So the first weekend I went on a trip through Adventure Korea, a company here that organizes adventure trips for foreigners and Koreans and provides a good opportunity to meet other people here. I went with two other teachers from my school, Amy and Nick, but met a lot of other interesting people on the trip. The title of the weekend was "Camping and Wilderness Trekking", although we didn't really do much of either one! After just BARELY making the bus on Saturday morning, we travelled east to the more mountainous area of Korea. We had to sit on the bus for around 4 hours to get to the destination but the scenery was beautiful:
How huge are these butterflies?! All the bugs in Korea are super-sized for some reason. The grasshoppers are HUGE and they have locusts all over here, the fields and mountains are alive with those creatures they are so loud!
Praying Mantis staring right at me!!
Thanks for the rain boots mom and dad!!
Our first stop on the itinerary was the Eulji Observatory at the DMZ- Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
We were at a different part of the DMZ than the normal tours, right above the 4th infiltration tunnel. There are 4 tunnels total and they're believed to be military invasion routes by North Korea. The 4th tunnel is the one that was most recently discovered in 1990 when South Korea picked up the vibrations on a radar. They intercepted the tunnel's construction and later blocked it off. We toured the observatory and tried to take a peek into North Korea but unfortunantly it was a cloudy day and you couldn't see much. There is a village right next to the DMZ that I was really looking forward to checking out, the Punchbowl City that sits in a huge valley of the mountains.
We couldn't see much of the Punchbowl City, it was way too cloudy! This is what I did see of North Korea:
After listening to a presentation (in Korean) and watching an informational video on the DMZ (in Korean) at the observatory, we went under and got to walk through a bit of the actual tunnel. We walked through a couple hundred feet of the South Korean-built tunnel to the point where it intercepted with the North Korean-built tunnel. You could walk through the SK tunnel standing up with plenty of room, but the NK tunnel was significantly smaller and we had to sit in a little mine car thing to go through the NK part. It was pretty cool, and now I can say I've been in the middle of the DMZ! Granted, we were underground.
Anyway, I am well and alive after our trip to the DMZ so no need to worry or come rescue me from North Korea!
After the stop at the Eulji Observatory, we went on to Yongsin city where there was a big summer festival going on and a campsite set up for us to spend the night. We roamed around the festival for while and did some of the various activities they had set up:
After pottery making, fan painting, tye dyeing, mud painting, and swimming we had a delicious traditional galbi bbq for dinner and went to check out the campsite. We set up all the tents and got settled in for the night.
Remember when I mentioned we didn't do much camping or trekking? Well, about 2 hours after getting settled into our tents the Korean heavens opened up and just DUMPED rain on Yongsin city! I was awoken from my half-sleep at 2am but one of those emergency blow horns and some Korean men running around yelling "hurricane! hurricane!" I'm not sure it would have been considered a hurrican back home, but it was definitely the most intense rain and wind combination I've been a part of for a while. And I wasn't watching it from inside, we were IN it! Whoever set up our tents failed to put any tarp under the tent to protect it from the ground. An expert-camper such as myself would not have made such a rookie mistake, :) and I was not surprised when I was eventually laying in a pool of dirt and mud. We had to gather all our goods and run through the rain and wind into the nearest building where all 45 of us on the trip slept in a huge open gym area. At least 5 of the 45 people were eventually snoring and I slept no more than 15 minutes that whole night. We woke to a new day and beautiful sunny weather, although the ground outside was basically a mudflat. So now on to the trekking portion of the trip, which also ended up not happeneing. The river had apparently washed out our trails and was too high and dangerous to hike anywhere else.
I did manage to get this gem of a picture before we left the area:
The world is your fashion show! The Koreans get incredibly dressed up for whatever outdoor sport they are doing: the bikers have the full one-piece spandex suits and the helmets with the built in visors, the hikers have the backpacks, floppy hats, collapsible chairs, and hiking poles, and I hear the snow sports are just hilarious! They dress the part, that is for sure.
Overall a fun weekend, even though we didn't get to do much of what the trip was all about. I still had a great time travelling Korea, getting to see a new city, and getting into the fresh mountain air!
The next weekend we headed east again to the border of the other provinces, Chungcheongbuk-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do, for a rafting and bungee jumping extreme adventure weekend! This weekend went according to plan, unlike the previous one. I am still a little in shock that I actually bungee jumped, I get a little nauseous thinking about it. That was by far the single most terrifying thing I have ever done or thought about doing. My goodness, standing on that platform with your toes dangling off the edge looking down at the little ants of people is a whole different feeling and prompted a lot of natural responses. My whole body started to shake, I got nauseous, and I cried! I mean I knew I would be scared, but not THAT scared. I usually like the adrenaline adventure activities, but this is in a league of its own. The guy behind me started the count down "5...4...3...2...1..." and I swear as hard as I willed my body to do it and just jump, I didn't move. I couldn't make myself jump off the platform. I couldn't take my eyes off the ground and all I could think is we as humans are not supposed to do things like this! Who jumpes off an extremely high structure for fun, is that fun? Am I supposed to be having fun right now? Haha, anyway I finally thought alright Tia what else are you going to do, and I JUMPED! It was an unreal feeling, free falling with my life dangling by my feet from a crane. Would I do it again?! Nayyyy! (That means 'yes' in Korean) The freedom of falling through the sky like that is unbelieveable and almost worth the sheer terror! Here are some pics to prove it:
So I survived the big jump, althought my vocal cords are shot I screamed the whole way down and while I was just dangling there. Next day we went rafting which was a blast, and had lunch and dinner at a nice little cabin area they had arranged for us.
Well since the adventurous end to August, I have been getting back into the swing of things with work and actually had a huge schedule change the other day. I now teach my own class in the mornings instead of doing the singing and dancing 25-minute classes I had been teaching. I have ONE student, her name is Clara, she is 4 years old and just absolutely adorable. I will take pictures soon and post them so you all can see, she's the cutest!
Also survived the typhoon this past week, there were three different ones that made their way through our area. I only really noticed it one night when the winds were whipping and woke me at 4am. Other than that it was just normal rainy-season weather!
I have to run but until next time,
Tia Teacher
