So I know it's been a little while but there is a reason. I dislocated my left elbow a little over 2 months ago and was in a cast for a month. While I had the cast on it was very difficult to type so I didn't post anything. I am out of the cast now and ready to start blogging again, woohoo.

Well here goes, it's been an interesting last few months so I'll give you a short overview, 1 paragraph for each exciting thing. If any have been on facebook then you may have seen my pictures but we've done quite a bit. The main thing is that there are now 3 new teachers at ECC, Matthew, Pete and Holly. They replaced Liz, Chris and Jeremy who were all good friends. That's the nature of the Hagwan system though, one year contracts make for a revolving door of employment that forces you to keep on readjusting. I'm now one of the longest tenured foreign teachers and in February when Ben Wages leaves, Natalie and I will have been here the longest. It's weird to think that I've been here for almost half of my contract, in about a week I will have been here six months. Just now typing that I actually wrote three months instead of six, that's closer to how it feels anyway. I'm getting sidetracked, the new people are a lot of fun. They are all Canadian so the Americans have become the minority at ECC, that being said they are very nice, true to the rumors. Pete is Allie's boyfriend and they spend a lot of time together but are still a lot of fun to hang out with. Matthew is something else, this kid is from western Canada who has been all over the world traveling. I couldn't remember how many countries he had said that he's visited but it's certainly more than I have. He's also worked on a deadliest catch type fishing boat out of Canada and done some other pretty interesting things so it's been cool to meet him and pick his brain about travelling and the like. Holly is the most recent addition to our school, she is also from Canada and has a wealth of experience teaching. She was a substitute teacher back in North America and she's shared a lot of good ideas with us.

These three aren't really new anymore but I do miss my old friends fortunately they have all come back so that's exciting too. Anyway I guess I'd better get started from November. It was an interesting month. Right when Matthew and Pete arrived we went out on the town and I dislocated my left elbow running in a foot race with Pete. That was horrible and I'm still dealing with the reprecussions now. Fortunately I was only in a sling for a month but in that time I lost full range of motion in my left arm. I can no longer extend my arm straight, it stops at about a 150 degree angle and I have to do physical therapy to get my arm back up to snuff. That wasn't the defining part of November though, two other important things happened.

The first of these was a visit to Seorak Mountain or Seoraksan a very famous mountain on the Eastern coast of Korea. Seven of us went out there on a bus and stayed in a very nice condo that sits right at the base of a really picturesque stretch of grantie spires jutting out from the spine of the mountain. We got there and took the cable car up to one of the peaks in the mountain chain. It was really cool you could look out over the city Suyok and see the Pacific ocean from the peak. It had recently snowed there and we were lucky to catch it before it melted. This was the first time we saw snow in Korea but it wouldn't be the last. We had a snowball fight went down the mountain and turned in for the night. The next day we picked up a park map and realized that we couldn't actually get to Seorak because it was a two day hike! Too bad but we decided to hike around the trails that crisscrossed around the park anyway. We hiked for a while and then soon came to a steep incline that ended in a cave at the top of a rock face. It took us an hour to get all the wayup there but we made it encountered a monk on the top looking out over the snow christened mountains. It was surreal, I sat behind him thinking about how peaceful it must be, I mean besides the constant flow of hikers coming in and out of the cave, then the monk whips out a cellphone and she starts talking to somebody in a really annoyed voice. That kind of killed it for me. We went down and tried to find a waterfall but were unable to before we went home that night exhausted. I did all of this with a full arm cast in a sling. I'm awesome.

The other important thing that happened is I joined a soccer team. I had started to go to a park near my apartment just to juggle and kick the ball around and one night a Korean guy approached me and asked me if I'd play on his team. At first I thought he was fifteen so I asked him how old he thought I was, he said thirty I laughed and told him that I'm twenty two. "UUUHHH??!" he said, "I thought you were 30" we had a good laugh. It turned out that he is 30 years old and that I'd be the youngest guy on the team which now consists of mostly 40 something year olds, me, and with a sprinkling of older guys. I said yes but told him that I'd have to wait until I was out of the cast to play. His name is Sung Nam, I've been playing with the team now since I got my cast off in December and Sung Nam has become a really good friend of mine.

That brings us to December then. As I said I had the cast taken off and am doing physical therapy for my arm. The day after I got my cast off I started to play with Eunma FC and am having a great time. Sung Nam is the only one who speaks English well, the rest of the guys can get by, but they keep on getting on me about learning Korean, which is understandable. We play every morning before I go to work at 7, it's early but it's worth it, on an elementary school dirt field. More often than not the ground is frozen but I still have a great time. I'm getting better all the time after starting out pretty rusty. I've scored a few goals in our games. We play on a turf field thats right up the road from me on the weekends. The league is six teams that we play over and over again, it's great. Eunma FC hasn't lost a game since I've been here. The team is really good and I fit in pretty well, at striker, which is awesome. The game format is strange though, usually we show up and there are three teams there, we play half hour games for 4 hours or so usually having every third game off. It's good fun and the jerseys that I got for the team are awesome too, one short sleeve, one long and a pair of shorts. We had a holiday party the second weekend we played at a private samgibsal place where I was forced to take bombshot after bombshot because I'm the new guy. Then we went to the Noribong under my school and they made me dance with their wives, it was ridiculous but a lot of fun. These guys are quickly becoming good friends of mine so I'm really happy that I got into this team.

Anyway December. I had Christmas away from home for the first time and I have to admit it wasn't very good. Don't get me wrong we had a lot of fun but I missed home a lot, who wouldn't. On Christmas we went to this bar that was hosting a Christmas dinner for foreigners though and that was awesome. Turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, roast beef, green beans, pineapple glazed ham, and delicious microbrews meant that at least Christmas tasted good.

As is usually the case after Christmas, the new year came up pretty quickly and we celebrated by going out to the center of the city to enjoy the party. Jonngak was packed with people all waiting for the new year's bell to be rung, no ball, a bell, and it was a big one too. We were told that we could shoot off fireworks wherever we wanted and we did just that after watching the Korean Dick Clark ring in 2010. At midnight the square we were in exploded with color. Roman candles flew everywhere, bouncing off of buildings and just generally causing havoc. I had a great time afterwards we went to a few bars and I treated myself to some expensive imports with most of my coworkers, Andrew, Colby, Keeri and a few of Andrew's friends from Japan. A long night out turned into an early morning with a soccer game but New Year's in Korea was excellent I had a lot of fun getting wild in the city. The pictures are on facebook but maybe I'll post them to snapfish and post a link on here for everyone.

The New Year has been full of changes. My school's building was moved and it's a lot nicer. We had to spend the sunday after new year's moving our classrooms but that was ok, it was nice to see the building on the inside and it's really nice. The transition went really smoothly and apart from some excited, rambunctious kindergartners we had no problems at the new school. There is even a rooftop patio, sweet!

We've had to change the restaurants we frequent because we're far enough away from the old school to have had to find new ones. It's been a struggle, the restaurants around here just aren't as good as the one's close to the old ECC but it's ok it means I'm more inclined to eat the free lunch at school, which still hasn't happened, but maybe I might. I also stopped drinking coffee because there isn't a good place on the way to work. I'd been drinking coffee for breakfast accompanied by donuts and eggwiches from dunkin donuts, but no dunkin donuts on my commute so I stopped. Now I spend half off the money I used to every day, just lunch and it's helping a lot, plus coffee is disgusting and I'm happy I don't have as easy an opportunity to get it as I used to.

I've also begun taking a Korean language class every weekend with Ben and Matthew. It started out at a pretty remedial level, mostly just the alphabet, but when we graduated level one the difficulty really increased. It's ok though, it's been nice understanding every 13th word said around me. I have to put more effort into it but I am getting better slowly.

That's about it, of course this is only a short summary of events but I'm happy to be writing again. I'll probably post another one soon about this last weekend and then try to get back into doing this regularly, sorry for the wait, good to be back.

Pat

ulleungdo part 1

I'm going to jump ahead real fast to last weekend because I'm afraid if I wait to long on this one I might not be able to do it the justice a fresh memory would. So here goes.

10/2-10/5

This past weekend was the South Korean holiday of Chuseok which is comparable to the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Families return to their points of origins, have a family meal and generally express their thanks for the past year and their lives. We had Thursday and Friday of last week off as well as this past Monday. A lot of the students went to their grandparents' houses, one kid went to Guam, but for the most part everyone returned to their families and celebrated quietly. Having no family in Korea, their teachers took this opportunity to take short vacations around Asia. A lot of our coworkers had made plans a while ago to get out of the country. Ben and Liz went to Tokyo, Jeremy was going to go to the Philippines but wasn't able to because of the Tsunami that recently struck, Ben Yannuzzi, Natalie and I being relatively new had to fashion our own plans and decided to stay in the country rather than leave. We were lucky and found that Adventure Korea, the same company through which we did the Bungee jumping, had set up a trip to an island of the Eastern coast of Korea which was relatively cheap, so we jumped all over it.

