A bit of Seoul
To begin, a few photos from the jet, as we flew up over Alaska and back down over Russia. In order, you can see some glaciers and arctic mountains, as well as Anchorage (Alaska), and the mountains of central Korea.
I live in a small alleyway near a busy street, but far enough in as to be relatively quiet. I am only a short walk from a subway/tram station, and the subway system here is so efficient that just about all of Seoul is within an hour's reach.
So here's the alleyway:
My balcony is in the top right of the photo, while the open door on the left is Jordan's.
Below is my balcony view, first to the right and then to the left
One day we found our way to a palace downtown... kind of a historical site. The pigeons here are darker coloured:
Typically when I'm out on the town I don't bring the camera, or I completely forget to use it. Jordan and I frequent a few bars, spend time with our students out of class, and spend time exploring town when we can. We've only spent one day in the city outside of Nowon, because it is a big enough district all on it's own. Here's one bustling part of Nowon, where we came across an outdoor concert:
The music was very cheesy. In fact, just about all pop music in Korea is cheesy... arguably even more so than in North America. The 'emo band' archetype is as popular here as it is anywhere; lots of songs pervade radios and music videos about young people breaking up with eachother and lamenting about how nobody understands them, or whatever else.
There are many stores and stands selling life fish and shellfish. I noticed a particularly large crab in a tank whose size wasn't quite captured by the below photo. The shop owners thought my taking a picture was pretty funny:
Finally this weekend I got a chance to get out of town into the largest national park, a mountainous area of 75 square kilometers, just north of the city. We decided to go on a hiking excursion, Myself, Jordan, our friend Sean, and another friend by the name of Jenice; Jenice is a local teacher from Seoul, who speaks well enough to serve both as translator to us and english teacher to the kids at our elementary school. The school employs both "Native" teachers (like Jordan and myself) as well as Korean english teachers (like Jenice). The kids alternate teachers throughout the school week.
Our friend Ty also joined us, but turned back relatively early on in the hike, as the previous night of drinking caught up to him just a little too quickly. Unfortunately I hadn't included him in any photos by the time he left.
After entering the park and walking past a solid kilometer of hiking/climbing gear stores as well as restaurants, we came to the trail up the mountains. There were temples on the way up and down, and the further we hiked, the quieter the atmosphere became. From several temples, here are a few photos I took:
The bell rang later in the evening about 10 times; the park is very quiet in the evening/night; we heard the bell clearly from about two miles away.
There were many little stone statues as well; we were told they represent good luck for hikers. Also, there were many dragonflies; I caught one atop a stone statue (below), then again as it flew up and landed on Jordan's hat:
The distant peaks (below) were our eventual destination. At this point the camera was pointing west, but we first had to travel up to the northeast before crossing a long ridge across. All in all, we began our hike at about half past one, and reached the bottom around 8:30pm.
And here the photos along the way; some point out toward the rest of the park, and some to the city, and some along the ridge to our high destination:
This is the ridge we were to hike across (below):
And a photo pointing off to the north:
Much of the hike consisted of ascending stairs, either wood/metal like these, or stone steps semi-installed into the pathways. The map's stated distances were incredibly deceptive; a mere "200 meter" checkpoint distance would end up being 15 minutes of grueling stair-climbing.
By this point we'd hiked about 2/3 of the ridge, but the hardest was yet to come. The hiking soon turned into full-on use-your-hands climbing at several sections.
Here's a map. If you zoon in, you can see our route from the bottom to the 'you are here,' then up a bit more and along the ridge to the peak on the far right, then back down. Again the short distances are very, very deceptive, as most of the terrain was steep, rocky, and slowgoing. Also note the three temples we saw, two on the way up and another on the way down. The third was barely visible though, as we were hiking in the dark by the time we came to it.
A photo of Seoul from the highest point. The left of the photo is essentially Nowon-Gu where we life. To give a reference, most of those buildings are residential, and each one is as big as Victoria's 'View Towers,' or bigger. Downtown Seoul is just out of sight to the middle-right. The very bottom-left tip of the photo is roughly where we got off the subway and began walking.
Jordan, Sean, Jenice, and myself:
All the solo shots of Jordan are on his camera.
Jenice was clearly improperly dressed for the occasion, as she mistranslated 'hiking' while we made plans as to mean 'walking,' in the sense of strolling. Luckily the dress wasn't restraining, and she picked up some good hiking shoes at the entrance to the park.
Often the best pictures are taken of people who don't know the camera is on them.
We saw the sunset just before we descended. On the other side of the sky was the rising full moon, which proved genuinely to be our saviour as we descended the rocky terrain in the dark. It was just bright enough through the trees to light our way.
The walk at night through the park was amazing, albeit a tad scary and risky. There were little streams running around us, as well as fireflies dancing about in the air. The last temple we saw was lit dimly by the moonlight. Unfortunately I couldn't take a single picture, for it was just too dark.All in all, our day at the park was very memorable, as have been my first two weeks in Seoul.
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