok. We started in the middle of many businesses so we had to wend our way through the town to find the path along the fortress wall. The wall was very interesting because you could tell which part was old, and which was newly rebuilt. The lower part was some 500 years old while the top was obviously very recently repaired. Here’s a picture for you visual learners:

Warren, Holly, Laura, and I pretty much lead the pack the whole way. Apparently we are fast walkers. Part of the trail was icy to begin with. What part? Why, the downhill part of course. We had to walk off the path on the few spots where dirt showed through. I did take this opportunity to try my hand at some downhill ice-skating though. It was pretty out of control, and fun. Here is a picture of this particular icy part, the railing was handy to grab when sliding too fast..haha!

We had some characters on the hike, a few names we remembered, but others we had to make up based on their physical attributes or clothes: a guy from New Zealand who Holly lovingly dubbed “Pinstripes,” because of his choice of pants, he was ornery and oddly dating a girl named Kaley, and “Red beard” who wasn’t a pirate, but did in fact have a red beard. The hike turned out to be pretty intense. Some parts were amazingly steep and made us question the “novice” label of the hike. Much of it was covered in stairs…but these weren’t NORMAL stairs…they were very inconsistent in their spacing and at one point the exclamation “what are these, stairs for GIANTS!?!” may or may not have been shouted between gasping breaths. The view from all three mountains was spectacular and made the sore limbs totally worth it. We felt like we had hiked along side Korea’s equivalence of the Great Wall.

Afterwards Holly, Laura (I’m omitting that Oxford comma…only because it’s a pet peeve of someone I know…take THAT Kanga!) and I went to Kraze Burger and had pretty much the MOST DELICIOUS burger known to man kind. We had the opportunity to join some of the other hikers for some Korean pancakes, but I decided to opt out; I wasn’t feeling like eating squid at the time, or ever really. We will be doing another hike with the group in a few weeks. This one is located near the east coast in a National Park. It’s supposed to be a beautiful hike during winter. We were supposed to hike it this weekend but, in the words of a fellow hiker, it experienced a “snow obliteration,” and the government actually shut it down until they can get some trails cleared. This time we will have learned our lesson and we’ll make sure and stretch. J love you guys. Another blog soon. Very soon.

Holly, Warren and I on the top of one mountain. Oh Warren. lol. And Laura looking out over the scenery.

Laura and I scaling some rocks. Who needs a ROPE?! Come on!

A tree that they built the stairs around. Amazing.

Abscond!!!!

Hello all! I'm back...Are you proud of me?! After this post, I should be up to date. I know I've probably forgotten a few things...but I think you'll have plenty to read. This one is pretty long. Enjoy!:

A couple of the classes that I teach are private tutoring for the more affluent (rich, they’re just rich) members of our school. One such student is a kind, older gentleman, who knew, well, zero English when he started my class. He had already been taking grammar classes with Cindy before I came so I was a little confused why he didn't know anything, ah well. He's very diligent and wakes up early every day to drive an hour from Seoul for class. The only time he has missed is because he was sitting in an 8 hour traffic jam because Koreans don't know what snow is (haha), but I'll get to that later. So one day, Mr. Lee was reading a paragraph in the book, and I corrected something that he said. He was confused so I proceeded to explain in more detail. When he finally understood what I was talking about he said "ohhhhh!" in understanding and leaned back at the same time. I will always have his next look in my memory, the universal look of "oh my gosh I'm falling all the way down and there's nothing I can do about it!!" but depending on who you are, in more profane and shorter words. He attempted to grab the table but the floor was too slick so, down he went, hitting the wall with his head on the way. Now, Koreans are all about the pride, so I was a little worried about how to react. I ended up helping him up and asking if he was ok. He kept rubbing his head and nodding in assurance that he was. Mr. Kim ran in and said "what happened?!?!" Mr. Lee said something to him in Korean and he left. We didn't speak much more about it until 5 minutes later when I was explaining something else to him, and he again realized what I was saying but instead of responding with "ohhhh!" he nodded and rubbed his head and started laughing. Yes, he had just made a joke. Bravo Mr. Lee. Then we laughed for about 2 minutes straight. Tension relieved. Alriiight.
About a week later, wouldn't you have it, another student did the exact same thing. I had moved the table away from the wall on the side Mr. Lee fell for fear of someone hitting their head again. This student ended up falling on the opposite side and did indeed, land a blow to the wall. Blast. I can't protect everyone! Now, when they lean back in their chair (as oddly, several of them tend to do), I have to warn them about falling. I have to resist the urge to say "4 on the floor 4 on the floor!" as was learned in elementary school. They'll learn, they'll all learn. :)

The snow: Well, it doesn’t happen much in this area. Obviously it snows more in the mountains but usually Korea gets a few small accumulations a year and that’s about it. But like at home, it’s a different story this year. Jan. 4^th it snowed about 8-12 inches in one day, depending on where you were. The reaction though, was the same everywhere. They didn’t know what to do. People were using what they had to the best of their abilities; shovels, brooms, and dust pans (uhhh?). The snow stayed on the roads for almost a week before they started bringing back hoes, yes, back hoes, in to clear them. The sidewalks were an icy mess, because people were packing the snow down when they walked in one path formed by some brave individual. At one point I spotted some city tucks making a valiant attempt to spread salt over the snow on the roads, at 10:00pm. So that way, the snow would melt a little, and then refreeze that same night for an interesting morning drive to work. J The snow, three weeks later, is finally mostly gone, do you know why? Because it rained. HAHAHA!