We would be staying on Ulleung Island or Ulleungdo (do meaning island) and would have the opportunity to travel to Dokdo, another island farther our into the pacific that has an interesting story I will get into later. We booked in advance with no problems and by the time last Thursday rolled around we were packed and ready to go . . . for our 11:30 pm departure time, woohoo. We took a cab to the express bus terminal and arrived along with 132 other foreigners who had decided to go on the trip. Four buses filled up quickly in front of the terminal and we soon were just about ready to go. Our guide, the same one who we had ridden with to the rafting trip took roll, made some jokes in broken english, we all laughed, he explained to us our schedule and then we got to know our bus mates a little bit. We didn't end up leaving till about 12:30 in the morning which wasn't that big of a deal, most people were much more excited than tired, so we all talked and laughed until the guide told us we were leaving, shut off the lights and the bus lurched to life.

The plan was to leave and catch the sunrise on the eastern coast of the country before taking a ferry out to Ulleungdo. Our guide encouraged us to sleep on the bus because we had a long day ahead of us what with traveling and exploring the island, the problem with this was that the bus wasn't comfortable enough for me to sleep, not nearly enough. Most of our companions had the same problem, so instead of sleeping I listened to my Ipod for 5 hours. The ride was broken up by two 15 minute rest stops, and oddly enough seemed to fly by. I did try to sleep but the only time I got close to passing out we pulled into the first rest stop. After that I gave up, luckily though we reached the beach parking lot after not to long. We still had a little over an hour until sunrise so I got out of the bus, ate my breakfast and Natalie and I began the walk down to the beach.

The walk wasn't too long, about 200 meters and I was excited to see the ocean for the first time since the plane ride but before I could we had to pass through a fish market where a variety of smells were waiting for us. First sewage wafted into our nostrils followed quickly by the smell of rotting fish, yummy. We turned a corner and saw what our noses had picked up, rows and rows of squid impaled by bamboo reeds hung out to dry by the local fishermen. There were at least 400 of them and they smelled to high heaven. Ben had been complaining about how he doesn't like killing sea animals for the whole of our stay in Korea so far so I turned to Natalie and said, "Ooo, Ben isn't gonna like this." It was squidocide. That was the biggest collection of dead animals I had seen ever in my life. We hurried by after taking a few quick pictures and made our way down to the beach. In the early morning the beach was a welcome site. The sand was cool between my toes and the wind coming off of the ocean felt like a cool caress on my bare skin, it was everything I had hoped for.

We walked down to the water and drank in it's grandeur. Far out you could see the fishing boat's lights dotting the horizon, 10 or more shone like beacons, and soon we saw the rock sentinels that dotted the water close to the beach. Years of wind, rain and ocean waves had carved watchmen out of the stoney shore. The rocks rose from the water in stalwart fashion all weather beaten but stoic against the omnipresent forces of nature. They were a sight to see. I scrambled across the bridge leading up to a rocky outcropping on the right side of the pristine water line and encountered only more impressive examples of the artistic prowess of water. Where I was standing had at one point been a massive boulder of granite that had jutted out into the sea, millennia ago probably, but now there were 15 or so immense rocks across the water. These were accompanied by spits of grey stone extending from the shore which created small channels that the ocean ran up between, like fingers almost, reaching out to touch the sea. I continued along the path and found the entire coast to be a surreal mix of stone, small patches of vegetation and ocean. It was remarkable.

To think that such as this had come without anything but time, people look on the world and revel in the marvels we create, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids at Giza stun and fascinate people the world over. Our cities are monuments to humanities ingenuity and dominance, but at that beach I couldn't help but delight in the fragility and mortality of it all. This had taken millions of years to create. Millions of years of constant wear and tear, millions of years of destruction, degradation. There was no planning, there was no prototype for what I was looking at. We the builders rejoice in our successes, name the planners and the architects geniuses, but could any of them have done this? I think not. Shelley had it right, "look on my works ye mighty and despair." The nerve. Who are we to have named the eight wonders of the world? I could've picked eight from that beach.

I rejoiced in my exploration. As it the night faded I ran around the area snapping pictures of the landscape, which without water would have been pretty frightening, the rocks rose out of the ground like spikes in places, I felt like I could have been traversing a granite wasteland except that it was broken by the bluest cleanest ocean water I have ever seen. The rocks looked menacing, frozen as they were climbing up and out of the ground. I started to climb on them and took as many pictures as I could. It was still very dark so I had a hard time getting shots that weren't blurry but I did manage to get some good ones as the lighting improved. There were fences set up everywhere and signs written in Korean which undoubtedly said "Do NOT Climb!" luckily I don't speak Korean and despite the fact that I will try and learn I will forever use that excuse as a way to circumvent the silly boundaries preventing me from venturing into places I must see.

This was certainly one of those must see places. The sunrise came and went with nothing as a large cloud bank was sitting over the pacific in front of us so I took the time to fence jump and play on the rocks that had been screaming for me to scramble across them. The climbing was excellent. Nature had carved natural foot and handholds into the stones which I took advantage of. It was lucky to that it had because my rainbows probably wouldn't have done so well on sheer rock face. I made my way out onto the largest extension of the shore, it was as if I was tenderly picking my way across the spine of a once mighty sea creature, now long deceased with only its bones remaining, rising twenty some feet out of the water as proof of it's monstrosity. I went up and down the solid backbone of the smooth stone, testing its limits finding new places to go. Paths along the rock opened up to me freely and were I a little braver I could have certainly made it to the furthest edge. I had my camera with my so I climbed to the tallest point took a few pictures and left.

No less exciting was the climb back, I tried new avenues, different from the ones I'd taken before, they proved more challenging but all the more rewarding. Halfway through I had to catch myself. A spider bit me as I reached for the next hand hold and I wrenched my hand away leaving myself supported by only one foot with a 15 foot drop onto the sharp teeth of the earth below me. Reminded again of my mortality and now carrying some kind of stinger in my left pointer finger I took less risks and made it back safely to return to the bus. My finger swelled up a bit but did nothing more, I'm fine now, but I do think I killed the the spider.

We left the beach not soon after I returned. People were disappointed we had not seen the sun but the anxiousness was building, we were almost there! We got to the boat terminal grabbed out things and boarded the ferry. I had the misfortune to be sat next to a very large man who smelled rather funny and seemed to want to talk the whole boat ride there. He was nice enough but I was not in the mood. Luckily I hadn't slept in over 24 hours at this point so I quickly passed out and slept for the entirety of the ferry ride. My oversized seat buddy shook me awake when we reached the harbor at Ulleungdo. We were leaving and I had missed the approaching view of the island, no matter though, I'm on vacation. Slightly groggy Ben, Natalie and I climbed off the ferry and took our first look of a simple little fishing town wedged between the ocean and the towering mountains that make up the island. It was exactly where I wanted to be.

We carried our stuff up to the hotel and got put in our rooms. Ben, Natalie and I were in one room with an Irishman who was also named Patrick. I took my name and he took Paddy but we hardly saw him for most of the trip anyway. We got situated and after exploring a little bit with a new friend Matt, discovering a few goat and an incredible view of a beach we had not seen, we were corralled by the tour guides into four buses on which we would circumnavigate the Island. I was excited, though very tired. From what I had seen the Island was a paradise. The place was clearly dominated by the landscape, mountains rising unhindered from the depths of the ocean, but the people had managed to carve out small niches in the small valleys between the looming volcanic rock. The rock itself was ages old and now much of the surface had degraded into perfect soil for the multitude of plant life flourishing on the slopes. Trees, shrubs, flowers and much more covered the entirety of the Island and we would gt some good views of all of this on our bus tour.

The first stop we made was at turtle rock, a huge extension from the main body of the island that rose hundreds of feet over the water. It's called turtle rock because it looks a lot like a turtle when you look at it right, it took me looking at my pictures a few times to actually get it, but I did. We walked around and climbed a little bit, the tide was going out and had left pools on the edges of the rock which I took some pictures of, but the most impressive part of this entire stop I think was the ocean. I hadn't taken time to stop and look at the water yet as we had been rushed off of the ferry, into our apartment and onto the bus almost immediately, but now I had the chance to. There wasn't anything but flat blue water with the sun reflecting off of it as far as the eye could see.

