Bukhansan - Not just another mountain

Oh man....

our third day of spring has sprung (shortly to be replaced by rain and gloom), so I'm on the terrace of Gecko's listening to the marvelous cacophony of life in Seoul; horns blaring, semi-decent music from within the restaurant, scooters buzzing, and the breeze snapping a few flags.

Nice-uh!

An opportunity to post pictures of the first "non-Namsan" mountain Yvonne and I went up.

A few weeks ago our school closed for a day to climb Bukhansan. Yvonne and I headed off together in a cab for the meeting space, but once there we were efficiently separated as we are from different divisions.

We wallowed about a bit at the National Memorial, and then departments began to head out. EIT was the absolute last to leave. As we wandered towards the park, another Park (Bom-shik) noted that our department had been just as tardy last year.

our students dorking around, ensuring our tardiness

Our tardiness meant that we were at the back end of a massive traffic jam up the hill. I felt sorry for the Ajummah and Ajeoshi who had chosen this particular day for their hike up the hill. Little could they have known that they would be engulfed in perfect storm of Makgeoli drinking college students.

The long orange trail

Fortunately, Koreans are not much impressed by the requirement to stay on the trail, so the older folks, wherever possible, detoured around us on the hill.

on the way up

After a long slog at sluggish pace, we reached the first ridge and things opened up for a while. This was a decent hike and produced some really nice views of the mountains to the right. Eventually, we hit another bottleneck just below the fort, and we all milled like cows on the slaughter train. Eventually I snuck my way through. I was the first person from our department, so I sat down and waited for the rest of the party.

Again, because of our tardiness, all the good spaces were taken, and the first spot out intrepid student leader staked out for us was right next to the honey-pot style toilets!

Cooler heads (and ones with noses) prevailed, as some other keen-eyed student noted a large group already heading out (this is how late we were) and we slipped into that spot rather quickish.

our student leaders

Then it was lunch, drinking, and the traditional games including one something like "Duck, Duck, Goose," which was rendered quite dangerous by low branches, rocky terrain, and a coating of fallen leaves that obscured the real ground. Still, lots of fun.

our ferocious lunch


our drinking

Then, a walk down the other side which was painfully steep.

At the bottom our tardiness caught up with us again, as the last Dongguk shuttle bus, which Yvonne's more timely department had caught, was long gone. So we had to hike out an additional mile or two to a bus stop.

My students tried to get me to take a taxi, but there was no way I was wimping out at that point. Then it was bus and subway back to Chungmuro, for the traditional post traffic-jam/horrific descent beer and chicken extravaganza.

toasting the hike

A great day, and our first mountain down.

The Mountains of Seoul: Inwangsan

A Representative Bell

A few weeks ago, Yvonne and I hiked up Bukhansan with our entire college (that's a story to post soon), and with one weekend off to go to Busan and get sunburnt inbetween, last Saturday was our day to go up Inwangsan.

We hopped the subway to the Donggimun station and stopped to purchase two bottles of water and one bottle of Makgolli. This was the complete offseason for hiking, and the guy in the store was happy enough to have customers that he asked if we were going to Muak Temple and then took a few steps to the corner of the block and pointed out the way. We walked a road cut out of the hill, and as I looked at all the colorful protuberances on the restraining wall I thought of how quickly every sweaty hippie in the US would be climbing the wall.. well, if it were in the US.

The Wall I would Climb

We walked on into the temple area, and took a long, looping, and sometimes doubling-back, walk through the temple area. Plenty interesting to see, including a variety of (usually lone women) doing various shamanic (I think, since there were sacrifices, alcohol, etc) things in front of very large rocks.

Shamanisting

At one point we got too far back down the hill, or, maybe I should say, far enough down the hill to see that we hadn't made it to the top. We stopped to get some water and I snapped a picture of some kid/NK spy, crawling up the defensive wall and into what seemed to be army territory. About three minutes later soldiers were patrolling the area, but we never could tell if they 'caught' him, or if he was actually doing anything wrong.

The Dude makes his Escape

Then it was a wander down the other side of the hill, where Yvonne's faultless nose sniffed out every dead-end trail in the area. Then it was across the main street, to yet another hill, where we found a lovely exposed granite slab, where I enjoyed the sun and Yvonne induced vertigo in herself. Finally, famished from the spinning of her head, and me with my appetite whetted by some of the Makgeolli, we headed down to the road and had some delicious Tuegi Galbi, that was only somewhat ruined by how solicitous the ajumma was.

I leave you with a picture of Yvonne, terrified of a 15 degree incline, and me taking a deranged looking photo of my own face, whilst staring directly into the sun.

