Anyway. This attempt started at about 10:00 AM with Nana's decision to stay home to rest, nurse a stomach ache, and prepare to host some friends for an afternoon of football, fried chicken, and beer. (Our giant new $420 flatscreen monitor helped make this totally sweet, by the way.) Then, a few minutes later, my hiking party showed up--minus one more, a colleague who mysteriously disappeared in the course of several Skype calls yesterday morning. However, undeterred by this appallingly high rate of attrition, we two remaining hikers set off through the streets of Nowon, navigating by sight to the foot of a small mountain nearby.
Now, you need to understand that we chose this hike because it was supposed to be relatively easy--the guidebook talks about a wide, sandy trail meandering its way up from street level, with some nice views and some rocks at the top. Well, apparently we took a wrong turn somewhere, because the trail we took was steep, narrow, deserted, and barely-marked at all! But after about an hour of hard climbing, we were finally rewarded with a nice view across Nowon, a short rest--and, of course, a glimpse of the aforementioned wide, sandy trail. A tiny helipad--yes, helipad--signaled that we were at the summit. We continued on, deciding to press forward to the Danggogae Metro stop rather than retrace our steps to the foot of the hill.
But at the summit we were not! After about 15 minutes on the sandy, windy footpath, we reached a rocky clearing and found ourselves looking straight up. (We also found the well-marked trail down to Danggogae, but seriously, how could you pass views like these up?) The last 20 minutes to the real summit were pretty wild--much more climbing than hiking, with long lines of ropes to help you up the rock face and some harrowing drops at the side of the trail.
But, hey! The views were well worth it. I could see my house from here!
And just to add a little more thigh-burning goodness to the day, the descent up at the top here was even tricker than the climb: we eventually figured out it was best to go down backwards, belay-style, but on more than one occasion we had to rely on the tried-and-true buttslide, plus a little help from our Korean guardian angel (some guy who adopted us for the day and made it his business to make sure we got to the bottom of the hill in one piece).We did, of course, make it to the bottom in one piece, downed a few bottles of Pocari Sweat, and then geared up for an afternoon of sloth and gluttony--fried chicken and two NFL games. Sweet!
2 comments:
Wow! That picture of you with the city in the background is amazing!! Looks like a successful hike all around. And I'm very jealous that you can somehow watch football, which I most definitely have not found a way to do here.
Hi--I just read your blog, it's really great! I taught English in Seoul last summer. A non-spicy dish I liked was "kong guksu," a kind of bean noodle soup with egg and pear.
As for teaching and getting kids to talk in class, I found that playing a short 5-10 min game at the beginning of each class helped them get to know each other and feel comfortable speaking up. We did 'categories' (ie each kid has to think of something in a category like fruit, or appliances--also helps their vocab) and the city game--each kid has to name a city in the world beginning with the last letter of the previous one. When I had the time to write the questions, they also liked "Jeopardy" games based on the novels we read and literary terms we learned.
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