I promised you I wouldn't leave you hanging, didn't I? And boy do I still have a lot of stories to share.
Prepare thyself!! (for the overwhelming amount of images in this post)
To start our adventure story-telling, let's go on a beach trip!
Ahem. Anyways, the group of us Fulbrighters all went on a very welcomed mini-vacation last last weekend to the east coast of Korea. We stayed at a place called Donghae (which can be super confusing because that is also the Korean name for the East Sea/Sea of Japan). Our adventure begins on a bus ride, bright and early in the morning, powered by the most wonderful power-source ever, CORN!
Yes. They gave us ears of corn to eat at 8:30 in the morning.
Goesan is apparently famous for their peppers and their corn. So we've had almost as much corn as rice and kimchi (rice and kimchi being the staple foods served to us every day in the cafeteria). The ladies in the cafeteria intercepted us on our way out from breakfast and eagerly said that we can take this barrel of freshly boiled corn with us on our 3 hour bus ride. And so we did.
Again, just last week, I went to a coffee shop in town, and sometimes little shops will bring out an extra drink or snack for customers, just as a little thank you, aka free "service". And they served us free corn with our coffee:
Anyways back to the beach trip.
About 30 of us all took a bus to this mountainy area with several different trails to climb. It was a beautiful place with some nice little waterfalls towards the base of the mountain. We all stopped there (at the waterfalls) to play in the water. I didn't want to stop there so long, and my good friend, David, jumped at the challenge of pressing onwards. Adventure time!
David and I broke off and went on an epic hike to the top of the mountain! Here are our triumphant summit pose-photos:
You can't even see the view in these photos
… And in case it's not super obvious… we never made it to the summit…
WAIT! Before you scorn us for our weakling-ness, I just want to say, we were on a time limit, and only the people who chose to stay late and take a taxi back actually made it to the summit… and we wanted to take the bus back…
No! There are more reasons too!
Let me explain.
David and I started on this trail number 2 and it was pretty easy hiking. Subtle rises and metal paths/stairs. The occasional log:
Fourth marker and still feeling great. The world is a good place:
Before the fifth marker, we got stuck behind a group of Korean hikers. They were all mid-aged or older. Definitely in the 아저씨와 아줌마 age-range. They had super-duper hiking gear and hiking poles (Koreans take hiking super seriously), but were traveling at a kinda modest pace, so David and I passed them eventually, hoping to keep up our speed so we'd make it to the summit in time. Things changed very quickly when we got to the fifth marker.
All is not well in the world.
The trail changed from this lovely slow incline:
to a sudden almost vertical climb that you seriously needed the ropes tied to trees along to path to pull yourself up (or hiking poles would have been nice, though sometimes it was too steep to even use those).
Unfortunately photos cannot capture incline. And I wish this one could portray what a challenge this was.
It would have been fine if that steep incline was just a part of the normal hike, but noooo. The path was completely converted into this vertical struggle and it never let off. I quickly lost my breath and we took a break after about 15 minutes of this. Sitting down, red-faced and out of breath, the middle-aged hiking group of Koreans soon passed us. They were still going at their easy pace, and I soon understood why they were taking it easy earlier. They were saving their energy for this son of a jackal. (Aladdin reference anyone?)
If we had more time, David and I could have made it to the summit. If I wasn't feeling slightly sick since the day earlier and maybe we had started a bit slower we definitely would have made it.
If there were switch-backs (hello? who hikes practically straight up a mountain?), we totally could have made it. And to be fair to David, I totally slowed him down on the almost vertical climb and downright gave up just before 2-6 (we were totally more than halfway there). Maybe he would've made it without me. He ran/climbed ahead at around 1 o'clock to see if the path leveled out while I sprawled out again, gasping for air, on our fake summit rock. Since we needed to be back at 2 or so for the bus, and my trusty scout determined the path too treacherous to continue, we decided to forfeit for the day, take our fake victory photos, and conquer the mountain at a future date.
