Nature Walk

Hi,
Sorry it's been so long.  The one weekend nothing exciting really happened.  The last one was so exhausting that I didn't really have time to write.  Last weekend I went to an area near the DMZ.  I didn't actually go to the DMZ, but we "trekked" along a river towards it.  It was such a long and incredibly hot day, that we didn't even finish the walk.  It smelled so good there though.  It smelled like home.  Here are some pictures.

Yesterday, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say, I was tricked into climbing up another mountain, two really.  I'm not sure how this keeps happening.  I signed up for a leisurely walk through a forest.  They didn't mention that the forest was on a mountain, but it may have been a little stupidity on my part to not realise that the whole country is mountainous, where else would a forest be.  In my defence the pictures showed flat paths.

The first part of the day we walked half-way up a mountain barefoot.  For the first little bit, we were walking in red clay.  This was challenging in spots where the clay was hard and wet, and the path was on an incline.  Luckily, I did not fall (that day), or slide down the mountain backwards.....much.  Part way up there was a sign stating the lofty health claims.

Shortly after the sign, the clay pretty much gave way, but we continued to climb up a mountain barefoot, and then climbed halfway down barefoot.  Shoes and sock had never felt so glorious as they did after that walk.

After lunch, we went to a recreational forest.  After some delicious watermelon, we decided to walk around.  We started walking up an incline and continued up, even though the incline got steeper and steeper.  Until we ended up at the top of a mountain.  Then we had to rush down the "hiking" side of it because we were going to be late for the bus.  It was a beautiful area and it would have been nice to have more time to explore it.  It would be a great place to camp.  Here are some pictures of it.

Long Weekend

Hi!
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.

Lantern Festival

Hi,
This weekend was the Lantern Festival in Seoul.  It celebrates Buddha's birthday, which is on this coming Thursday.  If any of you were every thinking of coming to Korea, come for this festival.  It was one of the best festivals I've been to.  I generally don't care for parades, but theirs was impressive.  They also have tons of free activities.

Saturday night was the Lantern Parade.  The parade marched from a nearby university to a temple.  There were so many beautiful floats, lanterns, and dresses.  They had two incredible floats.  One was a huge elephant that could move its' head and ears, and made elephant sounds.  Trumpet?????  The second one was a dragon that could breathe real fire, and once you were thoroughly impressed with that it let out a resounding roar.  Seriously, it was impressive, but unfortunately my camera died well before they came by.  Here are some of the pictures I did get.

I kind of like the ones with the Buddhist monks in focus but it blurry around them.  It looks like life is moving super fast around them, but they are still.  I'm super deep.  It was actually really hard to get any really steady pictures, especially of the walkers.  I couldn't figure out their pace and they are all blurry.

Today I went back to the festival to make my own lantern.  I did and it was challenging.  I was told it is an activity in which to practice patience.  While I was making mine three or four film crews video taped me.  I'm not sure what they are using it for, but they got super close and stayed for a while.  I refused to look up, but maybe they liked that.  The 10 year old near me even said that I was in the hot spot.  There are now so many videos of me making my lantern.  I didn't take a picture when I had finished.  I figured I would take one later, but that didn't work out.  It was near the end of the lantern making part of the festival and there was to be a competition and then you could collect your lanterns.  Sadly, I did not make it back in time to pick mine up.  I'm very disappointed, and trying very hard not to blame it on the girl I work with.  Ultimately, it was my fault because I could have went back by myself to get it.

They had so many other activities there as well.  They had a bunch of places where you could make mini lanterns, clay buddhas, Korean paper, prayer beads, and many more things.  They also had a few different kinds of temple stay foods.  That is the kind of food you would be eating if you spent a day or two at temple, which I plan to do, but I didn't try the food.  I figure when I go there I will really experience it.  There were also buddhists from all over the world, each country had their own little tent.  

The festival was very enjoyable, and affordable.  They barely charged for anything.  I made my lantern and prayer beads for free, and I even got a wagon wheel for free (they love wagon wheels here).  It was a great weekend and I would highly recommend it.

