Subterranean, Amphibious Hiking? Madness!

Left Seoul and this time instead of going South and West, the two usual directions I seem to take when getting out of a city, we went East. And North. Michele, Maranda, and I went with a group through Meetup (my first time hearing about this social networking site) to Dootasan Mountain about five hours outside of Seoul. A first for me was meeting at midnight, taking a bus, "sleeping" on the bus, and start hiking as soon as we get off. I'm not sure anyone is actually capable of sleeping on a bus. Regardless, after resting our eyes and trying out every sleeping position possible when you're upright at a 105 degree angle while the person next to you is coughing, we stumbled off at our destination circa. 4:30 and were hiking before 5. It was only about a 12 km hike, but the first five km were straight up in a dense fog. I'm sure we missed out on some amazing scenery, but hiking in a cloud was so much fun. You see pictures all the time of Asian mountain shrouded by mysterious mist and getting to be in the thick of that was amazing. By the time we reached our first breaking stop we were all drenched. The summit must always be in this kind of weather because at the top we found pools of water with dozens of frogs hopping about and thick, heavy carpets of green moss grew on the surface of nearly every rock and tree. The way down was more painful than the way up simply because the wetness had turned the ground into a treacherous, slippery, slide of dead leaves and mud. There were pools of icy, spring water near the bottom but only Andrew was brave enough to actually take a dip. The rest of us just wanted to be dry and continued along familiar, rope railed paths. A giant Buddha welcomed us at the parking lot but I was so tired (and oh so dirty) that I gave it a nod of greeting, threw my back pack down, and took a nap.
We spend the night at Mang Sang beach on the coast of the Sea of Korea in a pension. The weather remained grey and foggy but I took great delight in hearing the sound of waves and smelling the fishy, salty air that hovers around every ocean town. On Sunday we made a pit stop at the park known as Penis Park where we wandered around phallic totem poles and masturbating statues. We found a gorgeous stretch of beach with some freakishly big sand crabs but couldn't stay long. Our final stop was in Samcheok where we traversed underground in some giant caves before returning to Seoul by 11PM. I returned dirty. I returned with hat hair. I returned messy, messy, messy. But I returned rejuvenated.

Pictures to follow as soon as Michele posts them and my nimble fingers steal them.

My Own Hungarian Phrase Book

Watching a movie called "The Spanish Apartment" where the main character leaves France to spend a year in Barcelona. He has a few pretty rocky moments at the start which he remembers later as being the worst moments that turned out to be the best stories. Here are a few of mine.


The other day I was walking through my neighborhood and saw a rack of clothes outside a store. People sell clothes from the back of their cars out here, so seeing racks of clothes for sale outside is not a rare thing. There was a skirt that I thought was cute (and might actually fit) so I took it off the rack and held it up for inspection. As soon as I did a red faced Korean man storms out of the door and spits out rapid, very angry, Korean while pointing at the painted sign on the building that says "Dry Cleaning" in very large, obvious English letters.



Last weekend when hiking I was pausing on a rock waiting for others to catch up. I was copying the squatting pose old Korean women perform on every street corner around my neighborhood quite expertly and chatting with a (fully bilingual) Korean woman. A patch of sun hitting my face was bugging me so I put up my hand to block it when a group of Koreans not associated with our hike, and not billingual, went by and thought my hand was a signal to high five. I'm not one to be stingy with the high fives so I thought it was cool. They speak to my companion, saying something that makes her blush and stammer, something I can tell is happenning despite the fact that I can't understand what she is saying. When I ask her what they said, she tells me they said they were impressed that a cute kid had made it this far on the hike.

To Show You That I AM Sweating Out Here (aka also so Kelli can see how her track pants are holding up)

On Sunday Michele and I decided to be both social and active (a rare combination for me) and went on a hike with a group we found through facebook. We physically left Seoul to start it, I'm not sure we were on trails for the entirety of it, and I know I spent just as much of the hike scrambling on all fours as I did walking upright. At one point we were on more of a vertical axis than the horizontal one and the ropes which I thought existed only as handrails served to pull me up one particular rock. I'm not going to say it was a straight up, 90 degree angle. But if I had let go of this rope I would have fallen off the mountain.



Hmmm... do I really want to go up there?

Oh, that's not a mistake. We charge you extra 'cause you're handicapped.

Haeundae Beach

Jagalchi Fish Market: the largest fish market in South Korea

Busan

After working without any breaks since Lunar New Year in January, our school allowed us a break this weekend. The way the Korean calendar happens to work this year has most of the national holidays on weekends. This weekend, for example, celebrated Buddha’s Birthday on Saturday. Tuesday is Children’s Day (yes…a real holiday) and rather than making us come in to work on Monday, our supervisor convinced the owner of the school to let the teacher’s have it off. To the parents it was justified as a Teacher's Seminar. Michele and I went down to Busan on Sunday for the night. As the second largest city in Korea it is a necessary stop during our stay here. For even though it is a large city, the size doesn’t compare to Seoul and foreigners are much more likely to stand out. There’s also, as one coworker loves to remind us, a strong Russian influence in this coastal town which means it’s the one place in Korea where you can find pierogies. We didn’t eat Russian dumplings, but we did eat great Chinese food and fresh fish. Fish that was probably swimming in the ocean hours before it was served on our plate. First thing we did was walk around the largest fish market in Korea. Live octopus, scrambling crabs, gutted sting rays, and weird things that look suspiciously like male and female genitalia. Afterwards we headed to a mountain temple that required a trip on a cable car and a lot of help from a friendly bi-lingual Korean man. We found lots of boulders that were great for crawling over and sitting on, perfect for reading and journaling. Afterwards we headed to the touristy beach area where we watched the sun set and staked out spots for the following morning’s sunrise. Our night in the shoddiest love motel that involved cockroach spray in our room and walls as thin as eggshells was worth the twenty bucks we spent on it. Our shared double bed with no sheets and a polyester comforter did not do much to improve the situation. Frustrated by insomnia, I threw off the blankets at 4:30 and declared I was heading out to watch the sunrise. We were stumbling past bars that were still in full swing but after getting settled on our rocks we watched a perfect sunrise. The thing about sunrises is that I always forget just how quickly they come. The entire sky blushes rosier and rosier, save for one pulsating pink spot, until the sun just appears, and if you’re not carefully paying attention, and ascends into it’s place in the sky. We made up for lost sleep on the beach, getting some sun in the process, until the afternoon when we caught a bullet train back to Seoul.