Recent Happenings.

There are many times I find it difficult to convince myself that I need to publish a blog post.  On one hand it makes it easy to tell people who care/know about my blog/know how to use the internet what we are doing in SoKo in one fell swoop as opposed to telling roughly the same story numerous times.  There are also times, however, when I am too lazy to write a post and I feel like I don't need to update on much.  One thing that I find to be true and most common for all travelers is that there is an air of arrogance and boasting between them.  Most travelers have this incessant need to tell other people where they have been and what they have done.  If you get a handful of travelers around a cocktail table you'll know what I'm talking about.  While I find myself in that category I try to curb my enthusiasm when sharing stories with people who have never left state side.  That is why I decided to write a blog in the first place because I can brag all I want and nobody has to listen.  

I digress.

The month is April, and the last I have written a post was April 1st.  Twenty days has been a good break for me but terribly long (I'm assuming) for my readers.  While my writing style hooks a reader faster than J.K. Rowling, I figured it would be apropos to allow some time to pass before anything significant happens in our lives.  With that being said, I will start this epic post.

The Others

At this point Kelly and I have been living in Korea for about 4 full months and the possibility of having people come visit us was about as mysterious and unpredictable as "The Others" from Lost.  We have had the pleasure of having Ms. Meghan Donner and Mr. Drew Gernand visit us for about a week.  The living quarters were tight but it was comfortable.  Drew visited us from Thailand and Meghan flew all the way from Minnesota for the week.  It was a great time.

Cherry Blossom Festival

One cool thing about coming to Korea in the winter time is that we are able to see the sweet transformation in the spring.  Blossoming trees are a boomin.  Two trees in particular are in full bloom and they look beautiful.  The first of which is the magnolia and the second is the cherry blossom.  Cherry blossoms, like in Japan, are everywhere.  The cherry blossom festival is a pretty big festival, however, Korea is having their worst/longest winter in a long time rendering a late blossoming season.  One of the perks of living here is that we are able to see them regardless of how late they are.

A couple enjoying the festival.

This is a common food vendor stand.  Octopus.  I will never eat it, but will certainly take a picture of it.

Korean Baseball

We were able to experience our first baseball game this past Saturday.  We have heard a lot of good reviews about baseball in Korea, and let me tell you that it is an experience much different from the MLB.  The first aspect of this game that I very much appreciated was that it was my first outdoor baseball game.  I know that sounds crazy but I have only been to Twins games in the Metrodome, not an ideal place to watch baseball.  The second aspect was that we went with some good people.  We were able to go to the game with Mr. Reuben Haggar, Sir Erik Johnson, Miss Holly Schoephoerster, Count Drew Gernand, and Mme Kelly Freeburg.

 

The enthusasim at this baseball game was unlike anything I have experienced at a sporting event.  Well, I have experienced a lot of energy and excitement at a baseball game, but not for 9 straight innings.  Before we went to this game a fellow coworker of ours stated "every pitch is like the final pitch of the World Series."  While I took that comment with a mega huge grain of salt, he was not too far off.  If the batter made contact with the baseball, I thought people were going to charge the field, only to find out it went foul.  There were cheerleaders and guys who flamboyantly stood on a deck and led chants.  People were going crazy.  It was the most fun I have ever had at a baseball game.  (Those bags were our version of rally caps.  They were passed out to everyone and the visitors side was a sea of orange bags.)

Lake Park Musical Fountain

As mentioned in a previous blog post we live near a big attraction called Lake Park.  It is allegedly the largest man made lake in Asia.  At one end of this park lies, what I believe, the 8th wonder of the world.  Not really, but it is incredible.  There is an enourmous musical fountain.  When Kelly and I first got here in December, we noticed this attraction.  We have been greatly anticipating the debut of this musical fountain for 4 long months.  The show is 1 hour long and from April-June it is only on the weekends.  Througout the summer it is everynight.

The debut of this musical fountain from a lifetime in hypernation lied on the same weekend that our friends visited us.  The first night we missed the show by an hour, coming at 8:30 which was the exact same time it ended.  We then decided to come back the following night but it got cut short.  We were, however, able to go back the next weekend and were able to watch the full show.

The show was amazing.  It was very relaxing just to be able to sit and watch this show for an entire hour.  If we were not mesmerized in the streaming lights and flowing water we could just relax with good conversatoin. 

We certainly will make regular visits to this fantastic show.   Click to view a short clip of the fountain, or look on our web album.

Or click this one.