When it snowed, I received a call from Holly after work. She said “Hey, whenever it snows at home, we always go out and play in it. Do you want to do that?” You guys know me….she didn’t have to say anymore! I was ready to go! So, after some confusion (namely, me lying in the snow, not in clear view so she could see me, oops) we found each other and had a fantastic time sledding down a small hill and making snow angels! Thanks Holly. J

In the last couple months that I’ve been extremely lacking on my blog updates I visited a kind of theme park called Aiin’s World. As I don’t remember when this was exactly, we’ll just say the week of….November. haha. I went there with Jackie and Shirley. It has very detailed miniatures of many famous world monuments, buildings, structures, etc. It was quite fascinating. You’re supposed to be able to stand in a specific spot and make it look like you were actually at these places. This seems silly, because you can’t actually convince people that you went to all of them. So we took some unrealistic pictures, which I’ll attempt to include… right….here--

In December I was able to go Skiing! It was very, very cold, but also fun! About 40 foreigners/native English speakers went on the trip. We skied in the afternoon and evening. Korea is the opposite from America in that the majority of people are snowboarders. So, being a skier, I slalomed around many, many snowboarders who liked to just plop themselves down right in the middle of the slopes. No collisions on my part! Whew! We stayed the night at a youth hostel right by the slopes and it was quite pleasant. I enjoyed the 5 other roommates that I had and one of our newly made Korean friends even ordered us Dominoes Pizza!! Very Yum. Holly and I will go back for Lunar New Year in Feb. Excited!

Over Christmas break, Sarah, David, Holly and I visited Namsan Tower in Seoul. This tower is a very popular spot to visit for tourists as well as Koreans. Many couples visit with a padlock. They lock it on a fence together and then throw away the key to signify that they will be together forever. Hmmm…ok. You can ride the elevator to the top and look out over Seoul. Very beautiful at night. Before Namsan tower we ate at a Mexican restaurant (not even CLOSE to El Pueblito!) and went to Sherlock Holmes (which I thought was great). The interesting thing is we saw another couple, at all three places. Haha! They should have just joined us! On the way back to the bottom of Namsan is a very steep hill. At one point I said “Man! If I started running right now, I wouldn’t be able to stop!” and Holly replied….”Umm…I kind of feel like I can’t stop right now!” hahaha! After that, everything was extremely funny. We were tired, or happy to have someone to ride all the way home with, or both. But as soon as we were shoved onto the VERY crowded subway, and Holly said “I feel like a COW” …Koreans in the same car as us could have thought we were drunk, and we would have had no way to prove that we were completely sober. It made for an interesting and fun ride home!

The next weekend was New Year and I had a blasted cold. I didn’t feel like doing anything strenuous. Sarah and David had a longer break so they were in Japan, and Holly, God bless her, was kind enough to let me tag along with her. We went to some of her coworkers’ apartment and brought in the New Year with cake and sparklers. I barely made it. I blame it on the cold. Lol. Holly and I spent the rest of the weekend watching movies and just being generally lazy, which was so perfect. We did visit the gym (sauna really) a couple times as well as an interesting trip up Mount Okgu in the dark to investigate some mysterious lights. We scaled some rocks, got stuck in some thorns and I may or may not have had a quite hilarious fall (“before I laugh, I need to make sure you are ok…”). The weekend was absolutely great, making that next full week of class almost unbearable. I hate that.

I’ve decided that you know you miss home when you’ve kept an empty tube of American toothpaste near your bathroom sink for the last month. Luckily, Nicole, amazing Nicole, sent me two more tubes. Thank you so much! And thank you to EVERYONE who sends me care packages! You don’t know how much I appreciate them!

A couple weeks ago we went to see Avatar in 3-D and vibrating seats. It was amazing. This movie is now near the top of my very long list of favorite movies. Touché James Cameron.

Last weekend was my ice fishing weekend. It was a fantastic experience! We were able to try our hand at breaking a hole in the ice and trying to catch fish with fishing pole-ish things that thousands of other Koreans were using. None of our group (90 total) caught anything but we had very short attention spans. There were so many other things to check out and we had little time to look before our barehanded fishing slot at 3:00! We saw sculptures, ice bowling, ice soccer, sledding, four wheeling, go-karting, ice skating, and a sleigh competition. Then we headed to the barehanded fishing area and dressed in the shorts and t-shirts they gave us to wear. We had 5 minutes to catch three fish. The water was FREEZING and many people jumped out right away before they even attempted catching a fish. I only grabbed two before my hands got too cold to get that third one. Dang! I’ll also try to include a video….

The next day we went hiking and sledding. A tree stump hiding under the snow attacked my leg on the way down, but it’s almost healed already. J

Yesterday after class we got to the car and saw that someone had hit the mirror on Mr. Kim’s car. They were kind enough to place the mirror on the hood of his car but that’s about it. He was a little upset and kept saying “the abscondess!” and asking me if that was right. I told him no, the word was just abscond but he didn’t listen. I’m simply amazed that he even used this word. This is how Koreans learn English, they study vocabulary over and over. Learning words such as abscond and cordiality, words that many AMERICANS wouldn’t even know let alone use, unless of course your name is Caleb Eastman. Then you use them on a daily basis because you are a genius. J I will now attempt to use the word abscond in my daily vocabulary. Holly and I parted from out Tues. Thurs. breakfast club by shouting “ABSCOND!” because it’s funny.

I hope you all are having a great week. I am now up to date on my blog. Whew! Long one!