Last week I said to myself, 'self, you should go hiking on Saturday'. It was a great idea. However I realized that I probably would find an excuse to not actually do it, because hiking is hard when you haven't exercised in a few months and I tend to get lazy sometimes.
So when I saw an ad for another Adventure Korea trip to Gangcheonsan (Gangcheon+mountain) I decided to sign up. I sent a message to some of my Adventure friends about it and they all decided to go too. So now I had a plan for the weekend to meet up with some friends and go hiking and then to a festival in Suchang, in the province south of us.
On Wednesday I was surprised to learn that I would be getting a free day off on Friday. So I ran some errands in Seoul and took the opportunity to go to the North Korea Peace meeting that normally I can never go to, since I work late. It was a great meeting and left me really energized again for this group! (By the way, if you didn't see it, the Fairmont Sentinel ran a story on it after a few lengthy email exchanges with me...it was very well done!)
Anyway on Saturday we got on the bus at 7am and headed south. After about 4 hours we got to the state park where the mountain was and began our hike right away.
At first it was just a trail full of people meandering through the autumn foliage. All flat and easy. The trees were just about at peak color. Add to that the waterfalls and temple and streams and it was a really beautiful hike.
Then we headed into the forest.
Pretty quickly, the crowds fell away and it was just our group walking up a winding trail. For a while it was pretty easy. The trail was mostly unkempt and crossed a few mountain streams. The weather was perfect and it was very enjoyable.
But then it started to get steeper.
When we were walking the level of steepness which I thought was about the max I would want to even try, our guide told us it was about another hour and a half. And it got even steeper. Continuously.
Finally we got to a sign. We're there! I thought.
But no. It was 400 meters straight up, or 600 meters the longer, slightly less steep way. I figured damnint, I came here to hike so I'm going to hike! And trudged up the extremely steep incline. At many points I had to use trees to hoist myself up. My calves were killing me but luckily my lungs were doing their job just fine (it was the first real workout since pneumonia!)
It wasn't long before one girl and I had fallen far behind the rest of the group. At least there were a few yet behind us. Anyway, we lost sight of them. But luckily the trail was clear enough to follow.
Finally we got to what we thought was the top. She was really struggling and I was ready to be to the summit already. But no one was there. We called out but no one responded. Earlier I had heard the guide yell something about 'right' in Korean to the guide in back, so I figured maybe they had gone that way. So we took that fork that led us along a very narrow footpath between the steep slope and a very large boulder/rocky top to the mountain. Soon we came across this:
Don't worry. It's much steeper than it looks.
I said, mostly to myself 'are we seriously supposed to climb this rope??'
From above, my guide called down, 'yes!'
There were 2 others with me now and we were all a bit horrified. This had been a very difficult hike up to this point and not only was this rope up a the side of a freakin cliff, but we were really tired and not sure we had the strength to hoist ourselves up.
But we'd gone this far.
So I went first. I found if i didn't think about how far I would fall if I lost my grip, it wasn't actually so bad. Putting one hand in front of the other and holding on probably tighter than necessary, I made it!
This is what I saw when I got there:
My camera kinda sucks so it doesn't do it justice. But it was obviously an awesome view. Made all the more awesome by having just endured such a steep, 3 hour hike!
After taking in the view for a while we headed back down. It was much less steep. But going downhill for an hour is actually quite hard on the knees. So it wasn't exactly a cake walk. But it was ok. We came across the south gate of the fortress (I forgot to mention that what we were resting on at the top was actually an ancient fortress wall, that we could see stretched for miles along the mountain ridges).
We took some pictures there until heading to the base. There we sat outside a restaurant and had some water and beer and snacks before heading back to town for dinner.
We were all exhausted, but my friends and I ended up staying up pretty late anyway drinking magkoli and playing rummy. It was a really good time.
But the weekend wasn't over!
Sunday morning we got up to go to the gochujang festival.
Gochujang is a traditional Korean food that is kind of like a thick sauce. Or you could call it red pepper paste. It's served with meat and it's in a lot of other dishes. It's everywhere, really.