Now I've been going to the beach all my life, I love it there, but it was not the same as this. The water was different, the air was different, everything, even my sense of place was not at all similar to what I remember it being at Ocean City (MD or NJ) or even Key West. The water was comparable to Florida, crystal clear yes, as it was on the eastern shore of Korea, but even clearer than that. It was almost as if I was looking through blue tinted glasses at the bottom of the sea. I had never seen water so translucent in my entire life, not even in water bottles. I remarked to Yannuzzi that I think I could probably live in that water and never have to come up for air, never, that's how clear it was. It stretched forever too, the water did, and it wasn't that dirty greenish brown water we know and love on the east coast of the US it was all blue, inexplicably blue, it molded itself with the sky so much so that the horizon looked like the joining of two parallel universes, embracing despite their significant differences.

There I was, in the middle of all of this rock, air and water finding it hard to decide to which of these worlds I belonged. I knew which one was right, but I wanted to live in the others so much. I felt like my place could just as easily have been flying around the sky or walking on the bottom of this pristine ocean in stead of standing on the edge of my solid grounded world looking into the two realms of this planet characterized by motion and ever present change. On solid land we live in the same conditions as everyone else; we have gravity, we stand, we walk, we sit. We jump and we come back down, we fall and we get back up, but no matter where we are or what we do we still inhabit the ground. We have engineered planes and boats that carry us through these other realms of sky and water, but they are not made for us anymore than we are for them. Our place is rooted to the earth and forever will be. On Ulleungdo for the first time I though I could live in these two other worlds, I thought that they could be for me, I hoped they could, but they can't, I'm still rooted here in Seoul. I still walk to work everyday, I don't fly, I still teach classes standing near a white board, not angling my way through reefs. I know that this is where I belong, but if for a day I could belong to the sky or the sea, just for one day, I would never complain again.

We were called back to the buses, but I stayed and stared out for a little while longer. It was beautiful, the varied world we live in is truly amazing and there are some places in it that force you to realize this, Ulleungdo's turtle rock proved to be one of them for me. Snooze and I walked back. I was mournfully dry except for my toes, but that was enough for me, for now. We loaded into the buses and passed several more rocks rising out of the sea, each as impressive as the last. There were several tunnels, lion rock, bear rock, each of which I feel are pretty self explanatory and then we reached our second stop. There would be five stops and this on was just a deck from which you could see this entire side of the island. From here you could see part of Elephant rock, the ocean and a really nice view of topography of the island. The ocean fed into the small harbor which sustained the village that climbed up the looming mountain that outstripped the village and soared in its majesty. The mountains really did dominate the island but they were so nice about it I felt. They were ever present and triumphant but people lived at their feet and in the crevasses between their toes and thrived. It was perfect symbiosis and it was a nice departure from Seoul where people have become the dominant ones.

We stayed for twenty minutes there, took a group picture and departed for the next stop. We passed more rocks in the water. The first of these was the rock that nobody cares about, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, very funny. The next few were a trio, the three sisters. Legend has it that these rocks were actually angels who had decided to stay near Ulleungdo because they had found it to be an earthly paradise. All right, at this point I was halfway to declaring the same thing. Next was the sitting man, crocodile rock and a few others. One was actually another miniature island where there was only one farm and a man and his son who lived there, lonely life. We continued on, reached a harbor and then started climbing. The roads were very steep and frankly I was amazed that the bus could actually drive up. The drivers were maniacs, they could probably have driven those buses through hell if they wanted to but luckily it was just a mountain road and we made it to the temple we were headed for soon.

The temple was framed on three sides by mountains one of which had a few holes poked through the top. Our guide told us that these are for the apocalypse. When the world ends God is going to pluck Ulleungdo out of the ocean by hooking his fingers through the four holes. I love the legends this place had. I took some pictures of the relatively new temple and them we continued on to the final stop, the crater.

Ulleungdo had been formed by a now dead volcano and we were headed for the center of it. When we got there we were stunned it looked like the midwest. The island, being dominated by mountains, had no flatland except for the few plots some industrious fisherman had carved out for their homes. Here in the center of the crater was flatland though, enough for rolling farmland surrounded by the rim of what used to be a volcano. We stayed here for a little bit. We got to see an example of old an old Korean farming village which had been built for tourists, drank some pumpkin makali, a rice wine flavored in this case with pumpkin which is very good in my opinion then left. The whole ride took about 5 hours and I was pretty excited still. I surprised myself in that I wasn't tired. I had been awake for almost 40 hours straight at this point but I was still going strong. Ben had passed out on the bus a few times but I was just so excited by this amazing place my energy was feeding off of it.

I'm gonna post this now and stop. There's a lot more to this trip I know it's a lot but this was the best experience I've had in Korea so I think it deserves the time and volume I'm giving it, enjoy.

The two Polar ceilings of Seoul

Okay so I know it's been a little while but this blogging stuff is rough.  I'm so busy with school and having different adventures on the weekends that I hardly ever find myself really wanting to settle down and do this.  Here I am though, four weeks later than I want to be.  Yesterday I wrote on my hand that I would go home and write my blog, but I didn't I was exhausted, I went to sleep instead.  I ran today and now I'm gonna do this while the adrenaline is still pumping.  

            This particular post concerns my trips to the two highest points in Seoul; Namsan Tower, built atop a mountain on the Northern side of the river and the 63 building, built on an Island which hugs the Southern coast of the river.  Both were interesting and allowed me to make some interesting comparisons and observations.  Ben and I went both times, Natalie and Allie came to Namsan, so Ben and I at least have seen all that can be seen from the best bird's eye views of the city.  We went to one at night and one during the day so that gave us two different perspectives on a city so large a million different looks at a million different times couldn't begin to completely perceive it, however both buildings are in the heart of the city so I got to see the inner workings of the Second largest city in the entire world.  Needless to say both were breathtaking, amazing, astonishing, stunning; there is no dearth of adjectives to describe what I saw from the top floors of these buildings so I won't refrain from using as many of them as I can but for this paragraph it will suffice to say that it was really something else.

            I will start with Namsan because we went there first.  Ben and Allie had just arrive that Thursday and despite wanting to go hiking Natalie and I decided that it would probably be a little nicer to not drag our jet lagged friends up a 2,000 meter mountain on their first weekend.  We did decide to go to a mountain though.  One we'd been wanting to go to for a little while if only for the view.  North Seoul Tower or Namsan Tower or if we want to call it by its official name, CJ Seoul Tower, is a space needle-esque tower that sprouts out of the top of Namsan Mountain like a white concrete, symmetrical flower.  During the day it is a light gray testament to the triumph of man over nature.  A cylinder of concrete, steel, and wire rising from the highest point of a mountain forest on which nothing else has been built.  After the sun sets it is a column of ethereal light, bright white against the smog filled black of the starless Seoul night, a new moon which with the help of the smog surpasses the old in the midnight sky.  It is eery, awe-inspiring and ghostly all at the same time. 

            We walked up to it from the subway around 630.  Well, we walked up to the cable car station from which we would ride the rest of the way.  We were trying to catch the sunset from the tower but as we stepped onto the cable car and departed we watched the day's last glimpse of the sun pass behind a cloud, so much for that.  Oh well, we'll be here for another 10 months, there will be other sunsets.  The sun however still put on quite a show in the sky after it had left for the night.  We made it to the top after a ride of about a minute and a half in the stuffy, smelly cables car.  The ride though short was pretty cool, we got to see some of the mountain and a little of the city.  The car had windows on all sides so we could look around a little bit but there were so many people that the only view you ever got was a short one or the one you had staked out the minute you got in, so I looked out the right side of the car the entire trip.  It was still cool though the sky was nice and though you could only see some of the city because of the smog I still got a pretty good look.

            So after almost 2 minutes we stepped out and walked the remaining 100 yards or so to the top of the mountain.  There were lots of people there.  It was a Saturday, but I figured come on, don't they live here?  Do they really have to come and see Namsan Tower when I do?  Of course they do.  No seriously the fact that there were a lot of people there was not a problem.  I broke my camera out and started taking pictures.  The first thing that caught my eye were the flying men soaring around, sitting on air, you know doing the normal things that flying guys do.  There were several wire sculptures of men suspended from cables about 20 feet off of the ground.  They looked like Peter Pan sculptures almost, except probably cooler.  I took a lot of pictures of them which I will post presently.  Around the bottom of the tower you could also walk around and look out over the mountain.  The view was pretty cool, and on the fences keeping people from stepping off into air there were little key-chains, locks and other knick-knacks you could buy and write your name on to show you were there.  Most were couples things so I didn't get one, but maybe I will in the future.  