Take care!

Hanboks

Hi!
This weekend was much more relaxing than last week.  I went to Seoul again on Saturday.  I went specifically to try on the traditional dress, a hanbok, at the Korean Tourist Organization (KTO).  Every other Saturday, you can go down there and try them on for free.  You can also do a little calligraphy and origami, all for free but you do have to sign up, so there may be a short wait for your turn.  It was kind of fun.  You put them on to take pictures in them.  While the girl who worked there was taking our pictures some random Korean girl was taking pictures of us too.  Perhaps to giggle with her friends about later, who knows why, but it made me laugh that she was doing that.

After that we checked out Namdaemun.  A large outdoor shopping market.  I picked up a great $10 t-shirt, and some socks.  This market takes a while to get through, and it was very crowded, and Koreans push.  I mean push.  If you are not moving and they want to, they will push you out of their way.  That goes for everywhere, getting on and off the subway/bus, washrooms, markets, and of course the street.  I don't care for it.  

It was a good afternoon though.  The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed a coffee on the patio and admired Seoul.  It is a beautiful city.  It's clean, and calm (other than the pushing, but that's all over Korea), and doesn't smell of sewage.  Ahhh, not smelling sewage..........I'm just kidding, you only get whiffs, frequents whiffs, of sewage where I am.  So basically it was a relaxing day, and  a relaxing weekend.  

Hope you all had a great one too.

Jindo sea parting

Hi!
I had a busy weekend this last week.  I went to Jindo island, off of the southern coast of Korea, to walk on the sea floor after it had parted, and then I went to a butterfly festival the next day.  It was a great weekend, but it began with a very early start so I was very tired.  I had to wake up at 4:30 on Saturday morning to take the train to Seoul.  There I joined a group, the majority of whom were expats, and began the five hour bus ride to Jindo island.  The ride went fairly fast, with most people sleeping most of the way.  I unfortunately cannot do this, and didn't sleep on the bus at all, but I did rest my eyes.  The scenery in South Korea is very similar throughout the entire west side of the country.  Tree-covered mountains everywhere, although, as we got further south there was more farmland which was surrounded by tree-covered mountains.  We stopped at a rest stop about half way through the trip.  The rest stop was pretty amazing.  Imagine about four of the largest bathrooms you have ever seen all beside each other.  That is what the restrooms were like, it was impressive, and there was still a long line, although the wait wasn't bad.  The rest of the rest stop was basically a strip mall of food and coffee vendors, so there were a lot of options.  It was the most impressive rest stop I've ever seen.  It sure beats a gas station with one or two stalls.

We finally got to the bridge that went to Jindo island and we got out of the bus and walked across the bridge.  It was beautiful and it had three statues around it of a Korean general who outsmarted the Japanese back in the day.  Apparently the Japanese had fire power of some sort and the Koreans did not.  This general designed a boat that was low to the water, made of steel, or something, and had large spikes all over the top.  So, when the Japanese fired on these boats they couldn't damage them and the fire power actually bounced off the boat and sometimes bounced back to the Japanese boats.  This allowed a surprising defeat of the Japanese by the Koreans who were severely outnumbered.  There is a bit of questionable history for you.  Please feel free to look that up to see how much of it is actually true.  My main point being this general is a Korean hero and these three statues weren't the only ones of him I saw on the weekend.

After we got across the bridge there were some rubber boots we could buy for $5.  I had brought my own so I didn't get a pair even though I really wanted a pair because they were kind of awesome.  They were thigh waders, like hip waders, but they only went up to the mid-thigh area at most.  Since I had brought my own boots I thought it would be wasteful.  However, I soon learned a lesson.  If you ever plan to do this, get the thigh waders.  I got soaked.  It started off decent enough, the water was higher than I was led to believe but it was not higher that my boots, but as the tide rose back up the water flooded my boots.  What happens at the sea parting is the tide goes down, low enough for a road to a nearby island to emerge, and then tons of people walk to and from this island while the tide is out.  I got about half way before boats started blowing horns, and event organizers started blowing whistles, emphatically gesturing to us to return back to Jindo.  These warnings made it seem like there was imminent danger, so I high-tailed it back to Jindo and there was one section that the tide came in pretty quickly, and the current was pretty strong, so this all led to my boots getting filled with water.

