So things have definitely been put on cruise control lately. In the last few weeks I have felt like a ghost. I blink and all of a sudden it's the next day, yet still time somehow seems to be dragging on... That sounded a lot more depressed than I am. I am actually feeling great, don't get me wrong. Maybe it's starting to hit home that I am going to be leaving soon and my world is going to be turned upside down again (or rightside-up, depending on how you look at it).
Anyhow, onto the fun part. Last weekend I went to the tallest mountain in Korea, Seoraksan, with Adventure Korea Tour groups, where we (as usual) had an absolute blast. I always seem to meet awesome people with that group. I kind of signed on with Ryan and Kristin at first, but we weren't on the same bus, nor did we hike the same trail, nor did we sleep in the same building, or ever eat or basically hang out together the whole trip. That was alright with me, like I said before, I always seem to meet cool people out here.
We got on the bus for about 4 or 5 hours heading out East and got to know our busmates for the first chunk of the trip on Saturday morning, after which we grabbed some buffet bibimbap (a very healthy veggie/rice mix with a fried egg and some red pepper paste) and started up the mountain. It was nothing short of beautiful from top to bottom, and though we barely missed the leaves at their brightest colors, they were still in fine form. Just a great hike and an awesome last trip (at least for the time being) in Korea. Not much in the way of stories here, just hiked up it and hiked down it. I was kind of antisocial and passed people too fast to have a conversation for a good chunk of it. I hadn't had a good hike for a while, so sue me. There was a massive set of stairs winding their way straight up for the last 873 meters (we read the sign) that was pretty fun and tough, though. And you could see the ocean from the top, which was also cool. Oh and there was a 'rolling boulder' that apparently if you push the right way, just one person can push it and it will move. But there was a massive lineup of Koreans taking pictures in front of it, none of which were even attempting to roll it, which was, well... Korean.
After the hike, we all came back to the hotel, cleaned ourselves up a touch, and grabbed some dinner/drinks in the very secluded little mountain community. We swapped stories, drank a little more, and one thing led to another, and eventually we had a massive group of semi to full-on-inebriated people combined in the hotel lobby playing drinking games. In the spirit of one-thing-leading-to-another, we played 3 games that night, starting with a card game called 'Red or Black' (kind of self explanatory). To kick things up a notch, we then proceeded to play 'I've never...' (which is not self explanatory, but very quick to pick up), which was
very informative. By the end of this second stage, I wasn't sure what most peoples' names were, but I did know if they had or had not done countless unspeakable acts. If that wasn't enough, we then upped the ante again and played 'Spin the Bottle' (if not self-explanatory, was probably explained to you when you were 12) for a little while. After no one could think of anything to top that, we each went our separate ways (I think) and everyone went to bed.
The next day we woke up at around 9 am to some nervous morning greetings of 'Hey, you're the guy/girl who ____, right?' and had a nice little breakfast of toast and oranges, and some people definitely needed there coffee dose as well that. After that, we went on a cool little morning hike to a waterfall. It reminded me of hiking up to Lower Falls, for you BC folk, except the rocks were redder. The waterfall itself was kind of cool, but I'm kind of spoiled when it comes to them. What surprised me more was the old bridge that had obviously snapped and was hanging out over the pool the waterfall fed into. I guess they figured it's easier to just leave it there, but it's a little ominous, and you have to wonder if anyone was on that thing when it snapped.
After this, we headed back to the hotel, had a very light lunch and hopped on the bus home. This turned out to be the second worst bus ride I had ever been on (the #1 spot has to go to the China bus and always will be). What had taken 4-5 hours to get to, took us 8 hours to get home. It was dark out and we had no idea where the heck we were, so we spent the last 3 hours thinking, 'Alright, 10 more minutes and we'll be there.' It was the sucks.
On a side note, my computer isn't working so I can't put my own pictures up, yet. As a cop out, you can go to a guy I met from Edmonton named Clayton's website. He took some amazing pictures.
www.flickr.com/photos/clayrdeanThis will probably be the last blog, at least from Korea, so any unwritten stories will have to be told in person.
It's been real...