            The view was spectacular despite the day being somewhat overcast.  Ben noted that on one side of the platform, if you stood about ten feet from the fence and looked at the people looking out it appeared as if they were on the edge of a void looking into nothing because the clouds were so uniformly dull.  It was a little jarring at first but then you walked the remaining ten feet below and the city appeared below, but it still looked like there was no sky, which was strange to say the least.  This was on the eastern side of the tower, on the western side the remaining sunlight had painted the sky pink, orange, purple and the view was phenomenal.  The smog contributes a lot to this as the sun has more dust particles in the air to reflect off of so for once I was thankful for the poor air quality.  As the color brightened and then faded away we watched the lights start to come on in the city.  First came street lights in neighborhoods, then the cars began to turn on the headlights and finally the neon advertisements flickered to life just as the color drained out of the sky.  It was almost dark and we decided that it would be the perfect time to take the elevator to the top of the tower.  

            The ride was short and the elevator was decorated with small lights embedded in the black ceiling in walls that were an attempt at stars.  The attempt was a good one, it looked like someone had dipped a paintbrush in starlight and whipped bright paint drops all over the inside of the elevator, I appreciated it a lot.  It was very high tech and for me typified Seoul and the architecture I had seen so far.  We made to the third floor of the tower, which is as high as you can go unless you're going to the absurdly overpriced restaurants occupying the fourth and fifth floors and stepped out into an observatory wrapped around the frame of the building.  Large windows reaching from the floor to the ceiling gave us a spectacular view of the city, now entirely lit by electricity.  There was no moon that night so the sky itself was pitch black and instead of the stars shining above us, the city glittered below us.  It seemed as if the two had switched places.  I for one was dumbstruck.  The buildings and roads looked as if they were on fire.  They glowed blue, orange, green and red alternately as the neon signs, the streetlights, and the turn signals of the cars changed.  The towering skyscrapers shone bright but the roads winding through them bordered on blinding.  If the city is a living thing than the streets are the veins and the buildings are the organs.  The light runs through the city streets and flows up the sides of the building like blood flowing through the body, underground water through roots into trees.  This was an interesting thought because it forces you to realize that in all this light, technology and splendor, the driving force behind all of it, the lifeblood if you will, are the people perched at the wheel behind those headlights, or laughing with their friends in a cab.  The water giving life to it all are the janitors cleaning the every floor of every office buildings, the man working late into the night on the 47^th story of the 63 building.  The city truly is a living breathing thing and the breath is the people turning on there porch lights to fend off the blackness of the light.  It really is something to see, I mean we’ve conquered it, the world is ours, the night holds no power over us anymore.  We can live at night just as we do during the day and we can glow like the sun, the sun!  We’ve taking bombed out rice paddies and in fifty years turned it into a thriving epicenter of humanity, a testament to our race, and a being of it’s own.  I've never looked at a city like I did that night and if you can’t tell all ready I rejoiced in it to say the least.

            We stayed at the top for about an hour going to different windows and seeing different sparkling metropolitan panoramas stretching out beneath us in all directions.  As much as triumphant as it was it was pretty scary as well.  The city went on forever, you couldn't see the end of it.  From the highest point of Seoul the fringe of the city was beyond the horizon in all directions.  There were mountains interrupting the complete and total dominance of man's industry on the landscape but you knew that even behind these looming dark earthen pyramids there was more. 

            There's a computer game, maybe developed in Korea but I'm not sure, that I believe is called just the blob.  In this game you control a rolling ball of sticky goo that compounds itself as it rolls over things like trash, plants, animals, cars, people and eventually buildings, cities, oceans until you can't roll over anything else and the goo becomes its own planet.  This metaphor isn't as well thought out as my next one but bear with me.  It occurred to me at Namsan Tower that humanity is like that.  We go out into the unknown and mold, bend or break that which we find to suit our own needs then we pack it into our existence and make it a part of our civilization.  As a race we are constantly digesting the things we encounter in such a way that they become part of us.  Trees have become first buildings, then chairs, tables, flooring, paper, and a variety of other things that can no longer be described as trees.  Animals have become shadows of themselves in domestication, stone has become statues, stairways, skyscrapers, paper weights, has been adapted for the benefit of people and everything else humanity has encountered has followed suit.  It's a beautiful thing our capacity to do this but if you think about it through the scope of the blob game it becomes a little more sinister.

            The blob consumes all, to the point where there is nothing left to consume, and the odd thing about the game is that this is the goal, to exhaust everything, to be master over all, to become so large and all encompassing that everything is contained within you.  What then?  I imagine the blob will sit sulking on a hollowed out shell of a planet with nothing to do, no one to keep it company and nothing else to eat.  The enormity of the city made me frightened of that day, of the day when the blob that we are has rolled over everything.  The day I look out from Namsan and know there really is nothing else out there but what I can see, that the beauty, grandeur and ingenuity I saw that night and was so awed by is normal, is everywhere.  It scares me to imagine that I could climb hill after hill and encounter only bright lights interwoven with roads over and over again.

            That being said while the view was frightening it was enormously beautiful.  It was beautiful in the way that a volcano is beautiful.  The city center erupts with light as I believe I've said before and out from that center flows the glowing magma of constant traffic bright against the few dark areas left in the city.  The roads flow ever outward, as unstoppable as molten rock, lighting everything in their path.  Homes are engulfed in the flames the roads carry as are buildings, streetlights.  The road is as insatiable as lava too, they just keep going and have spread the light of the city to places I could no longer see from where I stood at it’s zenith.  The roads, just as lava does on islands, bring new life to the rest of the world.  While Lava comes first with fire, brimstone and death, from the minerals it deposits as it burns develops a soil richer than any found on earth.  The roads are the same, they deposit us, everywhere to the fulfillment of our enterprises, the beginnings of new ones, and the continuing progress we make.

            Our time at the top was coming to a close.  We had to go to our coworker Ben’s housewarming party and so after a few more glimpses of the city we walked back to the elevator and took it down to the tower’s base.  The bottom had changed a lot since we had gone up.  As the city had lit up and come to life so too had the base of Namsan Tower.  The flying men were lit up as was the tower which now rose like a white marble column.  It glowed, and we stared for a while took a picture, turned our backs and left.  The trip had been a sensory overload for me and I was happy to go to Ben’s for a few drinks afterwards.  The tower had been thought provoking but after all that rumination I had to go have beer, the cheese we had at Ben’s was delicious too.  We rolled on to the club afterwards, picking up more and more as we left.

Next up: the 63 building.

Seoul Tower 63 building et all (73 photos), by Patrick Douville

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The funniest thing happened the other day.  Ben, Jeremy and I were sitting outside of shamrock, a little convenient store that we go to sometimes after work, having a beer.  We had just sat down and were talking about what prize we were going to try and get from the Laser Target machine, a horrible horrible creation that is very good at sucking away our money.  Ben had bought an ice cream cone that he was happily eating and Jeremy and I are cracking open our first beer.  Ben is talking about how great the ice cream is:

"Man this really hits the spot.  I needed this man I love ice cream.  Who would've thought that Koreans can make good prepackaged ice cream cones just as well as westerners?"  He takes another bite and chews away contentedly for a few seconds when out of nowhere this big Korean guy runs up, snatches the ice cream out of Ben's hand, takes a bite and starts running away.  

Stunned, we all watch him take a few steps away before I yell, "Hey! What the hell man?"

At this the guy rumbles to a halt, turns around, meekly comes back and hands me the ice cream cone.  Then he turns back around and books it down the street.  The three of us are left sitting there as confused as we've ever been.  I'm watching a half eaten ice cream cone melting in my hand and I realize it's not mine.  I hand it sheepishly to Ben.  We sit and we stare at it for a few seconds before Jeremy and I start cracking up,

"What the **** was that all about?"  We're all laughing at this point even Ben;

"What?  I mean what?" says Ben, "Man, that cone was so good to, I can't eat it now, but . . . aw goddamit"  One of the workers at the restaurant next door to Shamrock comes out;

"Did you see that man?  That was nuts"  He nods an affirmative and makes the crazy sign, twisting his finger in a circle around his ear.  That explains it I guess but all in all, it was a pretty ridiculous happening that I will say would have made my day had the three of us not won the really sweet remote control car we did from that Laser Target game about , awesome.  What amazing way to start a thursday night. 

Some of my kids (49 photos), by Patrick Douville

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Bungee Jumping Trip (37 photos), by Patrick Douville

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Rafting (trip part I.)

