Fall Foliage

This Saturday was my friend Jess' birthday. She's a very adventurous and active person, so for her birthday she wanted to go down to Naejangsan to go hiking in the mountains and look at the fall leaves. This weekend was the peak weekend in Naejangsan, so it was rather busy and we were only able to get the slow train there and back because the fast train was booked. Half of the group went down there Friday night, and the rest of us followed on the first train out on Saturday morning. We made it to the train station around noon, and after a little debate on whether or not we should ask for directions, found the bus to the mountain and hopped on.

The bus was overly crowded with ajumas in hiking gear, younger couples in matching winter outfits, and Korean tourists, as well as our group of foreigners. We got to what seemed like the area we were supposed to get off at, and everyone got off the bus. The traffic was frustratingly slow, but it was still moving faster than you can walk. But because my Korean was the best out of the people there (and mine is severely limited at best), we got off as well when we should have just stayed on. So we ended up walking several kilometers to get to the area that we were supposed to stay.

We made it to a rather busy intersection full of hikers, tour buses, traffic cops, and some of the fittest people over 60 I've ever seen. After trying to have a phone conversation with the Korean man who owned the minbak we were staying in, we were picked up in a car and driven about two blocks to the place we had booked the week before.


Generally, minbak means a home stay. So you are essentially staying in someone's spare room in their home, and meals are often included. However in the case of Minbak Row in Naejangsan, the street of minbaks was simply a collection of supposedly low-cost, low luxury places to sleep at night. Our particular two rooms were supposed to sleep 15 people, but the 12 of us were in rather close quarters. When we first arrived, there was some confusion as to whether we were even in the right place, as there were no bags in the room and half our group had come in the night before. It turned out that they had stayed in town on Friday night and left their bags at the police station so they could go hiking in the morning. So we dropped our bags in the minbak and went off in search of lunch.

We got about 200 feet from the minbak before we ran into a restaurant. This turned out to be the closest place to get food, and probably one of the more expensive Korean restaurants I've been to. We did, however, get to see a whole pig on a spit right by our table.


After getting lunch, we decided to try and find the rest of our friends. They said they were heading back from one of the temples on the mountain, and we should just walk towards the main entrance of the park and hopefully we'd catch them in passing.


The walk was long and crowded, but we did manage to see lots of fall colors along the way, and beautiful scenery was captured by careful camera framing. :)


We didn't see the other members of our group so much as hear them. Jess is loud at the best of times, and we could hear her talking long before we saw the rest of our group. They had been waiting by a rather beautiful tree so we could get the whole group photographed together. Of course we couldn't get a Korean to take a picture for us, so Sean volunteered to take a group picture with everyone's camera.


After wishing Jess a happy birthday, the five of us that had come that afternoon headed up the mountain to see what we could find.


One person dropped out after we made it to a temple, so there were four of us that made it to the hermitage that was up some rather daunting stone stairs.


At the top at the hermitage was probably the ugliest Buddha statue I've ever seen. It's a shame, too, because it would have made a great picture. As it is, this picture just seems comical to me.


It was starting to get on towards early evening, so the two other girls decided to head back towards the minbak. James wanted to make it to the top before sundown, and I wanted to keep climbing, since we had long left the crowds behind us at the temple. So James, being the mountain goat that he is, loped off towards the summit, and I had a pleasant hour's walk by myself in the woods at dusk.



It started to get dark around 5:30, and the mosquitoes were starting to come out, so I turned around and headed back down the mountain. James eventually caught up with me, and by the time we had gotten back to the minbak 2 hours and about 5 kilometers later, it was pitch black. We met up with the rest of the group and sat around outside the 7/11 talking, drinking, and playing card games. I headed back to the room around 10:30 because we had decided that some of us were going to take the cable car at 6am the next morning to watch the sunrise. I was exhausted from climbing the mountain that evening, and I knew if I didn't go to bed at a reasonable hour I wasn't going to get up in time for the cable car, which was a good half hour walk from our rooms.

We had asked the owner of the minbak earlier that evening to turn the ondol (under-floor heating system) off, since the room was stifling hot, and with 12 people sleeping in the room it wasn't cold enough outside to warrant any heating at all. Unfortunately, the ondol was turned back on around 3am. So with sleeping on a burning hot floor, getting bit by mosquitoes and ants during the night, and being awakened several times by others drunkenly returning to the room at all hours, needless to say I didn't sleep very well.

I woke up at 5am the next morning, and guiltily roused the few people that wanted to catch the cable car at 5:15. I didn't mind as much as I would have if people hadn't confirmed the night before that they wanted to be woken up. I'm not a fast walker, even when I have gotten a good night's sleep, so I headed towards the cable car a little earlier than the other five people who had decided to get up. We made it to the cable car at around 6:15am, and even though we were late, we were the first ones to use the cable car that morning. It was still dark when we got to the top, and we found the observation deck to watch the sunrise.


