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Saturday, June 28, 2008
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Beomansan Mountain Adventure
It is amazing how quickly the days fly by when we stay around our apartment or just run everyday errands. It feels much more like summer and seems to go more slowly when we do random things like yesterday's hiking adventure at Beomansan. John said this spring that we'd hike a different mountain every week of the summer...well, it's week three and this is our first hike. The rainy season has thankfully come later this year according to a Korean friend but I think it has started now so we might have difficulty catching up on that hiking goal.
Nina walked up the mountain for the first time but was out of energy to walk down.
Our city, Daejeon, is in a mountain valley. On the moutain tops surrounding the valley are multiple fortresses left over from many centuries past. We usually hike to the same fortress nearest our apartment but this time we drove across the city to a different fortress and a new set of unexplored hiking trails. We usually try to avoid the main path as Koreans prefer to "hike" straight up steep stairs with no switchbacks. We still don't find switchbacks but at least we get off the stairs and more out into the woods.
We hiked "off-road" on the way up but decided to go down the main path...it was stairs like these (although steeper) for about 30 minutes. Yikes! Who needs a stairmaster? Not us!
Friday, June 20, 2008
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Busan
We decided to stay in Korea this summer. Since we didn't leave the country we took a trip down to the southern coast to have a second try at a Korean beach experience. (The first experience was at Kyeongu on the west coast shortly after we arrived in 2005. It was very different than Florida with pig heads and fruit all over the river rock shore being given as "gifts" to the dead.) Our experience in Busan was much more like we expected in a beach although still chock full of "Korean moments". (Those are moments in which we are hit by a sudden wave of culture shock that both enlighten us to the culture and challenge our thought processes in multiple ways, both great and frustrating at times).
One of the Korean moments on this trip was our feeling of being frumpy, sloppy foreigners even on the beach. We know that in regular everyday life we're usually underdressed but we didn't realize we "should" wear high heels and fancy clothes even down into the sand on the beach. Oops!
We had rain for several days while we were there but the hotel had two heated outdoor pools and outdoor hotsprings (the kind you can wear swimsuits in as opposed to the indoor public gender specific baths) so we enjoyed swimming every day. After a few minutes Sara remembered that she was part fish, Silas forgot that he'd ever swam before, and Nina learned to "spider" along the wall. Would you believe these "Floridians" have only swam in a pool one other time since we left the US two years ago? We also explored the Aquarium and walked along the rocks to the APEC House. We had one day of beautiful sunshine so visited a seaside Buddhist Temple in the morning and then we played on the beach, built sandcastles and reminded the kids how to jump in the waves all afternoon. It was relaxing and helped us realize that summer is here and that we're not just on a week long break from school.
There are some photos of our trip in the photo album section. Here are just a few:
The city came right up to the seashore. Nina liked to make "birthday cakes" out of sand and even used the sea weed to make candles for us to blow out.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
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The Bumble Bee
The faithful old scooter "Maroon" (actually pronounced Mare-un as dubbed by it's most recent previous owner Zach Evans) was stolen about two weeks ago. We replaced it this past week with a black and yellow motorcycle that the kids and I named the Bumble Bee. It's heavier and harder to steal so hopefully it will stick around longer. John was excited to get to upgrade a little bit and I'm excited that he'll keep doing the grocery shopping and short errands for me. Here's a video of the kid's getting their first rides with a little bit of commentary from Nina.
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Sara's End of the Year Music Class Concert
The elementary school has an annual year end music concert. Sara's class performed two songs for the evening. They are wearing a Korean costume and using a Korean drum to perform a Jewish song in this video. It's hard to believe that Silas will be up there next year too. Time is passing faster every year!
jandhwilloughby
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- Name: John
- Gender: Male
- Member Since: 12/2/2006
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