            Beep, beep, beep, beep beep beeepebbeeeeppebbbeeeeeep; ugh, and then I'm dragging myself out of bed at 630 in the morning to go hop a bus to Gangwon-Do province, a rafting trip and, wait for it, bungee jumping.  My hangover has rendered me less than excited though and the 3 hours of sleep I got after stumbling back to my apartment at 330 are just enough of a tease to really piss me off.  "I guess I'll pay for it today," I think, knowing that I would but consoling myself with the prospect of sleep on the 2 hour bus ride waiting for me at the Express Bus Terminal.  Liz and Natalie are waiting for me in front of our apartment building and we shoulder our backpacks and head to the road.  I haven't eaten, but I imagine I'll be able to find something by the bus stop, I mean come on I'm in the second largest metropolitan area in the world, why wouldn't I be able to.  That thought helps my bad mood a little too.  Jeremy didn't make it home yet, so he isn't coming and Natalie went home early from the wedding to get some sleep, but Liz and I are exhausted having stayed out for our friend Matthew's 28th birthday party the night before.  It was a bit of a banger, we had gone to several different bars, a Noribong, and I had slaughtered all comers at darts.  Somehow the sweetness of that victory hasn't lingered as much as the alcohol has, and I've rolled my window down to help with my headache.

            After an excruciatingly uncomfortable ten minute cab ride we get to the bus stop.  I use the bathroom in the subway because it's the closest one and according to Liz there is also a Family Mart down there.  The bathroom is great, miraculously it cures my hangover, but the Family Mart is nonexistent and I have to make do with the slim pickings of a mini food . . . place, not even a store.  Digestives it is, Jori you'd be proud of me, ugh.  Oh well, I think were going to stop at a rest stop I should be fine, they might have food there.  We meet Andrew at the bus and get in.  He sits next to a girl in the seat on the other side of the aisle;

            "Come on man sit over here," I say.  He's my friend, me mocking him is why he's here at least he should sit by me.

            "Oh yea sure, thought you'd want to sit with Natalie or Liz, no problem."

            We sit for two minutes.  I'm fiddling with my ipod looking forward to a nice rejuvenating two hour nap when . . .

            "You're going to have to entertain me you know, I'm wide awake.  You made me wake up at the ass crack of dawn to come on this trip so if you try to go to sleep I'm going to poke you until you wake up."

            The little bastard, of course, this makes sense.  I sigh, resigning myself to the fact that I'm going to be the groggiest white water rafter ever and we leave.

            We talk about school, work terrorizing small children, comment on the differences between Seoul and what we're passing at the moment, mostly mountains dotted with small towns and farms.  Andrew wakes up the entire bus singing along with the CD and my annoyance with him is complete, oh well.  My eyes have been half open the whole trip as I've drifted in out of debilitating exhaustion but not anymore.  Sweet Caroline has proved to much of a classic for Andrew to resist screaming BAH BAH BAAAAHHH, GOOD TIMES NEVER FELT SO GOOD, what an ass.  

            I figure if I'm going to be up I might as well make the most of it.  I get out my camera and start trying to get good shots of the mountains at 65 miles an hour, no such luck.  I delete most of them as they are crap.  A motorcyclist stares at me though and I get a decent one of him, that will have to suffice, an hour and a half has run its course and the rest station is outside.  Out of the bus, noodles for breakfast, they're delicious and along with the Powerade I get clear up what little is left of my hangover and even wake me up a little bit.

            After twenty minutes we get back on the bus and the remaining half hour of the ride flies by, I'm awake now and getting excited.  We reach the departure point for rafting ahead of schedule, gear up and get ready.  Our trip manager (?) has had us make groups of ten on the bus and we put together a pretty solid group of 9.  Liz, Andrew, Natalie and I, three Koreans, Barra, an Indian man who works for Samsung, and Ellie a really nice Canadian who also works at a Hagwan.  We pick up one more girl as the other two buses arrive and get ready to go.  A guide comes and gets us, we grab paddles helmets, lifejackets and our raft and carry it down to the river.  After taking a group photo of the Adventure Korea trip members we leave.  The rafting guide speaks no English and has struggled to get us in the water.  He gets impatient with us almost immediately as Andrew and I have insisted on splashing as many people as we can right away.  He's not the only one upset, the girl we added to our original group of nine is furious that other groups are splashing her.  She remarked earlier that she was uncomfortable in a bathing suit and had no desire to get wet.  Really?  We're going white water rafting, what do you think is going to happen here?  We're in a small boat, floating down a river dotted with rapids, and you have two idiots splashing everyone they can, sorry, you're going to get soaked.

            We spend 10 minutes failing to grasp the concepts of rowing as a group at the bend in the river we've launched ourselves into.  Our guide's feeble attempts to get us to row together only serve to make Andrew look like more of an ass and our guide more angry.  Great.  It doesn't matter though we're rafting and as soon as we figure out how to row we make our way into the steady procession of blue, yellow and red rafts floating down the river.  We hit "rapids" almost immediately and in my place in the front I'm grinning as a wave of river water washes over me.

            I've missed this, swimming opportunities have been sparse in Seoul and the only wet I've experienced has been the comforting warmth of my shower in the morning.  Here though I've just felt the shock of the cool river water right in my face.  I'm reminded of the Ocean, standing arm in arm with friends at the beach trying vainly to stand up to the breakers as they crash down upon us.  I'm reminded of the cool dirty water at the Laurel Reservoir, littered with leaves and floating sticks, swimming around them and laughing at Jessie's attempts at freestyle.  St. Mary's comes to mind, riding Ben's Laser so fast the only part of the boat touching the water is the centerboard, arching my back as I fly across brackish Horseshoe Bend trying to dip my head into the water careening past me below.  I remember pulling myself back up onto the boat feeling the water being pushed out of my face by the wind, streaming through my hair, down my sunburned back and pooling around my feet in the cockpit.  I remember letting go, letting the boat heel so much it capsizes and I'm thrown out of it laughing.  As this new river crashes around me, engulfs me, cleanses me, I can't help but smile and laugh a little bit, hello again my friend.  

            My reverie complete, I'm back in the boat, as wide awake as I've ever been, listening to the laughter of my fellows, the annoyance of the one girl who doesn't want to get wet.  She has a very winey voice, but it's really funny to listen to her complain because she deserves everything she's upset about in my opinion, I mean come on.  We resume paddling after we get past these first rapids to counts of "1...2...1...2...1," we're on our very own Greek trireme, a rubber one, that really won't do to well if we were to ram anything but the repetitive calls to dip our paddles reminds me of the drum beat that was used to keep the time on the old Athenian warships.  I smile at the thought, and stroke and stroke and stroke until the guide tells us all to stop, we're nearing the next stretch of white water and our paddles will remain in our laps so we don't lose them in the tossing of the boat.  This won't be a problem though because our guide has just steered us directly on top of a rock, and we're stuck.  

            Our guide of course is now furious, I mean as the person tasked with actually directing the boat whose fault could it be but anybody other than him right?  He gives us all withering looks and manages to get us off the rock but now he's really angry and it shows in his constant attempts to steer us away from things that look like a lot of fun, like the waterfall coming up.  We've all been trying to head towards it for the while against his Korean overtures which only two on the boat understand anyway.  The two girls who do understand him are yelling at the four guys in the front, Andrew, Balah, one other guy and I to stop paddling towards it, yea right.  We've just watched the boats in front of us all go under the water cascading down the rock walls of the river, I'll be damned if we're not going to do it.  So we keep our direction and as we get closer he yells more, the Koreans translate a little more urgently and the girl who doesn't want to get wet wails.  This is going to be fun.  We make it to the small falls and love it.  It's hot out and we've dried from our last trip through rapids so this feels very good.  The whiney girl complains all the louder now about how wet her jeans are getting and how we're all jerks but like I said earlier she deserves it.  

            At this point I'm ignoring the back half of the boat because they're loud and obnoxious, I'm sick of the guide, the Korean girls only translate for him, and that girl is just mean to all of us.  Andrew and I are having a blast splashing everyone around us while Natalie and Liz are doing their best to keep up with us.  The four of us in the front have become the ring leaders of this little escapade and we've been dictating our skirmishes with the boats around us much to the chagrin of the back half.  They yell, giving me all the more reason to ignore them and splash harder.  We head to the next set of rapids and brace ourselves, this one coming up looks rough.  There will be no splashing now, paddles in the boat as the boat bucks around in the river.  Natalie is laughing and the next thing I know I've been struck quite hard not once but twice right on my head.  It's a good thing I'm wearing a helmet as Natalie's paddle probably would have shattered my skull.  "I guess that's why we have to wear helmets laugh Natalie and Liz."  I laugh suddenly a lot more appreciative of safety precautions, maybe I should be paying attention to the back of the boat, no I don't think so.  

