Canadian Thanksgiving

Hello everyone! I hope your weeks went well.. Not much has happened for me this week. We started teaching classes again on Wednesdays because the middle school kids are done with their midterm tests. Justin moved to Suwon and we got a new kid from Louisiana named Tyler. Saturday was Alan's 23rd birthday, but he was sick so we didn't do anything. Remember how I said I had to buy those 2 classes ice cream? That was like 4 weeks ago, so I hoped they forgot. As soon as I walked into the class they were all like "Teacher, ice cream!" So, I had to fork over some won and have two students go down to the grocery store in the basement of our building and buy everyone in the class ice cream. It was so cheap though! I gave them 17,000 won (like $17) to get 13 ice creams for everyone, and they came back and gave me 13,000 won change. 

In Korea, when you frequent places like bars and restaurants, and build a relationship with them, they sometimes give you "service", which just means free stuff. I guess everyone went to this place by school called Tadori for like 4 years. Now though we go to the Japanese place thats like 2 doors away from Tadori. But, one night the Japanese place was full so we went to Tadori. The bar owner recognized everyone we were with and kept coming and talking to us! We had her do a shot of Cheongha with us (like a sweeter form of soju). By the end of the night she brought out service of peach slices on ice. It was cool! Foreigners usually never get service, but I think she just wanted us to start coming back to Tadori instead of the Japanese place. Sometimes after we go out for a beer after work we go to Sincheon to Gold Bar and play darts. On Friday night we went, and they gave us service of Tequila shots for free! I didn't do mine though because I had to work early in the morning Saturday, and Peter and Joon didn't have that luxury. 

Fridays are my day off, so I decided to continue with Friday mountain walks, but on a different mountain. A google search of best walking trails in Seoul led me to a close one called Mt. Umyeonsan. (The one I really wanted to go to was farther away, and would take like 2.5 hours to get through, but it said it had the largest manmade waterfall in Asia!) This mountain was only 5 subway stops away and it was late in the day, so I picked it. Once again I took a bunch of useless pictures. 

Entering the belly of the beast..

There comes a point on the trek where you trade the sounds of the city (cars, honks, people, helicopters) for the sounds of the forest (birds, crickets, bugs). Its like entering a whole new reality! Like Alice in Wonderland sans the drugs. It is really calm and soothing though, a great refresher. I always wake up on Friday anxious because I don't work and I don't want to sit in my apartment all day and I just feel helpless and hopeless, so these walks are great!

I love trees so I take lots of pictures of them. I just like how that in one given area hundreds of different trees grow next to each other, and they all grow in such different shapes! And they are massive and just grip the Earth with such strength.

This mountain was more popular, so the paths were better and there were street lights along the paths. The downside of this is that there were so many people on the main paths, and everyone looked at me cause I was the only white person. It was sort of like "what are you, a tourist, doing on our walking trail" kinda vibe.

There are workout machines all over Korea, in the most strange and absurd places, like say the middle of a mountain. Just randomly along the path was this workout machine. They have them in parks too, and sometimes just on the street. As if walking up a steep mountain wasn't a workout enough, you can also use these machines, and the older people do!

Nothing like telephone wires to bring you back to reality in the middle of the trail!

I hate when people are in my pictures. I'm more of a landscape/nature "photographer" (I hesitate to use the word photographer because I have about 4 weeks experience and work with a digital camera that does everything for me)

Made it to the top after about an hour/hour and a half! At the top to the left there were tons of workout machines, almost like a gym! I was huffin and puffin when I made it to the top, but these like 50-60 year old Koreans were working out! I wanted to take a picture of them but didn't know how that would go. 

These things are everywhere on these mountains. It is just like a large egg shaped thing, but made with like big rocks held together by smaller rocks. Its crazy in person! It looks like it should fall over, but they did a good job.

The view at the top of this mountain was fantastic! Although it is always smoggy in Seoul.. If you click on the picture to make it bigger you can see the mountains on the other side. These next couple pictures are just a sweeping view of the city from the top of the mountain (but is only a small percentage of the city as a whole!)

The circular building at the bottom is the Seoul Arts Center, and is also where I started my trek. It was right next to that glass circle thing that I had to walk through. Im not so sure where I live or I'd point it out. 

Before I left for the mountain I had coffee with Suzie and Peter. Peter gave me his kindle and told me to read these 3 Lord Byron poems when I got to the top. Peter is obsessed with poetry, and wants to memorize as many as he can just to bust out random lines throughout the day, but I took the kindle and read them at the top. I have to admit, poetry is way over my head, but I enjoyed them. 