Before the see parting on the beach on Jindo island.

In the water, before the road emerged.

Road starting to emerge.

After I got back to shore.  The line of people still working their way back.

The next day we got up and drove back to the main land.  There, we stopped at Mokpo which is my new favorite place.  We were driven halfway up a mountain and were then told to hike or have coffee or whatever.  We didn't want to sit so we ended up climbing up the mountain.  By the time I leave Korea I will have climbed enough mountains to last me a lifetime.  This was the most beautiful place.  It was manicured, and paved in sections, with beautiful views every so often.

This is another statue of that general.

After that we hopped back on the bus and headed to the butterfly festival.  The location seems to be a learning center on all things insects.  There were giant insects everywhere that were obviously permanent residents, and curiously enough there were many cow statues too.  There was a cactus exhibition, two tunnels of squash, and a butterfly and insect museum.  There was also a butterfly habitat, but all of these things seemed to be there all year round.  There were a lot of food vendors there, so I guess that is what makes it a festival.  I did have a good time, although some of the insect stuff was disturbing and I hope to never see some of them in real life.  After spending three hours there we hopped on the bus to take the 220 km drive back to Seoul.  I naively thought, oh 220 kms that won't take that long........5 hours later we finally got to Seoul.  That made me miss good old SK. 

Have a great week!  Here are a couple more pics.

The first squash tunnel.  Yes, there were two.

Hey!
Today I went on another soul crushing hike.  It was actually a pretty good hike and day, but the uphill kills me.  So many stairs.  A girl I work with and I joined a group hike on the mountain one train stop away.  It was a decent sized group with four Americans, two of them soldiers, two South Africans, who are here teaching English, a Chinese girl who is working here, and about four Koreans.  I seemed to be the most inexperienced hiker of them all, and fell behind a lot.  This mountain was steeper than the last, but the path was mainly made of stairs.  Yes, I climbed a mountain worth of stairs today.  What did you do?  I'm just kidding.  I fell behind quite quickly, and one of the organizers came back and hiked with me, and encouraged me to go on.  He was very nice.  They were all really concerned with our safety and us having a good time.  I enjoyed getting to know some of the other hikers on our rests and during the easier sections of the trail.  We some some people rock climbing on our way to the peak.  I would not try that for all the world.  They were so high up there.  I did get some good pictures of me on the top of the mountain.  Oh and just to taunt some of you back home, I burnt a bit today.  It was nice enough to go with just my t-shirt for most of the hike.

Take care!

Here are the people climbing the top section of the mountain.

As I was about to take this picture one of the organizers told me to move over so I wouldn't get the sign in the picture.  He said it said 'Danger - Death', I of course found this hilarious and insisted they get the sign in the picture.

Victory!  Darn, now I'm wishing I would have thrown my arms up victoriously.  Next time.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Hi!
Yesterday I went to Seoul's Cherry Blossom Festival.  There was one street that was lined with the cherry blossom trees, although only one side of the street was blooming on Saturday.  They were very pretty, but difficult to admire because I was in a large stream of people and it was hard to stop and look or take a picture.  I eventually got some pictures when I was standing away from the crowd.

It was at the National Assembly and there was an outside entertainment venue.  There wasn't any entertainment when I was there, but they had many food vendors.  They had all the corn and waffles anyone could possibly want.  I helped myself to some corn, but didn't end up with any waffles or other Korean treats.

I didn't end up staying for the evening festivities because I did not get much sleep the night before, and wasn't in the mood to wait a few hours for the festivities to continue.  Some of the other teachers and I had went out for a friends birthday on Friday and ended up going to a music lounge and enjoyed some 70's and 80's music and expensive drinks.  So, I stayed up too late on Friday, and woke up too early on Saturday and left the festival early.  I slept intensely when I got home.  I know you care.

Have a good one!