            The river is calm now, and has been since we passed those rapids.  I'm a little groggy from the blows to my noggin but all in all I'm having a great time.  The river is really something here,  it has cut a canyon of sorts through the mountains and small waterfalls abound.  The river is framed by black rock and a surrounding forest.  The walls of our little canyon rise as high as 50 feet in some places and some places not at all.  It's really cool.  We've seen several interesting rock formations and there seems to be an endless supply of these along our way.  I'm marveling at it all, the whole scene is breathtaking at points but never less than beautiful.  The green of the trees, the living rock we're floating past, the clear open blue of the sky and cool embrace of the water all offer much needed relief from the filth of the city.  Seoul is certainly beautiful in it's own right but this experience is similar to the hike I'd taken with Natalie a few weeks ago.  It feels so good to be here.  It reminds me of home.  I'm shirking my paddling duties but I really don't care I'm trying to absorb all of this, trying to internalize all of this.  I don't know when I'll be out of the city in a place like this again, I need to fill my cup because I may need to live off of this for a while.  

            Sometimes the city feels suffocating, the buildings arch over you and the sky seems to be cloudy much more than it is clear.  Space is tight in Seoul, everything is sandwiched between everything else and my claustrophobia has been itching a little of late.  I never thought that I was claustrophobic except once when I was younger.  At boy scouts Colin, Chris and I had taken turns climbing into an old chest.  I was last and just as I had done to them they leaned on the doors so I couldn't get out.  Colin had yelled until we let him out, Chris had sat quietly until we got bored of the game and crawled out on his own terms, but I took a different route.  I sat in the chest for two minutes thinking I'd be stoic like Chris was and get out when I wanted to, but as time progressed I got more and more jumpy.  The air was stuffy and smelled of mothballs, I was seated rather uncomfortably in the fetal position, my legs were up against my chest and my back against the rear of the compartment and I couldn't move.  I needed to move, I always have, and at that moment I felt this need more than I ever had before or since.  I felt trapped, suffocated, chained down and I grew frantic.  I kicked on the door to no avail, Colin and Chris were without laughing, calling me a scaredy cat.  I didn't care I needed to get out, breathing was becoming a awkward as it was the only action I could do.  My body was breathing as quickly as it could as if I had this sub-conscious drive to do something, anything, I needed to be active and breathing was the only thing I had left.  I kicked on the door again, only to hear more laughter in return.  My hyperventilation grew worse and I decided that this was enough.  I braced my legs against the door and back to the wall of the chest, and pushed with all of my might.  I ripped the back of the chest from the rest of the container.  I had pushed the screws out of the mahogany frame.  The chest had been up against the wall and along with destroying it I had pushed it and my friends two feet away from where they had stood seconds before.  I climbed out of the back red faced and sweating, looked at my friends who were stunned that I had broken the chest and ended our game.  "You broke it man, were gonna get in so much trouble, why did you do that?"  I blinked, "you should have let me out."

            We didn't tell anybody about that, we just pushed the chest back up against the wall and climbed off of the stage in St. Mildred's, back to Mr. Chrismer yelling at us to join the scout circle, so we didn't get in trouble, but I'll never forget that.  That was the most scared I had ever been in my life, and it was the day that I discovered I was claustrophobic.  I haven't had problems with it since then, but I've always felt a little it in cities.  Everything is so close together and it makes me a little uneasy.  The world is a large place and I hate feeling like I can't see it, like I'm encapsulated in monotony.  I hate passing the same gray skyscrapers day in and day out.  I hate starring at the same cobble stones under my feet every morning knowing there isn't anything there but stone.  At home there are trees, at school, the river, Dagoba, and so much more but here there are only high rises that loom like fence posts everywhere, the power lines linking them form the barbed wire and I walk the same trails daily like a mindless farm animal forever toiling amongst my own droppings.

It isn't like this though, here I'm only held in by . . . well nothing.  We pull up to a beach as I revel in that knowledge.  Here we're allowed to get out, stretch our legs and swim a little if we like (with our lifejackets on).  I of course choose the later of the three options and am now realizing that if I position myself just right I can float effortlessly in the cool murky water, unmolested.  How relaxing, I smile perhaps the biggest smile I've let go in a long while and amuse myself by waving at the passing rafts beaming like an idiot.  The people all wave back, mostly with confused smiles on their faces followed shortly by nervous laughs that can only mean "Hey, look at that crazy white guy, what's he so happy about?"  The fact that they wave tells me that somewhere in their Korean hearts they know exactly what I'm smiling about and are enjoying life just as much as I am right now.  The current cradles me in its arms and I couldn't be happier.  It goes around in an oval here as it swirls around the spit of land directly before the beach, so I really have to exert no effort to stay here, none at all, amazing.

I'm called back to reality by the rest of the group as the guides have set up a mini water slide on the beach.  If there isn't anything as relaxing as what I've been doing for the last few minutes than there certainly isn't anything as gratifying as a makeshift water slide, yes, I'm in.  I climb out of the water and get in line with the rest of the rafters.  We run as fast as we can down the slope of the beach one at time and jump onto the underside of an upturned raft being splashed with water from the river by the raft guides, sliding immediately off.  On my first attempt I propel myself over the 16 foot raft having attempted to skim across on my stomach.  Instead I'm surprised to find myself hitting the water on the other side face first, filling my mouth, nose and ears with the Hantan River.  I pull up out of the water laughing, that was great, 100% worth the sting of a face plant.  I think I'll go a few more times.

I went 6 more times, one guy got a back flip off, I didn't but am having a lot of fun watching the Indian guys try, this one guy just landed on his head, priceless!  "One more time," calls a guide to a chorus of groans, but we're on a schedule and this is only an appetizer for what's to come later so we all oblige them and go two more times, like I'm going to accept no more water slide for you, ever.  

The rest of the river is mild, one more set of rapids, but our battles with the other boats are far from it.  There is a boat loaded with Indians who work for Samsung chanting Indian War chants with one guy standing in the middle with his oar thrust to the sky as a spear.  We are in the process of obliterating them, even with our tiny contingency of people willing to fight.  It's four on ten and we've shown them what Amurica is all about.  This is a good time.  There are several stare downs with other boats involving the non spoken conversation of; "You're not gonna splash us," "No YOU'RE not gonna splash US" "Oh YEAH!"  "YEAH" which of course immediately degenerates into another skirmish.  Alliances are being forged and broken in spans of seconds.  The Indian battalion has been humbled but are still screaming their war chants as we pull away from them and four other rafts who we have had our way with.  We pull into the departure point, soaked, my leg is bleeding, from what I don't know, and tired.

What a great trip.

Dragonflies (23 photos), by Patrick Douville

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The city/Doosan Bears (38 photos), by Patrick Douville

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The Mountain revisited

Clearly my hiking trip this weekend meant a lot to me, I spent nearly 4 hours yesterday detailing it for you guys, and today I reflected a little bit on why it was so important.  At first I thought it was just the great feeling that I got when I reached the top and the cool things I got to see up and down the mountain, but upon further consideration it occurred to me that it's a bit more complicated than that.

Of course each of the views from the five peaks we visited were truly beautiful.  My pictures can't really capture for you all what I saw on Saturday but my memories of the things I saw and went through are going to stick with me for the rest of my life.  Not discounting these memories it is instead the atmosphere of the whole mountain that remains in my mind as the most important part of the whole experience.  

Being here in Seoul has been great, it is an amazing city with an enormous amount of things to do, places to go, containing far more people than I can ever hope to meet in the short amount of time I have here.  I'm one in over ten million small people and on top of that I'm a foreigner.  This makes me doubly invisible, doubly ignorable.  Not in the sense that people can't see me but rather that I am just another Waeguk (foreigner) here trying to make a buck.  I had a conversation at a bar the other night with these two women who kept on asking me why I came to Korea.  I tried to explain to them my different reasons, rather drunkenly I must admit, but they laughed at me and said "Noooo you're just here for the money."  Money?  What Money?

   Regardless of the reasons they thought I had for coming to Korea, the women had some preconceived notion as to why I was here and had no intention to hear my side of the story.  They saw me as just another outsider and that attitude sadly characterizes my experiences with most of the Koreans I've met.  I'm not one of them and they are acutely aware of that.  Some people here mistrust me and some dislike me, hell some refuse to even look at me.  I walk down the road and smile at almost everyone that I make eye contact with but nine times out of ten, despite the fact that we clearly saw each other and I am clearly being friendly, the man or woman on the receiving end of my good natured grin looks directly at the ground, or into a shop they're passing, or at the traffic signal.  Invariably these people disregard my smile, disregard me.  This is even true at work where some of the Koreans who make lunch for the children have refused to talk to any of us foreign teachers.  

