Hiking Dobongsan

Sabbath, June 9, was Jonathan's day to decide what to do. It being his birthday, I thought it only fair to let him choose how we should spend our last weekend off of our time in Korea. He picked hiking Dobongsan (Dobong Mountain). We researched how to get there on the subway and what peak to climb the evening before. Then that day, we were lazy in the morning and didn't arrive at the mountain until around 11 a.m. That was a bad choice as June was already sweltering, but we accepted the sweat dripping down our bodies and faces as our punishment. Dobongsan, within Bukhansan National Park, is one of the tallest mountains in Seoul with an elevation of 739.5 m (2,426 ft). It is also one of the most popular mountains to climb because of its proximity to Seoul and easy access from two subway stations.

Before reaching the park gates, we first had to maneuver through the maze of hiking stores and restaurants for 15 minutes. After grabbing an English map and asking a park ranger to point us to the peak, we set out. The first part of the trail was on an easy cobble-stone road that soon turned into a dirt path. Every so often we would come across stone stairs. About halfway up the mountain (or so we thought at the time) two Korean men passed us as we stopped to rest and rehydrate. We caught up to them again and one of the men spoke to us in very good English. He asked us all kinds of questions as we hiked up one section together, and told us that he hiked every weekend and had brought his friend along on the hike today. We gathered that the friend wasn't nearly as avid a hiker as he was, since he stopped often to let his friend rest. We continued stopping and catching up to each other for the rest of that part of the trail until we reached the ridge.

Then the REAL climb began as we came to an infinite wall of stone stairs reaching ever further up the mountain. I was ready to quit after just a few minutes of the tall stairs, but we stopped to eat part of our food and rested every few minutes from the steep climb. Somehow we managed to get past the stone stairs and then had to tackle metal stairs up the last portion. Once we reached the top of the metal stairs, we hauled ourselves up to the summit, pulling hand-over-hand with a hand railing up the very steep boulders. It was an incredibly hard hike with the incessant heat and tower of stairs, but the view from the top was, as always, amazing, although we were a little sad that the day was so hazy and Seoul was barely visible through the smog. After a well-earned rest and lots of pictures from the peak, we headed back down the mountain, going on a different trail, and finally resting our feet in a cool mountain stream before getting back to the city streets and myriad hiking stores. When we got home, we had celebratory cake for Jonathan's birthday (and for actually making it to the peak of Dobongsan). A splendid ending to a memorable day! :)

Map of the mountains we would be hiking in. Unfortunately we were unable to discover the actual peak we were aiming for.

Where we are headed

We discovered that if you somehow managed to roll out of bed stark naked and forget EVERYTHING,
you could completely suit up and gear up as you walked through the maze of shops to the trailhead.

Getting water from a rock

Lantern

Very rocky mountain

Looking back down at northeastern Seoul

Up into the hazy yonder...

Demoing the ropes for climbing which I didn't need

It was pretty steep and these railings were almost necessary at times, especially right at the top

At the top!

I attempted a 360 degree panorama but Photoshop didn't want to do it... I think I got maybe 180 degrees,
the rest was too featureless to find merge points (click to view larger)

Quite nice scenery

Seoul

Overlook

Fish in a stream where we bathed our tired feet

Tiny cascade

Back down in the shops

Upon our return, we found this celebratory sign - never found out who it was from...

The cake Ali got me - from Paris Baguette

1st birthday party

Pastor Jonathan, the assistant director of the Seoul Main institute, invited our director, Pastor Kim, and all of the teachers to his son's 1st birthday party on May 27. In Korea 1st birthdays are a big event. I'm not quite sure why since Koreans don't count age by the western scale, but apparently 1st birthdays are the exception.

The event was held at a vegetarian restaurant about half an hour from the institute. Part of the restaurant was reserved for the large birthday party group of relatives and teachers. Pastor Jonathan, his wife, and his little son, Hyun Su (English name, Ken), were all dressed up in matching pink and navy hanbok, traditional Korean clothing. Each guest brought a gift of money, the traditional gift for a 1st birthday.