Anyone Want to be a Star?

Does anyone (in Korea who is a male) want to go on a three-day filming with Arirang? It would be the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (18,19,20) of May. Kind of inconvenient scheduling, but you would get on TV and get trained around Korea.

You may have been in Korea too long..

When you make some kind of Chicken Jiggae, and at the end, attempting to determine where it falls short in spicing.. you think to yourself..

"It could have used Kimchi."

I am now there...

NASA releases new images of the sun. But you can't look directly at them.

kind of cool...

I think..

now that I'm blind, I'm working by memory....

Quick (QUICK!) survey on readability..

I mean...

really quick (three questions).

Do an inquisitive fellow a favor and answer the questions.

LOL... Someone whose plan for riches may NOT work out...

That was in my emailbox when I got home....

I put the "ME" into social MEdia...

I went to the marketplace
They said they liked my face
Better than a digital watch
You got it, we're pros and we can spot it
So I thought it was some disease
But they were all on their knees
Shakin' hands with my picture

Had a meeting with Arirang TV today.. they may want to take me on a train trip around Korea and film it. ... They are apparently unaware of my ability to derail nearly anything. ^^

First we sterilize it
Then we merchandise it
Everybody tries
Everybody buys it

On Friday I meet with the Director of the Presidential Council on Nation Branding. They want to talk about my blog and my work "for Korea." They have already called my University President and thanked him for my work. (!)

I'm both scared and intrigued.

Well that's fine
Put me on the slug line
Punch a pretty hole in my mind
Show me where to sign
And put me on the slug line

The cool thing is all these hookups are happening because of the KTLIT blog, so it's safe to say that it paid off in gigantic ways...

They told me how to behave
Like any other public slave
Keep a smile on the face of the consumer
Or you'll become a rumor

PS.. can anyone tell I got my hands on the John Hiatt Compilation and have been enjoying the pre-sober days of his songwriting?

Nanoomi NET goes BETA!

And I am a featured blogger. Take a look at www.nanoomi.net

Here is a snatch from their "about" page:

Nanoomi comes from the Korean word “나눔”–”to share”.

We’re a community of writers, translators and Korea-enthusiasts who have come together to share with the world, the deep and diverse ecology of the Korean blogosphere.

Actually, make that the Korean blogospheres. There are talented bloggers writing about the country in Korean, but there are also amazing English-language bloggers sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm for all things Korean.

But they play in different blogospheres, separated by language, culture and (ahem) social-networking platforms.

Nanoomi wants to bridge those differences: our aim is to build a cross-language “bridge-blogging” community.

Retard Nation

This week was special in the sense that the short school bus is special.....

First, it appears I will be a TV star, an unfortunate thing for a man with a face and body made for radio, but a voice made working at the deaf camp. I got a call from Arirang and they want me to be one of 20 foreigners who travel to "unknown" Korea and experience it, from the tigers in the swamps, to the natives - bones in noses, slathered in alarming slashes of white paint and little else - skulking away from the campfire whilst sharpening their pointy sticks.

It is a vision to drive any civilized man to a quart of gin and a cultured racism. ;-)

When I got the call, however, it alarmed me.. because..

Korean winters are quite dry, and as a sensitive blossom, my face gets a bit chapped (and that is all my chapped bits that I am willing to discuss at this moment). So I put lotion on it. In fact, I put mineral oil on it, and then slather on some lotion.

It works.

Except the night before Arirang called, Yvonne hid the normal lotion. I looked about a bit dispiritedly, but could not find it. Fortunately, kind as Yvonne is, she had left a different bottle of lotion in its place. So I slathered up and went into our office to write a bit of this, slightly more of that, and an appalling amount of the other.

About 30 minutes later I felt some stinging on my face, "aha, it's working!" I opined to myself. And went to sleep, a great sodden and drunken mass.

Next morning.. I get up and I have three great triangles of red skin on my face. And inverted triangle whose narrow point is between my eyebrows, and which expands as it goes up my forehead.

Similarly, beneath each eye, a triangle of ugly, chapped red.

So.. when Arirang called I was worried they wanted some last minute interview... thankfully they didn't.

I got home and asked Yvonne where she had put the lotion I liked. Turns out it was in the living room, a bit obscured by drying laundry.

I told her about my trauma and how I hated the second kind of lotion.

She looked at me, head a bit aslant, "what other lotion?"

I said, "the lotion in the bathroom," and went in and got it to show her.

Shampoo.

Not lotion...

Fark me with petrochemical cancer causers.

It turned out well, I guess, because Yvonne is still in stitches I did this dumb thing...

And I've always really wanted to put her in stitches..

I suck that way...

;-)