I've read that Koreans habitually mistrust outsiders, especially Westerners as they see our many intrusions into Korea as harmful and beneficial only to the intruding party.  This is especially true in the elderly who experienced the horrors of the Korean war, and the generation they reared which is now running the country.  Fortunately this mistrust has not spread to my students or else I'd have quite a hard time trying to teach them, but even in that case I get the sense that I am looked upon by some with doubt in almost everything that I do. 

Maybe this is just my first time in a big city and this impersonal way of life is just the way that everyone lives.  I've not been to New York but I hear that the people there are cold and unfriendly, I've heard the same for Boston, but I never imagined that one could be made to feel so isolated in such a big place.  That is an overstatement, I don't feel tremendously isolated, but I do feel like just another face in the crowd, easily ignored.  That doesn't really sit well with me, I like being nice to people and I like seeing people happy.  My previous experiences have taught me that a smile is often enough to brighten someone's day, that smiles are contagious and spread if only you're willing to be a carrier.  Here I've found the opposite to be true.  My smile is perhaps what makes me different, people don't seem to want to smile at each other here, they're content to be alone with their prejudices and preconceived notions about outsiders, and a smile to them doesn't cut through the walls they've built, doesn't cut into their community.

That's the problem, Korea is a definite community in which I have yet to gain a foothold.  Some of my co-workers seem to have broken into this community a little bit by dating Koreans, learning the language and other things.  I am new and have not had a chance to seriously study the language or develop any meaningful relationships with any Koreans, but from what I've been told Waeguk attempts to learn the language are looked upon with scorn as pronunciation is tricky and mistakes are a hallmark of anyone learning Korean as a second language.  It's almost as if you're trying to get your dog to do a trick and he does half of it right while completely ignoring or botching the other half, you smile, give him the treat and walk away thinking he did a good job, because well he's just a dog anyway, he's never going to get it 100% right.  You know you could do it perfectly and well, that's what separates us from the dogs.  From what I heard Koreans regard foreigners with a similar mentality, no matter what you do to improve linguistically or culturally, you're never going to be one of them and though you may be cute when you try to emulate them, you're always going to be a step below the real deal, a cheap imitation of a priceless piece of art.  That my friends is immensely discouraging as immersing myself in the culture is something I would very much like to do.  To be sure I can still do it but I don't know if I'm ever going to belong to that inner community no matter how hard I try.

This weekend however, I had the odd notion that I was becoming a part of something here, the mountain climbing community.  Though I was still a Waeguk people didn't seem to avoid my gaze and surprisingly my smile was returned to me a thousand times more than it had ever been in the city.  Though people laughed while I rested, laughed when I lost my footing, laughed  when I almost fell, I got the sense that I was being laughed with instead of at.  Even though I certainly didn't look the climbing buff I felt that people respected me a little more just for being there and sharing the mountain with them.  In my mind I found my first foothold in a Korean community on Saturday, and though it's a cooky community of people who take climbing far more seriously than I ever have and probably ever will, they definitely accepted me in.  I was invited to join in a mountaintop drinking session, I took dinner at a Temple alongside fellow climbers, and Korean people smiled at me!  The mountain proved itself to be a great arbiter between me and the Koreans.  I may not really be a part of the Korean community per-say but I've found a niche within this society where I can be at least be marginally accepted.  

I get the feeling that I'm not giving the Korean people enough credit and that the longer I am here the more accepting they'll be of me, but up until Saturday I hadn't felt a part of the culture here at all.  The attitudes of the people on the mountain changed that for me.  Maybe the city changes people, maybe the rat race makes people disregard things like smiles from foreigners, makes them refrain from trusting others, and maybe I'm just to new to really pass any judgement, but the open atmosphere of  Dobongsan didn't have any maybes in it.  We smiled at each other, we laughed together and we all climbed the same stony stairs leading up to a breathtaking look at the squalor of the city below.  Natalie and I've decided to go hiking on a different mountain every two weeks, to taste the crisp fresh air of the great outdoors, to feel the burn of exhaustion in our legs, to get away from the monotony of work and for me at least to rejoin a not so exclusive club whose only condition for membership is a person's presence on the mountain.  Perhaps most importantly everyone in this club is always read to smile back through sweat and exertion, through culture barriers and community walls, because here we're all the same, sore and tired.

Dobongson (142 photos), by Patrick Douville

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

album 08/14/09 (28 photos), by Patrick Douville

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Dobongsan and more (this is going to be a long post, a lot happened)

Friday night I took it easy preparing myself for yesterday morning.  Natalie and I had planned a hike for the morning on the recommendation of one of our Korean coworkers and I figured if I was going to get up super early at 1030 and go on a hike I'd better not be feeling the after effects of the night before.  That may have been the best decision I've made since getting here.

   After sleeping in until 10:30 and suspending the trip an hour or so I met up with Natalie, we bought some food and went down to the subway.  Four transfers and over an hour spent languishing on the subway we arrived at Dobongsan station at the foot foot of the mountain.  We had seen just about all of the eastern side of the city and were now farther than we'd ever been from home near the end of the far reaching line 1, the purple line.  When we stepped off of the train we could see the mountain we'd be climbing despite the cloud of smog that hovers over the city, and though not gigantic it was impressive, I was pretty excited.  We were about to climb Dobongsan.  San means mountain in Korean and they just attach it to the end of the name so if we were to translate this, we were headed up to Dobong mountain.  

While we were walking up the road I couldn't help but think that it didn't look that high and was excited to go up, conquer the mountain, come down having proved myself a badass in less than 3 hours all without breaking a sweat.  Ha.  On our way up we passed a lot of older Koreans all decked out in climbing gear; poles, hiking shoes, mountain climbing backpacks and under armor-esque clothing all of which was long sleeve.  We had a laugh at that because as much as these people looked the part, we did not.  We were both wearing shorts, a t-shirt and running shoes and I probably wouldn't have looked much different had we been going to the bars.  As funny as we thought these avid climbers were they actually helped us out when we got off the subway.  We had no idea how to get to the mountain, we could see it but that was it, we were still in the city, so we decided to just follow the currents of obvious mountain climbers flocking to the beginning of the trail.  We were right to do so as the hikers led us right up to where we would be starting our hike.  

On the way up to the mountain we got a chance to see where all of these hikers did their shopping.  The road was lined with hiking shops big and small.  All of them had barrels full of hiking poles, shelves full of hiking shoes and racks from which hung the ridiculous clothing our fellow hikers were wearing.  There were also special hats, handkerchiefs and sunglasses in a variety of colors.  Ponchos, mess kits and tents also sat in the display cases, you know just in case you had forgotten yours at home.  The size of this hiking market was ridiculous, these stores had everything and I think we passed about 45 different places.  All of the big brands like North face were represented and the funny thing was that the knockoff brands of the bigger ones had stores right next to whomever they were trying to emulate.  The one that stuck in my mind was a North face store right next to a Red face store, but there were many more besides that.  We also passed a lot of food stands that sold anything you could want.  We had bought some snacks before hand so we didn't stop at these places, but I at least was amused by the fact that these shops on top of selling traditional Korean food, which isn't very nutritious as it is, carried soju and other liquor, what great companions for a grueling hike, liquor and junkfood.

At the trailhead we stopped into the park rangers office and picked ourselves up a handy dandy map on which the ranger was nice enough to highlight the route we'd be taking to the top.  The map showed all the peaks as well as points of interest along the trails, we'd be taking the orange trail to Juanbong, the top of the mountain and I was happy to see that along the way we'd be passing a few temples and hermitages that had been there for quite some time.  I'd be getting a little history and sightseeing in with my hike, killing two birds with one stone, alright! We got started right away . . . on a paved road which cars were driving down.  Great, is this going to be hiking in Korea?  Paved roads lined with food vendors?  Natalie and I remarked to each other that this had better get a little more challenging or we'd just taken an hour and a half subway ride for nothing.  We kept on going though and encountered our first temple, luckily I had brought my camera so I was able to snap off a few shots of the temple buildings, an impressive statue of the Buddha and the guardian demons painted on the doors.  Not too long after we came across an old school which I also took a picture of.  Both the temple and school were the first real examples I'd seen of traditional Korean Architecture and though they were small it was pretty cool to see.  I particularly enjoy the roofs and gates, the tiles that compose the roof and the lines of the houses and gates are quite cool in my opinion.  