Sometime during the beginning of our decent it started raining. Now I at least brought an umbrella, which if there were switch-backs we totally could have used. But since I kinda needed both hands to climb back down, umbrellas just were not an option and we got soaked.
And then we discovered that my bandana bled dark blue dye when wet… so I had a blue forehead and creepy blue drip marks down my face and neck (you can sort of see it in this photo of us showing off our guns).
All in all, it was a great adventure! I'm super motivated to get more in shape and make time for a complete hike during this upcoming year. David was a great and patient hiking buddy, who even ran ahead at the end to catch the bus for the dead Gabby. The mountains were really beautiful too!
One more fun story! (Sorry I know this is a lot. Patience please dear reader)
This last week a news crew came to Jungwon to film a short news segment about the crazy foreigners and their training camp. They filmed the intermediate level class Korean language class (apparently the advanced class is too boring - but I bet it's because they wanted to film more "foreign" looking people, and our advanced class is over half Korean-American…) and they also filmed our Taekwondo class.
This is almost a complete déjà vu to my summer in Seoul two years ago. At the end of the summer I went to SM Entertainment's big concert right before I left (no, I did not write anything in the blog about it because I was super overwhelmed by the experience. I think I could write a whole book about it!) But that time as well a news crew was doing a special feature on foreigners and the global power of KPOP. This time again, they especially interviewed and targeted close-ups of the most foreign looking people.
I understand you Korean media. You know you are actually super transparent, right?
…. And on both of these occasions I was interviewed. I made my Korean television comeback just last night! New haircut and styling and everything! (you can tell when KPOP stars are about to have a comeback by their newly cut/dyed hair and extreme weight loss)
Here I am on the bus after the concert in 2012:
Cameras in the face!
If you really want you can even see my very intelligent responses here:
In my defense for that terrible interview, I was originally encouraged to do the interview (over all the other, probably more interesting, ETAs learning TKD) because of my Korean language "skills" which are really not that impressive. My mind was racing trying to think of what I should say in Korean and how to, so when the interview was actually going on - and they only wanted me to talk in English, I was very… lackluster. They kept asking "how does it feel to do Taekwondo here?" and I honestly am not very thrilled with the basic moves we are learning (which I already knew from the TKD club at Harvard, and our instructors were also much better, and... Harvard TKD 4 lyf!) but I tried to act positive and kept repeating that it is really fun to learn together with all the ETAs. That was not what they were looking for so they asked again, the same question. Finally when they figured that I had done Taekwondo before, they locked on and asked how is it different doing TKD in KOREA? And so the best thing I could think of at that moment was that lovely quote: "It's more… real?"
A much better quote that would encapsulate my thoughts better would be simply, "It's more authentic" or more accurately "It's exciting to learn in the country that historically created this martial art form."
Alas, I am not a verbose speaker. "real" is the best my deer-in-headlights brain could think of.
That quote, plus the fact that we are all wearing uniforms only a black belt (the highest level of TKD) should wear (while we all are clearly not masters - only beginners) makes me terribly embarrassed. But looking back, it really is quite funny. I think I should look back and laugh at this TV experience like how the KPOP concert was as well. When I was interviewed before, during, and after the concert, I was honestly excited and full of the adrenaline of a concert, so even though I could see through their obvious questions: "Do all your friends love KPOP too?" "Do you listen to their music everyday?" "Will you come back to see another concert?" - I happily obliged with my giddy "Of course, the whole world loves Korea and their amazing culture" lines they were fishing for.
I mean they even had an Olympic opening ceremony-like parade (psst it's a link - click on it), ending with the SMTOWN Nation Flag? This is downright propaganda. And I really enjoyed playing along with it… (The link should start with the American flag and me walking with a gigantic garland on my shoulders).
Seriously. Just look at the size of this thing:
I will be teaching my second class for Camp Fulbright students tomorrow and and not very prepared so… this procrastination post will have to come to an end.
Umm… thanks for reading (or if you just skimmed through the pictures I guess that's cool too)
안녕!
-Gabibimbap (a nickname David made after the korean dish, bibimbap 비빔밥)
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