Scouring the land

Make no mistake for those who know me well, know that I am an advocate of adventure.  I'm also an advocate for documentation of adventure in a skillful and craftful manner (I mean photography, a world in which I do not fully understand but am beginning to consider).  One reason why Korea is a perfect match for Pete Freeburg is because it caters well to my obsessions.  I love being married, check (wife is here).  I love traveling, check.  I love hiking, check.  I love taking pictures, check.  I love awkward moments with people I cannot communicate with, check.  I love trying to observe cultural complexities and mysteries that seem to make no sense, check.  Korea houses many of my opiates.

Korea's national sport is Taekwondo.  I know this because I see gyms all over the place and nearly all of my students practice Taekwondo.  They even wear their uniforms to school to prove it.  I am convinced that one of my students has his Taekwondo uniform sewn onto him, because I have never seem him in anything other than that uniform for weeks.  The reason I'm discussing Taekwondo is because hiking, as it appears, is more popular than even their national sport.  Boo ya.  I love hiking, too.

Korea is a very mountainous penninsula such that you do not have to look very far, nor travel very far to see mountains to hike them and enjoy their beauty.  North Korea is actually more mountainous and scenic in that dimension, which is why prior to the Korean War, North Korea was actually more prosperous than their democratic counterpart on the basis of natural resources.  North Korea had more natural resources and factories (such as ore and so forth), which made it appear that they were the prevailing country, where as South Korea was doing miserably.  It was up until the 60's or 70's when South Korea realized they needed to funnel their energy into a working economy to prosper, specifically in technology development.  To this day, North Korean leaders have also lost their minds, which in no part aids an already failing economy. 

Regardless, I knew that hiking was popular in Korea but I just didn't know how to get my hands on it.  I could see the mountains and I knew if I got on the right subway or the right bus, I could get to them. I just have the problem of not being able to talk to anyone who knows the answers.  **Introduce a legitimate functionality of Facebook as a powerful networking tool.**  There are many Facebook groups that cater to foreigners in Korea, one that I found (with direction from Holly Bonnema and Kaley Eastman) is called Seoul Hiking Group.  This group does a lot of hiking and adventure type things on the weekends and are very cheap.  So cheap, in some instances they are free.  Boo ya.  It is also a great way to meet some other cool (and sometimes lame) foreigners in Seoul.  

                                                         Suraksan and Bulamsan

The last weekend of March we got our first taste of hiking in Korea.  We went to Suraksan and Bulamsan, about 1.5 hours away from our apartment but about 25 mintues via subway outside of downtown Seoul.  So it is relatively close.  We met some great people and had some amazing hiking.  It was really awesome.  One problem, I might add, is that whenever Kelly and I plan to do something fun outdoors on the weekends it usually is very cloudy and hazy.  This is OK, but usually 9 out of 10 times the next day in which we are not planning anything, it is really sunny and about 10 degrees warmer.  Korea is playing hard to get...and I like it.  We are very much anticipating Spring and Summer, as it will be a completely different experience.  While it pains me to say this, I cannot upload any photos on this blog of that trip because I shot all my pictures in RAW, rendering the file size very large.  They are, however, up on the Picasa Web Album.  If you are not too lazy to click on the link on the right of the blog then you can see them there! :)

                                            Yeosoo, Suncheon Man, odong do, Youngchi San

This past weekend I went with the Seoul Hiking Group to southern Korea for a day of hiking.  We left a subway station in downtown Seoul at 11:30 p.m. on Friday night and rode a bus for about 5 hours through the night.  We started a sunrise hike at 5:20 am and hiked until around noon when we had lunch.  It was so nice to get outside of Seoul and see some more landscape of Korea and some smaller towns. 

What makes this particual trip so appealing to many hikers is because there are some areas of the mountains that are completely covered in Rhododendron flowers.  In full bloom,  the hills appear to be purple.  It was very beautiful for us even though they were not in full bloom. Still, there were many blooming flowers.

 

After lunch we went to this island that was completley tourist-ized.  It was a beautiful island, very small but developed.  It was more of a big park but covered in trees.

The shoreline of this island.  The island itself takes about 30-45 minutes to walk around.

This is the singing fountain.  I have a video of it, but I can't seem to find it.  The fountains were, at one point, in rhythmical coordination with Queen's, "We Will Rock You."  Remember cultural oddities I try to observe?  That was one of them.  Why Queen with a musical fountain on a tourist island?

After the island we went to a nature reserve.  It was once a huge bay but has since dried up.  It is now, according to our hiking leader who organized this trip, the 5th largest swamp in the world.

The view of the wetland from the highest observation point.

Once again, all of the pictures are on the Picasa Web Album.  If you want your life to be changed forever, if you want something to tell your grandchildren, if you are looking for ways to acheive world peace, then I suggest you check them out.