My life in Korea: I am back. Sorry for the hiatus.

Wow it has been awhile. I am BACK

Hiking

I went hiking several times since my last blog. There were 2 big ones that are the most worth mentioning. Taebaeksan was the first and I went with the climbing club. As any adventure with them I never really know what I am in store for. This was a winter hike and it was to a very high peak. But it was a relatively short hike for the height. It was a lot of fun and there was great scenery the whole way up. The view at the top was breath taking as always. And then we went just off the top and had lunch. The parents brought plastic bags similar to softener salt bags. Which became sleds; everyone had a good time sledding down the shortest of slopes. Maybe only 30ft long into a little bunch of trees. And it was great to see even the oldest in the group doing it. Once again it was another successful hike that I would do again in a heartbeat. A few weeks later I met up with my friend Nikki in Busan and we climbed Geumjeongsan. Which is a mountain range with a cable car to the top and you can walk along the top ridge from end to end. We skipped the cable car and hiked up the mountain. And when we reached the top the view of Busan , the 2^nd biggest city in Korea, was amazing. You can see that in the pictures. The hike was longer than expected. But along the ridge there was a fortress that was used in wars hundreds of years ago. At one point there was a sign that said photo zone. Every Korean would stand right in front of the sign and try blocking it instead of just moving over two feet and avoiding the sign. It was really funny to watch. The hike took about 5.5 hours and was around 13km. It was a great hike but it felt great to complete it. I have many more hikes lined up, I am actually going to lead a hike with a friend for foreigners in town. It is going to be fun. Many people want to hike but don’t realize how accessible they are.

Rock Climbing

Since the weather has warmed up I have been Rock Climbing a lot more. I try to climb 3x a week. I have been doing more natural rock climbing as well. One of them was at this mountain Hakasan. That is where everything changed. I normally had my own harness that I was borrowing. Then I had to share, sounds greedy but I hated that missed out on half the day of climbing. So a couple days later I bought my own harness. It makes me feel much more official. I am starting to become a real climber. Also what I love is the improvement I have seen. All aspects of my climbing seem to be improving ever week. I feel addicted, and I am excited to go every time. At Hakasan they did this ceremony basically praying for a safe season of climbing. And it was being recorded by a local tv station. They had me be one of the parts of it not just an awkward foreigner in the back ground. It was very interesting but a lot of fun. More than that I was honored, they have really taken me under their arm as one of their own. I can’t wait till I get home and I can go to a climbing gym when I get back. I know I will improve even faster. There will be people whom can actually teach me the technique

without a language barrier.

Caving/ Dumb Travels

About a month ago I went on this caving trip. It was with a well-known traveling group. Before I get into the caving let me tell you about my travel nightmare. I had to be in Seoul at 7am, but I was being cheap and didn’t want to stay in a hotel up there so I took the 2am train from Andong. Got there at about 5:50 and then made my way to the meet up point. For ppl in Mi. that is like Lansing to the Bridge. At the meet up point I thought we were going west. NO! we went south but I didn’t notice till we got back to Seoul. We went 2.5hrs South. To a place that is a 45min-1hr bus ride for me. Where I could have met everyone if I had looked it up. So let’s do the math. What could have been 2hours traveling total turned into 4hrs(train Seoul) +2.5(bus to caves) +2.5 (bus back to Seoul)+3.5(bus to Andong)+ about 12.5 hours in one day. What a mess!!!

But besides that it was a lot of fun. I met up with a fellow EMU student and made two additional friends. First we started out with a relaxing ferry ride for about an hour. Which was really nice, we all just relaxed and got to know each other a little more. Amongst all the chaos and the fast paced society of Korea it is nice to just chill. Then we made our way to the cave. And it was a lot bigger and deeper than I expected. It had all the different textures that a cave could have. And at the beginning there was plaques showing each of the different rocks/texture styles and telling you how they are formed. Which was very interesting. There was water dripping from the top of the cave that would fall on us. At one point Dave decided to take his shoes off and both Antoinette and Lauren joined him as they went over the ropes into the do not ever zone where there was a small pool of water. I was the camera man, while an old man yelled at them, especially Dave, and just gave them the death stare till they got out. It is a big Korean no-no to be in public without shoes. Even wearing sandals without socks you will get looks.