It wasn't the most amazing sunrise I've ever seen, especially since the actual sun was blocked by one of the mountains, but it was a pleasant morning nonetheless.



After getting a minuscule cup of coffee from a restaurant located on the edge of the mountain and having a rather amusing chat with a group of Korean hikers who were still drunk from soju, we headed back down from the top. The trees below us reminded me of some sort of weird cauliflower garden.


By the time we got back down to the base of the mountain an hour or so later, the line to get on the cable car had about 200 people in it, and probably would have taken at least 45 minutes to get through. We looked around the bottom, and I was fascinated by the persimmon trees, which were prolific and looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book or a Tim Burton movie.

By the way, if you've never eaten a frozen persimmon, I highly recommend it. It's like a fruit slushy in a peel.


Then the six of us headed back to the minbak, because our train left around noon and we needed to pack up and catch the bus back to the train station. We took the scenic walk on the way back instead of the more crowded and open trail.


We did notice on the way back quite a few Koreans who all seemed to have the same super-expensive camera with giant zoom-lens and tripod who were all taking pictures of the same thing.


But the walk was nice, the colors were more vibrant that morning even though it was overcast, and we just barely made it onto the bus back to the station as it started to rain.

Photography Contest

I like taking pictures, as you may have noticed. Some people have even told me that certain photos of mine should be entered in a contest . I hadn't really heard about one until today. So, I've entered several of my photos (i.e. my top five or so twelve from the past year) into a photo contest called Korea 100 Sparkles. Take a look, and if you can find one of mine and you like it, vote for it please!

P.S. If you feel like sharing the link and asking others to vote as well, feel free!
P.P.S. I realized there's a search bar near the top - you can type in my name and it will bring up my 12 entries...
P.P.P.S. You can vote every day...

September Survival

September's been a rather busy month for me, both in school and out of it.

At the beginning of the month I took a level test to see if I could join the free Korean classes offered by city hall. It was a difficult test (it was all written in Korean), and I was impressed that I was able to get any right at all, let alone the 6/30 score that I received. But because I missed some of the earlier questions (they got progressively more difficult as you went), my level was determined to be beginner. Which would have been fine, except that the beginner classes are only offered on Wednesday from 4pm-6pm (I get off work at 5:30 and the classes are a half hour subway ride from my school). So I asked if I could go into the level 1 class, which is offered from 7pm-9pm once a week. They said it would probably be too difficult for me, but put me in for the October class anyway. I've since decided that I (probably) won't go, as I really do need to start from the beginning. It is, after all, a very good place to start. I asked about the discounted language classes offered by my company, but you have to have been working with them for three months before you qualify. So I think I'm just going to wait it out and start classes in early November.

So on September 5th, the Seoul Drum Festival began. I wanted to see part of it, so I checked out the directions on the website, which were slightly confusing. I started by trying to find it at Children's Grand Park, but after wandering around for almost 2 hours, I got a little frustrated. I did get to see a rather large and diverse park that I'd never been to.

At the entrance to the park.

A large fountain of the type that's rather ubiquitous here. It lights up and plays music at night.

It says "Mushroom Village"

The rather depressing zoo located inside the park.

I'm guessing this was part of a "traditional Korean stories" section...

I called James, who checked the website and figured out that it was actually in Seoul Forest, which was several subway stops away. So I hopped back on the subway and headed to Seoul Forest, which is located in the middle of one of the smoggiest and most industrial areas I've been to in Seoul. Someone has since described Seoul Forest as more of a "twig-land" than a forest, as it's only a few years old.

I've been trying to get a picture of the completely dyed dogs, but the ability escapes me. Apparently you can't tell these two apart, so pink and green tails were in order.

I found the 'forest' to be more of a large park, and not even as large and tree covered as Children's Grand Park.

Part of the playground - kids could climb in and around a giant metal person.

After looking around for about 15 minutes, I decided to try the info booth. Through my broken Korean, I deduced that the festival was indeed in Seoul Forest, but I had missed the performance for the day, and the next one wasn't until the following weekend. So I headed to James' place, since we were meeting up with some friends of his for dinner and drinks.

We went pretty far north on the subway to get some Moroccan food, and then headed to a place called Ka Brew which had just opened. It was 5,000won for all you can drink beer at the pub, which had its own microbrewery.

The price was amazing, but the beer was only average (though certainly better than the bottled Korean beer).

The next weekend one of my closer friends Stephanie had her leaving party. She left to go on a short Euro trip before heading back home to DC, after which she's thinking about moving to Prague to study.

