The 808 Steps

With much planning, my coworker Carp organised a weekend away on the Eastern coast in the Seoraksan National Park. It was an incredible place, and a very fun weekend!
It began with us feeling very Amazing Race-y with just 35 minutes to get from work to the bus terminal, a stretch at the best of times and harder with the Friday afterwork traffic. We all pretended to be kind and generous teachers and let our students leave 5 minutes early, but really we needed that little time up our sleeves. Unfortunately our boss chose that night to have a "quick word" with us, and despite our protests and strained faces, he was actually being lovely, having heard we were off to Seoraksan, and gave us some money to help support our weekend! Very kind and unexpected and helped start the weekend off on a good note. We got to the bus with four minutes to spare and travelled for two hours to Chuncheong, where we stayed the night, after some delicious dakgalbi (the chicken barbecue in front of you, totally delicious) - apparently it originated from there, and we weren't disappointed.
The following day we had another two hour bus ride through to Sokcho, a city on the coast and the gateway to the national park. Totally beautiful, the ride through almost reminded me of Fiordland, only it just had a different feel about it. We met up with others there and headed for the park.

Korea does nature: Neon welcome signs!

(l-r) Sara, Ann, Me, Laura and Carp

Carp had given us a little idea about where we were going, but then he pointed out THIS:

Ulsanbawi Rock

And told us we were going to climb it! I almost fell over. It's over 800m above sea level, and we were about to climb 808 steps straight up the side of it, about 400m straight.
It's hard for photos to do justice to just how major this was!

This totally reminds me of somewhere in

Fiordland - minus the tui, and pohutakawa

We walked for maybe 1 1/2 hours up through forest, it was relatively easy going, we passed an amazing HUGE statue of Buddha, a temple and a hermitage where monks still live. I saw my first ever squirrels, chipmunks and woodpeckers - I was LOVING it, while everyone I was with (being either Canadian or American) scoffed at my innocence, but it was so novel to see these wee critters!

And to hear birdsong, it was lovely. So nice to be free of the hum of neon (excluding the welcome sign) and the constant blarring of K-pop music (as much as I do love it) and the noise of the city. Silence! Peace! And because we'd got our a into g so late, most of the Korean hikers were heading down and out so by the time we got to the base of the rock, we were almost the only ones left there.

This isn't the rock we climbed.

We reached the hermitage where there's a teetering rock, which (with effort) you can make rock a little - we all failed, and then watched one single (and slight) Korean man do it almost effortlessly.

The most daunting part of all was looking up at this rock we had to scale, there was a rickety ladder bolted to the side of it and they pretty much just went right up. I'm sure at home you'd not be allowed to climb this without some kind of harness, it was perilous at the best of times. I had moments of horrible vertigo looking back over my shoulder (which I quit doing) at just how far down the ground was.

One of the many, many rest stops - it was

incredibly hot despite being so high up

The view from the peak over Sokcho,

the city we stayed in, and the Eastern coast of Korea -

pretty close to the border with the North

At one point we passed a group of Koreans heading down, and a man was carrying a beer, which he insisted we take - pretty bizarre he thought the need to pack that for this trek, but we were pretty happy to receive it - despite it being warm and flat.

There was also an ahjumma (which is the word for an older Korean woman, who are pretty notorious around the place, they say they run the country) tailing along behind us using her hands and feet to climb, and we were determined not to let her pass us, so were super pleased when we finally made it to the top!

Lazzarin and I on the top of the world!

The temple back down on flat land, most incredible,

beautiful setting for one.

Sara and I having some well-earned Galbi
back in Sokcho

The next day was spent on a hot stinky bus home, there were plans for bungy jumping on Sunday but noone was feeling much up for it. We're hoping to get back over this way in autumn, apparently the colours are incredible, and there are many more walks to do, it's an area definitely worth more exploration!

Some very jaded travellers

Trains, Ferries and Automobiles

How to: Get to the Beach in Korea.

First, take a 1/2 hour taxi to the subway station, then take two subways to Dongincheon. Perferably have some sunshine in your foreground, and ensure you pack your togs, sunblock and a very cheery mood - you're gonna need it!
Also helpful to have a loud and still semi-drunk Irishman along for the trip for entertainment value. Thank you Aidan.

Sunshine and we're going to the beach - hurrah!

From there it's a simple cab ride with a fabulous driver who plays you A-Ha 'Take On Me' and ABBA 'Honey Honey' on the way - this is his driving music. But do not, under any circumstances, over enthusiastically begin to sing in horrible non-melodic voices. He will tell you to shut up and threaten to kick you out.
Arrive at Woomuido (I can't spell Korean place names) and get on a boat. Sing the predictable "Never thought I'd be on a boat, it's a big blue watery road" lyrics - they are compulsory. Watch Korean families throw food at seagulls with gusto and enjoy hundreds of the scoundrels trailing along with your boat across to the island.

Poesidon - Look at me!

Next, wait 1/2 hour for a bus while reading your Korean phrasebook and being rather proud of being able to read the signs around you for the first time - EVER! Enjoy a Korean man squat down beside you, take said phrasebook and laugh hysterically to himself while pointing out particular words or phrases. I guess these must be in jokes, as I found it funny, but not as funny as he did.

After a 40min bus ride across Incheon (an island, where the Int'l airport is, where I flew in, funny to be back) enjoy a leisurely 15 min stroll across a causeway and around a road to another ferry.

Board ferry. Watch as ferry turns around, travels for two minutes (at most) and docks on the other side. Question need for ferry and the possibility of a bridge. Dismiss. You're on Muuido!

