Chiak Mountain - I Can't Go On I'll Go On

For those of you who don't understand the title, pick up a copy of Bandslam. We watched it while eating delicious chicken on our first annual roommate night. If you aren't sure what this movie is, i'll just tell you that it falls somewhere between High School Musical and School of Rock (I enjoyed one and refuse to even watch the other, i'll let you figure out which). Anyways it was an enjoyable night even if the film choice didn't exactly capture my complete attention

The band name in the movie (I can't go on i'll go on), gives the most fitting description of our experience last weekend on Wonju's Chiak Mountain. It all started with my roommate Sung Jun suggesting that we go hiking on Saturday. Of course I loved the idea and since it was supposed to be a nice day Sung Jun suggested that we climb Chiak mountian in the National Park. On the internet it said the hike was about 2 and a half hours to the top, so we figured that would make for a nice little day trip. At 9:30am, we put on our jeans, sweatshirts and tennis shoes and headed out into some nice Spring weather. The sun was shining with a few clouds in the sky and the temperature was supposed to hit 50 later in the day. We arrived at the mountain and started climbing around 11am. The trail head said that our path was a distance of 5.4 Km to the top. That translates to just over three miles. As we started hiking a trail similar to that of the Gorge in Akron, I thought to myself "There is no way this will take 2.5 hours, this is going to be a cake walk..." Looking back I was only right about one thing, it didn't take 2.5 hours.

After about 40 minutes, we came to a bridge that crossed over a section of the creek and discovered a sign that said it was only 2.7 km to the peak. In case you're too lazy to do that math, that is half way to our destination. We had been gradually increasing in elevation, but there were still towering mountains on either side of us, and I was beginning to wonder if the view from our "mountain" would even put us in the position to see over the other real mountains. Thats when things went downhill... or more literally, uphill. The moment we crossed the bridge we were faced with a looming flight of stairs that continued into the heavens. Not really, it was just a really long flight of stairs, followed by another long flight of stairs, followed by a strip of rocks lined with steal cable's to grab onto as you cross because the drop off was so steep.

After crossing the narrow rock ledges and climbing the rope to the top of a large boulder, we realized there was a little bit of snow left on the ground. It was more annoying than anything, but it was proof that we were gaining altitude. Larger mountains still loomed around us and for the rest of our hike it always looked like we were almost to the top. However, every time we got to the top of a section, it revealed another large section yet to climb.

After a good hour of exhausting climbing over rocks, stairs and muddy paths, we arrived at another distance sign. We fully expected to be almost to the top, but strangely our sign read, "Birobong Peak - 2.2 km." There have been few moments I can remember that were as disheartening reading that sign. An hour of hard hiking / climbing had only gotten us 0.5 km after we trekked through 2.7 in 45 minutes. By that point there was a thin layer of slushy snow covering a lot of the ground, but the path was still mostly mud. Another climber, who was decked out in North Face climbing gear, informed us that we still had over an hour to the summit. By this point I had noticed numerous hikers loaded with day packs and extreme gear, but I figured it was because they climb regularly or they have the money to blow on fancy gear.

As we pressed forward our obstacles become more imposing and the snow continued to get deeper and more widespread. Long, steep, uphill sections lined with ropes, winding steep staircases, and more weird boulder sections made up the rest of the hike. As we climbed higher, I noticed that not only were we in the minority with our jeans and tennis shoes, we were actually the only ones not decked out from head to toe with expensive hiking jackets, snow pants, hiking poles, hiking boots with metal spikes, and daypacks with meals and hot water. By this point people were giving us strange looks and Wooseok's low-top converse shoes were completely soaked. I still don't know why, but we continued on...

Finally we got to a spot that was .5 km away. A group camped out there had made lunch and shared some food with us as well as hot coffee. By now there was about 6-7 inches of snow on the ground and everything was covered with snow. We could see where the summit was, but not the actual summit because there was a cloud resting over it. A large group came by and recommended that we turn around, but we had not come that far to stop short of the top.

Exhausted, soaked and unsure how we would get down, we arrived at the top of the mountain after 3+ hours of climbing. At a modest 2188m, the mountain gave us the view we had hoped for as it overlooked all the other peaks in the park. We took some pictures and to our great pleasure, we watched as the cloud moved off of our mountain and opened up an incredible view. More people shared their rations with us and took our picture before we headed back down. The way down only took 2.5 hours as we discovered we could use our flat bottomed shoes as skies and hold onto the ropes in a crouched position and simply slide down the most of the mountain paths. It was really fun and only moderately unintelligent.

I'm sure there's more to the story, but the pictures will have to do. If you ever find yourself climbing a mountain, swimming across an ocean, biking across a country, or anything else extreme; remember this phrase inspired by Dui from Bandslam, "I can't go on, i'll go on."

Let the Studying Begin

Well there hasn't been too much going on recently other than classes and one on one's with the Korean students in the GV program. I woke up this morning to about 4 inches of snow after a few days of 50 degrees... apparently Korea isn't that different from Ohio after all. Fortunately its going to be almost 60 this weekend. I'm playing lots of soccer and hanging out with a lot of the GV students which is very cool. Me and two of my roommates climbed a mountain on Saturday, and believe me when I call it a mountain. I'll give a full update on that adventure with pictures later, but I will say now that we were the only people on that mountain wearing tennis shoes, jeans and casual sweatshirts... and it wasn't to our advantage.