So James and I headed back to Uijeongbu, where we had dinner at an Indian restaurant, tried to go bowling but couldn't because the place was shut down, went to a bar that filled up immediately with all 27 of us, left and went to another bar, around 1am headed for a noraebang for three hours, and then headed to Stephanie's place to crash.

Me, Joey and Lauren at the Indian restaurant called Durga.

The biggest leaving party I've been to - 27 people showed up to say goodbye to Steph.

Steph and James getting up to some crazy stuff in the noraebang

I wasn't immune to the noraebang fever, either. It was 4am though...

So after crashing at Stephanie's, James and I headed back into Seoul because we had a picnic planned with Kathryn at 2pm at Children's Grand Park to celebrate her 30th birthday. Surprisingly, we were able to make it back into Seoul, get showered, changed, pick up food for the picnic, and make it out to the park on time with bright smiling faces.

Melissa, James, me, Fan, and Gary

Our amazing picnic, which lasted for about 9 hours!

Me, Fan, and Gary

There was a wild rabbit who kept hopping about and got rather close. The Koreans seemed to enjoy clapping and shouting at it to try and scare it.

We continued the picnic at Kathryn and Gary's house once it got dark at the park.

After a late night version of the picnic, we headed out to Itaewon for drinking and dancing. I had my first experience with the two hills in Itaewon - Hooker Hill and Homo Hill, both completely apropos names. The two hills are right next to each other, and while looking for the later to go dancing, we went down the former. I'm not naive, but I've never seen a place like this before. I won't go into details, of which there aren't many anyways, but suffice it to say that hill left a definite impression on me. We made it to the dancing street, where we (being James, Gary, Kathryn, Michelle and myself) danced for several hours before I decided to call it a night and head home around 3 or 4 am.


Stephanie had shown up to Kathryn's picnic for a few hours and left her sunglasses there, and I had left a necklace at her house over the weekend, so we decided to meet up for dinner. She wanted to go to Insadong one last time, as there's a vegetarian restaurant there she really enjoyed. Insadong is only about 15 minutes by subway from my house, so I headed there early to do a little bit of sightseeing and shopping (it's a big tourist area).

The face of a sculpture on Insadong street

Our vegetarian meal - yummy!

The railroad tea shop on Insadong street that I wanted to take my parents to. Everything has been taken from old railroad cars.

Steph had been wanting to go to a batting cage for a year. So when we heard the sound of metal bats ringing out, we just had to stop.

On Friday the 18th, my kids had a photo shoot for their yearbook. And yes, it was a photo shoot. We went to Dosan Park, and were there for about 2.5 hours, taking class, individual, and candid shots.

Sapphire class - me, Miss Alison and the kids. I was told my picture would be from the waist up, so since it was Friday I wore jeans. Oh well.

Playing the "cooperation game" so the photographer could get small group shots

The boys examining, and then later killing, the bugs on the ground.

The girls played telephony - an apparent favorite of the photographer.

This could have been a good shot. I think Anika made it a great one.

The next day, I met up with Kathryn, Gary and James for a French photography exhibit, and then an open-air jazz concert at the Seoul Arts Center.

An add for the photography exhibit.

Me, Kathryn and Gary at the Jazz concert

Gary and James

The jazz quartet, and the scenery behind them.

After the Jazz festival, the four of us headed to Habangcheon to a friend of James' house named Jess. Jess had recently moved to a new apartment and gotten her Masters, so she was celebrating by throwing a house party. The four of us waited for almost an hour for two girls I had met online who live in Apgujeong and had just arrived in Korea less than three weeks ago. The six of us went to Jess' house, where we stayed until around 3am, at which time things were beginning to slow down and I decided it was time to call it a night. I went to Uijeongbu the next morning for a doctor's check up, and met up with a former Korean co-worker of mine from EWAS for coffee, and then had dinner with another co-worker before heading back home to Seoul.

I'm also a member of the national council for ATEK. We've recently elected our first president, and we held our first meeting on Skype on Wednesday. It's a fledgling organization, and as hogwan representative for the country, I'm finding it a bit hard to know my role and what I can do to help. I'm doing what I can, though, and I hope over the next year the roles become a bit more defined and I'm able to help a little bit more.

This weekend I plan on going to the Seoul Mass Freeze, and then I'm throwing a housewarming party on Saturday on my rooftop. We'll see how that goes - I'm historically rather bad at throwing parties, but this will be byob so I don't go broke. The rooftop should keep the neighbors from getting annoyed, and I live close to a downtown area, so if people get bored we can always migrate.

And next Monday is International Costume day at school (I'm doing Ireland!), Thursday is a half day, and we have Friday off for Chuseok - the Korean Thanksgiving. I'll probably be going to the islands near Incheon for Chuseok with Gary, Kathryn, James, and Kobus (a friend of James').

Busy, busy!