Amsikle - Sunday, November 04, 2007 10:52:28 PM

HIIIIIII! I'm posting finally. This time I don't really have a good excuse why I've neglected the computer...hmpf. Things have been really cool lately and I guess its been out of fun that I haven't updated. So, midterms are over, I feel relaxed, and I'm stoked that SHANNON MY LITTLE SISTER IS COMING TO KOREA! Holy moly! Wow, when the event of buying her ticket came upon us, and we confirmed the flight details I got suuuuuuuper excited. I've pretty much told everyone here that she is coming, and every time I think about it this huge grin comes upon my face and I get really really really happy. ^_^.

What else...oh yeah so I went hiking last weekend. INSANITY. Check out pictures people even though snapshots can't even discribe the amount of people hiking on this mountain. So to begin with, Korean hiking, or so I'm told Asian hiking in general, includes tons of people and I should have expected this. However, I didn't not expect the masses of people, restaurants, shops, gift stores, norebangs (kareoke), bars, and bumper cars at the bottom of the mountains...BUMPER CARS? REALLY? Oh yes...bumper cars. I can't even describe to you how weird hiking is in Korea, nor do I really want to get into all the details considering it would be some serious work on my part including a lot of bitching about how ridiculous and dangerous it was hiking. But I do want to say that it blew me away. First of all, almost all Korean hikers dress exactly the same but in different colors. Everyone comes equipped with $600 hiking gear that has never been worn, and many times, they purposefully dress exactly the same while in groups of 50. Everyone wears hats, they have their hiking poles, gortex pants, shirts, and of course, the vest. They each carry a backpack which is whatever, but its the SAME backpack. The hikes are less than difficult, and I think everyone dressed like they were going to summit Kilimanjaro. Beware, I'm a little bitter right now, and that's actually pretty sad on my part since it has been like a week for me to calm down. So after seeing like masses of people, all dressed together, all stretching in packs of 50 (WHO HIKES WITH 50 PEOPLE?!?!) we get distressed and try and find alternative hiking routes where masses of people aren't going to be. We ended up finding a less than busy route, but we were still hiking behind 20 people which at the time bothered me, but I got over it after an hour. Then we hike to a photo opportunity plat form which was busy with people, but really fucking cool. The mountains in Korea are definitely beautiful even if there are tons of people. After than we summit the mountain of Namsan, and again, even with there being like a gagillion people at this point, there was solitude in being that high up looking over the landscape of pure mountains.

We were all stunned, excited, relieved cause the hike made us a little winded, and after about an hour of eating and soaking it all in, we made our decent.

This was probably the worst part of our trip as well as the most dangerous. The way down, we crossed a very touristy area of the mountain, and because of this we definitely paid for it. The amount of people reached ridicuclous, and for hiking atop mountains with mud, and guard rails, there should not have been the amount of people there were on that trail. One woman slipped from the crowd keeping grip of the guard rail, and dangled beside the mountain face. Grant it  she could have rolled down the mountain considering it wasn't a cliff face, but none the less, it was frightening to hear her scream. Thank god a man grabbed her and saved her from falling of the side of the mountain or it could have been really bad. However, the madness doesn't end there.  On the way down, there must have been hundreds of people trying to get down the trail. Everyone was pushing, running, and cutting each other off to get down the mountain faster. Keep in mind the descent was a boulder field, and not necessarily the most maintained trail, so while this was going on, people were falling, sliding, twisting their ankles...sigh, it was horrible. My poor friend Hannah was being pushed, kicked in the knees, grabbed on to, but off, and no one said sorry. It made me soooooo bitter against Korean hikers, and I really wasn't wanting that to happen. I literally almost had a panic attack on the mountain because of the sheer danger and awe of the people around me, plus I had to hold back the instant reaction to just start throwin bows at everyone. GRRRR. The boys fared much better than the girls considering they just bolted down the mountain, traversing the unbeaten path. I thought about doing this however, I was afraid of loosing everyone in the crowd. The only thing that saved the lst hour of the trip was the bumper cars at the bottom of the mountain. While I was joking on the fact that there was bumper cars next to this mountain, the bumper cars totally saved our moods, and we had a BLAST! So we did some bumper car action, ate some food, and made our way back home.

And that is the hiking experience in Korea. I'm not sure if I will go back and hike more in Korea because of the experience that I had, but we will see. I might just wait till it's not such a  popular time and just go then.

What else is new...hmm...My Korean is getting better, and I'm pretty proud that all my classmates and I are trying really hard at learning the language. At this point we have all come to the realization that it's an incredibly hard language despite popular opinion (I heard 3rd hardest in the world) and we are taking it a day and a time. Jeeze we sound like recovering attics of something haha. So yeah, I have another word test tomorrow, I think I'm ready for it...er...I hope I'm ready for it. WISH ME LUCK!

I think I'm going to go though, I want to read some of my chapter book Everything is Illuminated, plus get some things in order. I'm sooo tiiiired. blehhhh. But, I didn't want to send a link to you guys that I thought was pretty interesting: It's about the abuse of Vietnamese wives by Korean men in Korea-  link 

NIGHT EVERYONE! I promise I will be more positive about Korea tomorrow!