We learned the Korean alphabet this week in class so I can now sound out Korean words and spell my name in Korean. I got really excited about it at first until I realized that sounding out a word is still pretty far from having any clue what it means... but hey, its a step in the right direction.

Okay that is really brief, but maybe on Friday or Saturday i'll update in full. Peace

I Didn't Know It Was Edible Either

So you probably thought that everything from my last post was enough for one weekend. I mean, there couldn't possibly be more things to see and weirder things to eat in the same weekend. After all, I have to sleep at some point, right?

Wrong, say hello to Busan, the second largest city in Korea and one of the two destinations we travelled to with the remainder of our weekend. Oh, we also viewed this skyline from a penthouse on the 19th floor of one of the nicer hotels in Busan, no big deal. (More on that later).

The whole trip was centered around visiting a friend of Josh and I named Taeyoung. She was an exchange student in Akron for a year and we got to know her well during her time in Akron and we wanted to visit her in Korea. We left Saturday at noon and went to Gwangju, Taeyoung's home town. It was a 4 hour bus ride, then Taeyoung met us at the bus station and we took a Taxi to her parent's house. Her mom made an incredible meal for us with lots of variety, delicious fruit for dessert, and her homemade blueberry "juice."

Left to Right: Emily (Taeyoung's friend), Weston (Our American Friend), Josh, Mom, Taeyoung, Me

After visiting Taeyoung's family we went out into downtown Gwangju and ate a good meal and went to the "Speakeasy," a bar run by an Irish guy where foreigners gather to drink "the best Guiness in Korea" and listen to local Korean Bands. We watched the Rock Tigers (A Korean Rockabilly band) play a set and then went to bed. The next morning we took off to Busan to experience the popular spots in the city.

Quite possibly the most unique thing we experienced was at the Busan fish market. It was quite as huge as I was expecting, but there was no shortage of unusual fish, popular seafood and other unknown objects from the sea that people apparently eat. Our first meal consisted of fresh cooked eel, which is one of Busan's trademarks. Now you generally expect restaurants to use pre-prepared meat and kitchens to cook the food for you, but not here. We walked into a small tent restaurant big enough for about 20 customers and gathered around a table. As we walked in, we noticed some squirming intestine-like objects and realized that it was eel that had just been skinned. Many of the street vendors actually left plates of skinned eel out front as some sort of sick advertising scheme. PETA South Korea would have a fit if they only knew... or if they existed. Of course I thought it was brilliant and took a pictures of it. 

Before (Nasty / Intestine-like)

After (Delicious meal)

 (Left: typical street restaurant, Right: typical goods for sale)

The eel cooked right in front of us and squirmed for the first few minutes, but then as it cooked and as they chopped it up it got a lot less disgusting. Now the picture of our actual dish is missing some colors from the artsy camera mode, so it actually looked more appetizing than that. There were onions and some peppers and a good sauce with it.

After that meal, we explored for awhile and then went on a mission inspired by our friend Weston. If you thought the eel thing was weird... i'll put it this way, at least the eel was cooked, and dead.

That my friends is Squid. Not grilled squid, not boiled squid, heck not even dead squid. Weston had been talking about his desire to go to Busan and eat live, baby squid, and that is it. Now I pictured tiny little squids about the diameter of a penny, but apparently baby squid are much larger than that. The lady we purchased the squid from took it right out of the tank, chopped off the head, and then just chopped the tentacles into the pieces you see on the plate. If you would like the full effect just click on the picture of the squid to enlarge it and then just imagine every piece on the plate squirming around. That will begin to give you an idea.

Before eating it, we were warned to make sure to chew it well, especially the larger pieces. Why is this you ask? That's because if you eat a large piece without chewing it it could suction itself to your throat and you could choke on it. Comforting, I know. The first bite was awkward, but in all honesty, it was pretty tasty. After the first couple pieces I pursued larger, more lively pieces. When I stuck them in my mouth they would wriggle around and suction themselves to the roof of my mouth and to my tongue. It tickled a little bit, but all in all it was quite a unique experience. We even finished the whole plate (mainly because Weston ate about half of it and the lady kept shoving pieces in our faces).

In case you were wondering, I don't have any more crazy eating stories or pictures, so you can relax and enjoy the rest of the post. The rest of the night was spent at a restaurant, a couple of naribongs and a jinjibong. I may have spelled those wrong in Korenglish, but a naribong is Karaoke room and a jinjibong is a spa, bathhouse, hotel kind of blend. Our first naribong was one we went after dinner, but then as we were on our way to the jinjibong for the night, we got a call from Taeyoung's college professor. It turns out he was in the same hotel that our jinjibong was in and he had apparently reserved a room on the 19th floor for a celebration with some of his students. He really wanted to meet us because Taeyoung was one of his students. We took the elevator up to a room with an insane view of the skyline, platters of fruit and snacks, and a seemingly unlimited supply of beer. We spent a couple hours there singing Karaoke and eating snacks with him and the 10-15 students there and then left after a few toasts. The jinjibong (paid for by the professor) was very cool as well, but since we got their around midnight most of the hot tubs and pools had shut down so we just went to sleep in a large room full of people on small blankets they give you.

(Left: World's Largest Department Store, Right: Breakfast at Starbucks)

That is still only a glance at our experiences in Busan and Gwangju, but I think it highlights the most unique experiences we had. We also saw the world's largest department store and took a bus from the largest bus terminal in Asia. Who knew Korea had those two things?