While we were waiting for the party to begin (apparently we got there early), we were asked to write a small note of well-wishing on small slips of paper that were placed in a box on the main table. During this time, Pastor Kim also told us teachers about a certain prediction event that takes place at 1st birthday parties. A tray is prepared with various career-associated objects arranged on it (for this birthday the tray included: a Bible, a pencil, a soccer ball, a toy microphone, a stethoscope, and a 1,000 won bill to signify the careers: pastor, writer, athlete, singer, doctor, and rich person, respectively). Each guest guesses which object the baby will choose when the tray is held in front of him. All the guesses are then put into different boxes labeled with the item that was guessed. Once the child has chosen an item, the parents draw a name from the box labeled with that item, and the guest's name who is picked gets a prize. So we all made guesses, wrote them on slips of paper, and put them in the correct boxes. When the time came for Hyun Su to pick an object, he eagerly picked up one item, then tossed it to the ground and grabbed a second one. The consensus was to put both items back on the tray and let Hyun Su try once more. Unfortunately, neither Jonathan nor I can remember what he picked on any of the tries, but neither of us guessed the final object...

Here are just a few pictures of the first Korean 1st birthday party, we attended. We didn't get many pictures, but we did have a good time and learn a lot about another new-for-us Korean tradition.

Teachers talking to Hyun Su and his parents

Tray with career-predicting items (not sure what the cloth items are, and the money was added later)

The family (mother's side is Japanese and father's side is Korean)

Christmas and Boxing Day

Our Christmas was enjoyable and relaxing! We especially loved being able to celebrate together for the first time ever! It sure beats only being able to chat on Skype... Christmas evening we had Fabrice over for a Christmas movie (Elf!) and then he took us to a department store, La Galleria, not too far from our apartment. We enjoyed the views from the eighth-floor balcony, browsed through a completely Korean bookstore (not my favourite type of bookstore...all the covers looked so appealing, but I couldn't understand one letter...), and ended up in the basement eating amazing American food!

Boxing Day (December 26 for those of you who aren't familiar with the Commonwealth holiday) was literally boxing day for us. We started to pack up our things and do a final cleaning of our apartment. In amongst the cleaning we also managed to find time to take Fabrice out to Toujours, a local patisserie and coffee house, for his birthday. Tuesday we continued packing, cleaning and moving furniture back into the rooms we found it in and today our apartment is empty of all our items (except the row of suitcases standing near the door) and ready for the next set of Seocheonan institute teachers to move in. We'll miss living in our spacious apartment and walking through the now-familiar streets of Cheonan, but we're excited for our 5-day sightseeing vacation to Busan, a city in southeastern Korea. Next term will be very different for us, but I think it will be good, too. Please pray for us as we move and begin a new chapter of our lives in South Korea.

Finished Christmas calendars (we managed to find them in the international aisle at E-Mart)

Eiffel Tower & Ferris wheel in front of La Galleria

Hedge bunnies

Smurf village (with oddly-sized animals)

La Galleria looking up from the ground floor

La Galleria's changing light walls displaying Christmas trees and snow

Christmas-themed blueberry cheesecake from Paris Baguette

Scrubbing the cupboards
(That purple bottle is the best all-purpose cleaner I've ever used! Sadly I can't read the name...)

The line between scrubbed and unscrubbed...

Jonathan vacuuming 

Tourjours bakery below, coffee shop above

Interesting coffee descriptions... (we decided to stick to hot chocolate and herbal tea)

Coffee beans on display

The infamous Kenyan coffee (refer to menu above)

An improvement on the traditional North American right-side-up Christmas tree 

Fellow Seocheonan teachers outside Tourjours - Fabrice, Ali & Jonathan

Neat circular walking bridge around a large intersection

View from the top of the walking bridge

Suitcases lined up ready to be shipped to Seoul while we head to Busan for the rest of our term break

Last picture of our apartment as we walked away to catch a taxi to the KTX station