The city that holds the festival, Sunchang, makes the most famous gochujang in all of Korea.
I've been writing a while already so I'll try to keep it short.
At the festival, we...
*Made deokkboki (a spicy rice cake dish)
*Learned how to make gochujang.
So first we made gochujang. It contains red pepper powder, bean powder, and rice milk. After mixing it, we tasted it. For me the most prevailing taste was the beans. Not exactly delicious. I thought, ew, this is the worst gochujang I've ever had.
But then the MC told us that actually gochujang must ferment for 6 months before it is served. So then he passed around some aged gochujang to taste.
Now that I had experienced the bean taste, I was easily able to distinguish it in the aged gochujang. But this was also sweet. And clearly sweet due to fermentation.
I have to say, a fingerful of gochujang is not exactly the tastiest thing you could eat.
Anyway we then went outside and we got to take a turn pounding rice in the traditional manner to make rice cakes:
We also learned how they make puffed rice. They put the rice in this iron contraption and put a fire under it, and turn them. Then this happens.
*As foreigners, we were once again a part of the festival's entertainment for the day. We all got to help stir the 'World's Biggest batch of Bibimbap' for the Guiness book of records. It's always fun to be a spectacle in front of hundreds of people.
Then we had time to wander around the festival. We sampled 'the best and most expensive gochujang' in the world. According to the maker. It was made from plums.
We saw a traditional dancing contest. I was curious about what it all meant! My teacher told me yesterday that it was a traditional harvest dance. We also ate some Korean food and listened to to some music. And of course flirted with the cute MC.
Overall it was a great weekend! It's always fun to see new parts of the country. Also it was fun to see my buddies from previous trips again. This really got us in the hiking spirit so we planned to meet up tomorrow to hike Seoul Fortress and then visit the lantern festival downtown. The weather has really cooled down so it will be a great day for a hike.
The big news is that today was Pepero Day!!!
Pepero Day is on 11/11 every year. This year, being 11/11/11, is "Millennium Pepero Day".
For the uninformed, Pepero Day is a perfect example of the power of corporations to influence culture. It was invented several years ago by Lotte, one of the biggest companies in Korea. So now every year people spend craploads of money so they can exchange these:
Many holidays in the states are like this nowadays...but I love the fact that no one has any illusions as to the meaning of this holiday. Everyone knows it was made up by Lotte for profit and everyone does it anyway.
And why not? Pepero day is a glorious day.
Last year, I got 12 boxes, a huge paycheck, and found strawberries for the first time.
This year, I got 9 boxes and a juice drink (not that I'm counting, but I got more than any other foreign teacher by far!). Plus, my agent just texted me that he saw strawberries on the market again. AND I started taekwondo again!!!!!
So now I'm going to taekwondo 3 days a week. My co-workers dad runs the dojang about 20 minutes away. He trains taekwondo masters who want to go to America to teach, so it's kind of a combination of their getting training in teaching taekwondo in English, and our (me and 3 other foreign teachers) getting general taekwondo instruction. It's pretty much the perfect situation.
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I was a bit nervous because I haven't trained in about 2 months so was worried that not only would I be much less flexible, but that I'd forgotten some things.
We did kicks and forms today. I made some mistakes in the forms but I remembered more than I thought I would. Also they all praised my side kick, which was nice because I always thought it was my weakest.
The funny thing is that since I learned everything I know about taekwondo in Korean, the English terms are unfamiliar to me. They said, do the horse-riding stance! I had to think for a moment to remember what that was. Then they said, do the roundhouse kick! I didn't even know. But when they said it in Korean, I was all over it. So I guess I'll have to relearn some of those things!
But overall it's pretty much perfect because there are 3 Korean masters plus the grandmaster, and with me there are 4 foreign (that is, Western, English speaking) students. So it's basically one-on-one instruction.
It was another glorious Pepero Day!
Here is the link to my facebook album for the rest of my pictures from last weekend. Enjoy!
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