This mountain was full of paths that broke off into more paths, and it would take a couple of days to see everything. I was headin back down and saw a sign for a temple 1,000m away. I love stuff like that so I wanted to go. The sun was setting fast by now, but I rationed out that since the paths were lighted I would be fine. At this crossroads was another set of workout machines!

I was trekkin for this temple down steep paths, up other steep paths, just going wild. No one was on this path which was nice. I made it to this really great little valley. A little forshadowing. See that sign? I didn't know it from where I took this picture, but that sign was the death of me. When I finally got to, there was no English! I was like whaaat??!? There was like 5 different ways I could go, and I had no idea which one meant "temple". It was miserable. I whipped out my phone and started pouding the words in to the dictionary, but none of them came up! I was like great! now what! I just kept walking straight and hoped for the best. 

They had little rest areas all along the paths too.

This is where sh*t got serious. I was carrying my bag with books, peter's kindle, my camera phone ipod everything. The path ended and I was left with just rocks going straight up for about 300 meters. I was sweating so bad by the time I got to the top. The path was pretty steep, and in some places it was carved out of the side of the hill and the other side was like a steep drop. I thinkin to myself "this temple better be worth it".

So, after about an hour walking around looking for this temple, sweating, burnin calories and getting in shape for the upcoming 5K we're doing next weekend, I finally made it to a clearing. I was so tired and wanted nothing more than to just reap my rewards of scaling a mountain. I made it to the top and what happened?? I was back at the top starting at the same view of the city!!! I was like what happened?? I walked in a giant circle for an hour looking for this darn temple. But these trees were cool.

I gave up and descended the mountain, determined to come back another day and find that temple. I was welcomed back to reality with some Seoul traffic.

I rewarded myself for the day of hiking with my new favorite meal, Shabu Shabu! (although its Japanese). It's basically a feast. The pot is full of boiling broth. The plate at the far left is full of raw vegetables like mushrooms and greens. The greens are stacked in such an order that the ones at the top take the longest to cook, and spinach at the bottom the shortest. But it makes you feel so healthy. You put the mushrooms and some greens in the pot. The plate at the bottom left is very thinly sliced beef. You pick up a slice of beef and dip it in the broth for like 5 seconds and it cooks! It's so cool and fun to watch how fast it goes from red to brown. Then you chow down! When you are done with this, a waitress comes over and mixes in some soup stuff. Then you put your noodles in the pot and cook them! Once you are done with the noodles, they bring you out a cup of tea or coffee. Its great!

I waited for Suzie and Peter to get off work to get a drink at the Japanese place. I was just sitting outside the elementary building in this little alcove when I noticed this bathroom. Leave it to Korea to design this! It is a men's bathroom, and the whole wall is glass. The alleyway I was sitting in has some pretty decent foot traffic going through it, and you can literally see people peeing. 

After work on Saturday Peter invited me over to watch the England rugby world cup game with him and Ben. On my way I stopped at subway to get some lunch. As I was leaving, a little Korean girl literally pointed her finger in my face and said 외국인! which means foreigner!! (which was kinda funny, cause I was listening to foreigner on my ipod)

Suzie had us over on Sunday for Canadian Thanksgiving. On my way, I stopped at an international wine and spirits store to bring a bottle of vino. The guy who worked there was walking around with me explaining things and there was another guy sitting in a chair, drinkin a bottle of wine and watching the baseball game. I settled on a bottle of cabernet, and was about to pay for it when the guy sitting down drinking was like (in perfect English) "Would you care to try some of my cabernet sauvignon? It is my absolute favorite" I was blown away because he was so old and spoke great English! I said yes because its rude to say no to elderly people here, and he poured me a glass. We got to talkin about how he lived in Queens for 3 years. All of a sudden Joon walked in! He bought some wine, I finished my cup, thanked the guy and we headed to Suzies. 

This is peter and his girlfriend minnie. Minnie made an apple crisp thing, Suzie made carrots and mashed potatoes. The rest came from a deli on the us army base that you can order from and pick up at the front gate. 

Some veggies, Suzies carrots, the turkey, and stuffing! The only thing missing right now is the mashed potatoes, which Suzie was mashing with an empty wine bottle wrapped in cellophane. 

After dinner we played some poker. Notice the fireplace on the tv! it was great. To my left is Brian, then Joon, then Peter. Brian won.