It was a long weekend here in Korea. Friday was a day off because they celebrate it as Buddha's birthday. It was a good weekend. I did so much, but most of it wasn't anything exciting. On Friday, some of the other English teachers and I went to the underground shopping mall in Gangnam. I found some great t-shirts under $10. It was a large mall, so we spent five or six hours there but it went by in the blink of an eye. Saturday went much the same. We went to the I-park mall and browsed a bit, and then we went to a movie.
Sunday was the most noteworthy day. I went on a bike riding tour of a couple of islands off the coast of Korea, near Incheon. It was very beautiful and worth it, although it was one of those days where we were lucky it ended well, or even began. We started early, at 8:00, to get to where we were supposed to meet the rest of the group. We thought we had the way by subway all figured out, but we were wrong. We took a way that was supposed to save us time, but because of a detour it took over an hour longer than it would have if we had taken the more familiar route. The line we were on forked, and our subway took the wrong fork, so we had to go back and figure out another way to get to our desired station. Luckily for us, the group waited.
We met the group over an hour late, and they were very nice about it. We rented our bikes, and then got back on the subway until we were near the airport. We then rode our bikes to the ferry, which due to a series of delays, we just missed and had to wait for the next one. Luckily the ferries were only 20-30 minutes apart, so we were able to continue fairly seamlessly. We finally got to the island, and started riding. It was not what I was expecting, but it was fun. I was expecting a leisurely ride near the coast, but that was not the way it would be. We biked up and down the large hills/small mountains. It was way more effort than I had planned.
During our ride we stopped at the coast of the island and went into a beautiful house/museum, where they had once filmed a movie. This house was amazing. It had a spectacular view, tons of windows and balconies. One the second floor it had a round room made of glass with a white piano in the center. Our leaders new how to play (one was a piano teacher), so we had some wonderful music while we toured. I didn't actually take pictures of the house, but it was amazing, and a lot of us wanted to move in an clean the place up. We couldn't understand why it was, seemingly, abandoned.
Here is the view from the house.
This is where our trip took a bit of a bad turn. We had just started off back down this hill and the girl behind me, one of the girls I work with, fell over her handle bars. Thankfully, she didn't hurt her head, and mainly just had scrapes, but she did hurt her wrist pretty bad. We walked our bikes to the nearby beach and had lunch. The girl was not able to ride her bike, so she couldn't continue on. The three of us were going to stick together and head back to the pier to wait for the ferry, but Koreans can be unbelievably kind. There was a couple heading back and the group's leaders asked them if they could take her back. They didn't have room because their car was packed. Did they say no and leave? Nope, they got out and reorganized their entire car so they had room for her. They never once complained or gave a look of impatience or inconvenience. She later told us they even bought her a coffee. It was so nice to see that people or a culture can still be so generous and kind.
We finished our tour of the islands and headed back on the long journey home. For the most part it was a pretty great day. I don't know if I would go biking here again, just because I don't think I can handle the hills, but I'm glad I did it at least once. I would also like to head back to these islands because they were beautiful and the view was gorgeous.
Have a great week. Here is a picture from the ferry on the way home from the biking trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment