Since I don't have school on Fridays, I decided to take a small excursion to the Bukhansan National Park, which begins on the northern outskirts of Seoul. The subway ride there was pretty lengthy (2 hours), but I nodded off in between, so it wasn't that bad. Once I got out of the subway station, I had to walk for about a kilometer through a maze of restaurants and sporting goods stores. I would've gotten lost if it hadn't been for an ajumma wearing a violently purple and green hiking outfit who I followed to the trail head.
Out of the maze onto the street
The hike was quite pleasant, and the trail was devoid of the crowds usually present on the weekends. I met fewer than ten people going up the mountain. It took me a little over an hour to walk the 3 km trail with about 700 m of elevation gain. Halfway up the mountain, I took a pause to admire a Buddhist temple. It was decorated with hundreds of colored paper lanterns in preparation for Buddha's birthday on Monday.
I also saw a chipmunk!
All the Buddhas!
The temple
They made it nigh impenetrable
The lanterns
Buddha's death?
Skinny Buddha
Golden Buddha
Ceramic Buddha
The ceiling of one of the shrines
Some of the lanterns had prayers attached
The lanterns marked the trail all the way up to the temple
To ascend the last part of the trail to Jaumbong peak, you had to climb up a stretch of rock which would have been impossible to navigate without a railing for most people. Three other foreigners where at the top before me. One of them was from Texas and had gone to high school in Heidelberg! He was an Aggie though, class of '77. Two Korean boys asked to take a picture with us. I felt like a celebrity. :P
That's were I was headed
Ascent to the peak
Tiny ant people
Beautiful view
Sweaty me
Safety railing
... Yeah!
After talking with them for a while, I kept going until I saw a sign that advised against visitors taking the Y-Valley trail since falls often occurred there. But of course I wasn't going to settle for the detour. Let me tell you, that trail was intense. It went almost vertically down then back up again. At points I was basically rappelling down backwards with the aid of the rope railing or pulling myself back up again largely with the strength of my arms. It was quite exhilarating! I took a few pictures, but none of them seemed to capture how steep and narrow the trail was.
Challenge accepted!
Small ascent at the beginning
This is going pretty much straight down
Trying not to fall... :P
Can you see where the trail goes? Straight up.
That's where I had to climb down
Made it to the other side. No big.
After making it through the Y-Valley, I started to head back down the mountain for food. I found a kitty, a hermitage, and trees wrapped with fly paper.
Meow
It wouldn't let me pet it. :(
Many trees were buzzing...
Built into the cliff face
This monk was holding prayers
A guy carrying food up the mountain to sell
After a delicious meal of cold, spicy mixed noodles, I was heading back to the subway went I saw a sign for the Seoul Iris Garden. Most of the flowers had already bloomed, but nevertheless, it was a restful place. There were quite a few people there including a group of teenagers, a pre-K outing, and plenty of old ladies sleeping, chatting, or eating in the shade. Aaaannd a bunch of flowers.
I hereby start this post off by stating that I only got five hours of sleep from Friday to Sunday. I completely crashed Sunday night, but it was entirely worth it.
I started the weekend off by going to a baseball game in Seoul. The Samsung Lions played the Nexen Heroes and lost. The game was no different than the only baseball game I'd ever been to in the US (Tech vs. someone else), but there were a few differences in the audience culture. Bear in mind that the only baseball game I'd seen before was a college game.
The stadium
A mosquito advertising an electric bug swatter
First off, the ceremonial pitch was thrown by a tiny girl probably from some kpop group. I missed the actual pitch itself, but it can't have been as bad as this one.
There were also cheerleaders playing loud music (including ABBA's Dancing Queen with Korean lyrics) and dancing on a stage throughout the whole game. I was sadly sitting too far away to get any good pictures.
When I think of food eaten at a baseball game, hot dogs and of course peanuts and crackerjack come to mind. Here in Korea, it's all about the fried chicken. Just walking from the subway to the stadium, we were accosted from all sides by people of all ages hawking chicken. So of course we got some, with a sweet and spicy sauce and white pickled radishes.
Korean Baseball fare
The stands and field
My group
The Nexen pitcher
Nexen is winning!
I really tried to get into the game, but baseball isn't really my thing, so I kind of zoned out during the second half (I read). Nexen won 6 to 7, and we headed back to Suwon.
