A break from the hustle

Well it has almost officially been one month since I arrived here in Korea and it is definitely starting to feel like I am settling in. Friday night I stayed around here and had some beers with my housemates. The best thing about Korea is that public alcohol consumption is okay! We hung out at a park by our apartment building and drank beers and soju! Fun adventures!!

Saturday morning, after waking up with quite the hangover, I set out for a day of hiking with my friend Nate. Our first stop was for some food to feed our hangovers. We went to this sandwich shop by our school and I got a club sandwich. In Korea they put egg on everything so I was not surprised when there was egg on my club, it was a delicious addition! Fueled and ready we headed to Suwon to a mountain a friend of ours recommended. Once in Suwon we had to get a cab to the mountain, which proved to be a difficult task. Most taxi drivers around here do not speak English, luckily for me, Nate speaks some Korean so he was able to get us to where we needed to go. We were finally at the mountain and I was ready for some wilderness. Little did I know it would be awhile before we got to the point where it was relaxing. The first leg of the hike was cramped and packed(as is everywhere in Korea), so many hikers all decked out in the finest of hiking gear. It is hilarious to see all the "hikers" in their expensive hiking gear. The funny part is that the hike is more of a leisurely walk through the woods with stairs on almost all of the hills. When we finally reached the peak of the mountain(only about a 1.5 hour climb) we climbed a rock face and descended a different path.

 This was when we finally got the hike we were looking for. There was no one on the trail but us and by this time we had both talked so much that we were okay with a nice quite hike. Turns out there was a reason that we were the only ones on that path, it just ended. Literally we were in the middle of nowhere with no path to follow. We could hear the highway so we just hoofed it through the woods hoping to come across some form of a trail. We eventually did and ended up in someones backyard. They were out gardening and directed us to the road. We walked for a bit and found a bus stop and hoped on a bus that we were told would take us to Suji. After about a 5 minute bus ride we were home. We had actually hiked almost all the way back Suwon! I was glad to finally have had a nice day of adventure out of the city.

Today I went into Seoul with Desiree where we mett up with our friend Tobye and went to check out Seoul Tower. We took a cable car up to the tower and then went up and got an amazing view of Seoul. It was pretty awesome! On our way home we met another teacher who lives here in Suji and has been here for over a year. She is going to show us the gym she goes to tomorrow so I will hopefully be able to get some better workouts in!!

Another week off work starts tomorrow!