We continued up the paved road and were happy to see that it turn quickly to old laid stone which quickly changed to jagged stone steps as we made our way farther up the trail.  Directly next to the trail was a stream strewn with boulders where Korean hikers were picnicking and washing their feet.  The trail itself was littered with large rocks and grew progressively steeper as we went up.  It was all steps at this point that seemed to have been hewn out of the rock of the mountain itself.  The steps were old and rough, some were small, others large but all were unique, it was interesting to see and different from any hike I'd been on in the states.  I imagined that these had been laid by either the monks or hermits of one of the monasteries we were approaching some centuries before and that thought steeled my resolve to beat this mountain.

The problem however with that was that this was getting hard.  It hadn't been an hour before I was soaked to the bone.  I had packed my bag full of food and 4 liters of water and gatorade adn it was weighing on me pretty heavily, my calves were burning along with my hamstrings while sweat poured out of my my brow and dripped all over the ground, my camera, my shoes.  I'm sure you could have followed me had it been less hot, there would have been a small salty stream coursing down the mountain in my wake, disgusting I know but it was a hot day and the hike was becoming more and more strenuous as we got further up the mountain.  I started giving myself breaks by taking pictures of the scenery.  While this may not have been necessary it was worth it and I got some cool shots of the mountain as we climbed.  It wasn't very different from mountains I've hiked in the appalachians.  The plant life was comparable, a lot of conifers, some oaks, the only glaring difference was the amount of stones, the combination of these things made for some pretty cool pictures and I took advantage of that.  

We both tired out pretty quick, the hike was quite a workout and we were laughing at ourselves for our earlier confidence, which turned out to be pretty ridiculous.  It was a jolt back to reality, I had imagined myself to be in pretty good shape, but the mountain proved me wrong.  I might still be in decent shape but I am certainly not where I want to be just yet.  I remember being a kid and going four hours up old rag without any significant break.  Maybe these trails were steeper but I still felt like a wimp as we sat down for our lunch of bagels and apples.  The Koreans were laughing at us as well, which normally would make things worse for me, but Natalie and I both laughed it off, we kind of deserved it, and besides we thought it was pretty fun too.  We sat for a little and then continued upward, continually laughing at our now exposed frailty, the trail was at such a steep incline at some points that you had to use a rope to pull yourselves up, at other points railings were set up to hold on to where the rock was to smooth to climb, all of these seemed insurmountable barriers by the time we were about an hour from the summit, and our resolve was at an all time low when we stopped for a break near the top.

We were in the middle of talking to each other about how ridiculous we must look, how funny it was that the Koreans were all laughing at us, and how both of us had almost fallen within the last ten minutes when we met with our new companion.  Torbin was a German biologist who traveled all over the world with his parents and was admittedly pretty strange.  Natalie saw him climbing up when we were resting and asked him if we was going to make it.  I think she may have regretted calling out to him later but he came over and started talking to us.  He is a beetle expert who had just come to Korea the same as us.  Well he had been here before but had only recently returned.  He sat with us as we rested and then continued on with us as we resumed our hike.  

He spoke to us the whole time through such a thick German accent that I thought his name was Tobin for almost the entire day.  He punctuated almost every sentence with abrupt laughter, but was so good natured it was hard not to like him.  While he was a little weird he was a very nice guy and he provided us with the drive to reach the top that we had lost in our last break.  It was only about 15 minutes to the top from where we had stopped and it went a lot quicker than the last hour had.  We talked with Torbin about different things, Korea, Germany, hiking, how we all needed to get back in shape while climbing nearly 70 percent inclines of solid rock that were pretty challenging but quite beautiful.  Before we knew it we had reached the top.  

The scenery was spectacular.  The peak we had climbed was the highest peak you could reach on a ridge line dotted with six or seven other mountains that you could see.  All of the peaks were topped with massive boulders jutting out of the surrounding forests.  Our peak was the same except that we were at the top of the giant stone looking out over the other ones.  All the effort had been worth it the view was just amazing.  Alone with the other mountains you could see the city, still shrouded in the smog that makes it nearly impossible to see the stars at night.  Despite the smog it was still breathtaking.  The best part I think had to be the air.  As we had climbed I had noticed the air becoming cleaner and cleaner, it tasted so delicious, especially at the tope of the mountain coupled with the landscape below us, it tasted like accomplishment.

We took some pictures of ourselves, included Torbin and some of our fellow mountain climbers and continued on.  Natalie had planned on going down but we continued along the ridge of the mountain with Torbin to the next peak.  This part of the trip was much easier as we were walking either downhill or on mostly level ground and we now had a burning sense of victory to fuel our extended hike.  It was a nice walk Torbin proved that he prefered to talk then be quite and I was happy to humor him.  He told us he was 32 and traveled a lot with his parents.  He worked out of his home studying beetles and would stop every once in a while to examine the flora and fauna.  

We stopped at 4 other peaks each slightly different than the one before.  From the first, Jubong, we were able to see the northern side of the mountain, a sea of trees stretching as far as one could rolling like waves over the mountains in the distance.  At the second one we encountered some picnickers who were happy to share their bounty with us.  One of the men handed Torbin a milky liquid in a cup which turned out to be some sort of liquor.  We passed it around and it was delicious, I had scoffed at this at the bottom of the mountain but at the top it was really refreshing.  I think it also gave me a little more energy.  At the third which was Podae Peak I think, Torbin and I scrambled over the boulders on the top with Natalie worrying out loud behind us, we then convinced her to scramble up with us and the suburbs surrounding the Purple line we had rode up on sprawled before us.  We took some pictures and were about to leave when a helicopter came roaring over our heads.  We had passed a helipad earlier and the pilot landed the chopper there behind the second peak we had stopped at, presumably to rescue some poor sap who had twisted an ankle.  We moved on, having watched the helicopter land and depart to the fifth peak we would see that day, the fourth since the original and the last we would see that day.  The way there became a little less concrete.  Gravel and loose dirt were most of what we walked on on our way and Torbin had quite a fall.  He tumbled down end over end and cut himself up on his hands, legs and forehead.  He was a little shaken but besides the cuts none the worse for wear.  We made it to the last peak not to long after that.  From there you could see an ancient Monastery that we left for after taking in our last view of the mountain top.

The three of us started down the mountain around 430.  Actually it was three mountains over from the one we had climbed earlier and the way down was pretty easy.  "It's all stairs" Torbin told us as we went down and so it was, wooden stairs set very close together, I had to walk sideways down them because my feet when facing forward hung over the edges of the steps to much.  Despite the short, steep steps we made it down to the monastery though Torbin kept on jokingly telling me I was going to fall next.  The monastery was beautiful, well it was a Temple actually, the Mongwolsa Temple to be precise.  I took pictures of the Temple itself which was really something.  The building itself was really ornate and intricately built, with reliefs on the outside walls and impressively detailed painted wood carvings framing the roof.  The inside was amazing too.  Awe inspiring Golden Buddha statues and golden wall hangings, the name of which I can't think of right now, stared out at me from behind the simple altar.  I snapped a few pictures after asking permission from one of the monks and then we walked down a stairway into the courtyard of the Temple.  There was a spring were weary hikers were resting and having a drink.  We waited unsure what we were allowed to do, while Torbin cleaned his cuts at the sink in the kitchen.  He called out to us that dinner was free here and we were more than welcome to it and several of the kitchen ladies beckoned us to come in and sit down, we happily obliged.

The meal was pretty good.  It was all vegetables for the most part with rice, soup and walnuts, but I was pleasantly surprised.  We had the pleasure of english speaking company at dinner to, a lady named Diane who was staying at the temple for the weekend talked to us a little bit about Buddhism and the temple's history.  Diane and her friends told us about the time they'd spent in America, one had been to Baltimore and stayed in Hunt Valley.   Unfortunately we couldn't stay to long to talk though.  It was getting late and we were tired so we washed our dishes, thanked everyone for their company and food, walked outside to fill our water bottles up at the spring and walked down the rest of the way.  We encountered another spring on the way down which we crossed over a few times.  I took pictures of the source and later the stream that it became.  It was a nice little stream because the water just cascaded down the rocks so there were several small waterfalls along the way and a natural water slide that several guys were playing on.  It reminded me of Sedona though it was small in comparison and I think that I'd like to go back there just to try it out, it looked like a lot of fun.

We made it down finally and walked to the metro exhausted.  We stopped on the way to get ice cream, a desert that seemed fit for a king at that point.  We gobbled it down then left on the subway.  We said goodbye to Torbin halfway through our ride, and laughed a little bit when he left, he had been a strange man but a good hiking companion and I'm glad we ran into him.  An hour later we got back to Hanti and went almost immediately to bed, tired and sore, but, in my case anyway completely satisfied with the day