On the subway, I spotted an interesting sticker. John told me that the government is trying to regulate and/or control the subway companies, so this is their form of protest. Just like guys shouldn't peek on girls, the government shouldn't mess in the transit companies' business.
Protest sticker
Back in Suwon, we headed to a restaurant and generally had a good time eating and talking until the wee hours of the morning.
Yummy chicken, with lots of cartilage that you're supposed to eat, but I didn't
The four of us
Fighting over the free peaches :)
Since the dorms close from 1 am to 5 am, we headed to a jjimjjilbang to sleep. A jjimjjilbang is a Korean bath house. The one we went to was on the 7th and 8th floors of a skyscraper. At the front desk, they gave us each a set of clothes- a t-shirt and shorts, pink for girls and blue for guys - and a key on a bracelet in exchange for 9,000 won. The lower floor was divided into men's and women's sections so we went into the women's area, put our shoes in lockers at the entrance, went into the changing area, and put our belongings in a second locker. There was a spa area with numerous hot tubs, which felt amazing after the long night, and of course everyone was naked. I didn't spend long there, however, but headed upstairs to the communal (clothing not optional) area. There were sleeping mats and block pillows laid out, so I settled down for about two hours before an alarm rang at 7:40 am, and the lights were brightened. After finding the rest of my group, I tried out a few of the rooms. I stayed in a hot room (65° C) until the heat grew too oppressive, and I felt like I couldn't breath. The other rooms I tried included an ice room (4°C), with pipes covered in frost along the walls and a forest room (30°C) with wooden walls and a fake forest behind glass.
People sleeping in the forest room
The walls of the hot room
Detailing in the hot room
a couple watching TV in the hot room
There were many other rooms, including segregated sleeping rooms, and other temperature based rooms, but at that point, I had to leave to get ready for the next event of the weekend.
So I took an almost three hour long subway ride out of the city to get to the SAPA MT. SAPA, if you don't remember is the Sungkyunkwan Academic Photography Association, and an MT is so-called "membership training". All Korean collegiate clubs once per semester, rent a large room/building and spend the night there getting to know each other, eating, and drinking.
As soon as we got there, I passed out for an hour or so, after which we went exploring! There was a valley nearby with a stream running through it, so what did we do? Throw people in! I would have gone in too, but I hadn't brought a change of clothes. We then walked on to a larger river, spent a while ambling along the shore, and rented rowboats for an hour! I rowed most of the time in my boat of course, and we got into a huge splash fight with other boats which left me soaking wet. After our time was up, we headed back for dinner, kimchi jjigae prepared my our leader, Songmin.
After waking up
Cute Korean girl playing in the water
Buildings overlooking the stream
Time to get wet!
The stream
These cute birdhouses caught my eye
Dog and puppy
The river
You could pay for a ride in a flyfish boat that got airborne for short intervals
Hills in the background
Cute couple
Petra rowing
Wet but happy
Soggy waegookins
Kimchi jjigae cooking
I also painted my toenails in between :)
We then divided into four teams (mine was the Ace team) and played many games, surprisingly many of which were word based. One involved having the first letter of each syllable in a word written out and having to guess what the word was. There were categories such as movies, foods, and songs(they had to sing it as well) to make things a little easier. Another one involved four people shouting out a syllable of a word simultaneously and everyone else had to guess. During the last round of that one, the foreigners were the shouters. They said I pronounced my syllable very well. :) At the end, my team won, so we didn't have to help with cleanup.
Then it was time for more food, this time barbecue. We ate two huge sacks of meat and plenty of lettuce(for wrapping.
Grilling the meat (sorry for the blurriness)
YEAH!
Goofiness in the early morning
By that time it was already three or so in the morning, and most people went to sleep. I stayed up and played Mafia for a while, and then watched the Champion's League final. Bayern München losing to Chelsea was a real let down, but the Koreans were happy. After all, Chelsea was sponsored by Samsung, a Korean company.
Is it morning already?
Sleepy Koreans
It was then breakfast time(ramyeon), but I wasn't hungry, so I slept a little, and then it was time to head back to Suwon. We stopped on the way for mul naengmyeon, cold noodles, which were delicious. When I got back to my dorm room, I forced myself to stay up for a few hours, and then slept for thirteen hours straight. I thankfully didn't have class until noon the next day.
One last tidbit: sitting on a hard wooden floor for close to twelve hours is not a good idea. My bum is STILL a little sore. :P