So now, pack yourself into another bus like cattle (or some very intensive bus ghosting - ghosting for beginners if you will) and enjoy another 15 min ride along very narrow but two-way roads through farm land. Be pleased you can only see your friends' armpits and not how close you come to running down SUVs, goats, and children.
And then, dear friends, you are AT THE BEACH!

Six hours of travelling was SO worth it for this!

How to: Have Fun at the Beach

1. Swim. Ignore the lack of other swimmers. Ignore the brown water from the silt pouring in to the China Sea from the Yellow River. Ignore the floating bandaid and itty bitty little dead crab. Put your head under for beachy hair. Rinse. Repeat.

2. Beer on the beach. Obviously.

3. As the tide receeds, follow it, and you'll end up walking for about an hour. On the return trip, splash annoyed friends and marvel at the weird and unique sealife dredged up in the mudflats and laugh at the Korean families wearing plastic yellow waders while digging for clams.


4. Watch the sunset. Pur-edy.

5. Eat galbi (Korean BBQ) on the beach front. Combine with soju.

We are very mini. But we are also having a

whole buncha fun with sparklers. Yippee!

6. Realise fireworks are sold alongside sunscreen and shampoo at the one and only store on the island. Buy a bundle. Write your name in the sky.

Laz's bike is so much cooler - it's pink and has a basket!

7. Borrow/steal childrens bikes and ride around on 'em until you tire of it/until you break them/until a Korean woman - likely the mother of the children who officially own the bikes - comes and scolds you and whacks you on the bum to get off (yes, this is from experience. Bad, bad Sophie!)


8. Steal/raid wood and make bonfire. Fall asleep in front of it. Bliss!

Next week: Seroaksan - The National Park of Wonder!

Map: Not To Scale

My first weekend out of Suwon to a rugby tournament in Gumi turned into quite the adventure- which began when we got our train tickets from Suwon station and hopped on what we thought was the train to Gumi before being told it was in fact the wrong train.
The conductor was very helpful and said we needed to get off two stations down and RUN from platform 6 to platform 2 - we had five minutes to do so. Adrenaline was pumping as we rushed up an Everest of stairs with legs, hearts, eyes burning and getting to the top,running in circles a little before finding the right platform and being told we'd missed the train by about 10 minutes. And by some small miracle the next was delayed by 7 so we had enough time to exchange our tickets (and get an upgrade to first class, yuss) before we were finally on our way to Gumi.
It was great to finally see some countryside outside Seoul and it looked just as I'd imagined Korea, verdant bushclad hills and sinuous riverbeds. At times it looked like New Zealand, a little like Fiordland, a little like the McKenzie Country, but there was an "air" of Asia about it. Pretty cool.
After about 2 hours on the train we made it to Gumi. We'd been given a map to get to the soccer fields where the rugby tournament was being held, and had been specifically told it was not to scale.
We were intending to get a cab but suddenly on the map we'd walked half the way to the field and as it was such a beautiful day, we decided it was totally reasonable for us to walk. And walk we did... merrily down highways, then streets, then dusty roads, until we had walked all the way out of the city and were still only barely further on the map.
It was an amazing walk, the countryside was beautiful, it was so nice to be surrounded by mountains and rice paddys and farmland. It wasn't until we realised we'd been walking for over an hour and had little to no idea where we were that we started wondering how much further the fields actually were.
We passed a dog farm (heartbreaking, sounded like the SPCA, but we knew these dogs were not going to loving homes) which was on the map and eventually turned onto a semi-main road, off this dusty track we'd been on.
And this amazing Korean farmer stopped and picked us up with his ute and gave us a lift to the fields! It was the best, and saved us much much more walking.
The rest of the day was spent soaking up the sun, watching rugby (I love that I lived in NZ for 24 years and never went to a rugby game, been in Korea 5 weeks and that's where I was) and bush whacking to find places to pee (I avoided the longdrop toilet all day after the descriptions of the smells)
Home to our motel for showers before heading to a westerner bar for the most delicious burgers known to man and a shoeless danceoff - my favourite kind!
Here's a photo essay which is- as always - out of order


Laz and Sanders and the Chicken Dance, naturally


Dancing barefoot in Korea - scandallous

Kathleen and her best friend Cass

Laz, Sanders, Sara and I in the pickup

"We're on the road to nowhere"

On the wrong train

At some point on our long long walk, having a wee rest

So turns out you CAN get burnt through smog and ozone - who knew. So I embraced my newfound Korean-ness and whipped out my umbrella (ella-ella, eh, eh, eh) to shelter from the sun.

Back on the ute, happiness personified.

Tomorrow, When the War Began

Feeling slightly uneasy all the time at the moment due to the rogue bullet of a leader not all that far north. I really hope it's all just a bluff but you never can tell and I have never been so close to possible war in all my life.
And almost the scariest bit is all the news here is in Korean and I didn't even know about the tests until I spoke to my sister back home - anything could happen here and I'd be none the wiser.
Since I arrived there have been massive loud speedy fighter jets flying around overhead, freaked me at first but got used to them but in the last two days I have seen an unbelievable increase in the number. Noone around me seems all that phased but I just feel slightly unsettled and really hope a resolution is met quickly and without bloodshed.
Apparently if the worst did happen the US army would round us up and get us out, which is reassuring but still think I would prefer to stay here happy and continue my lovely new pretend life (this is not the real world. It is some random parallel universe where everyone acts like hyperboles of themselves back home, everyone earns the same and does the same job and things are ridiculously cheap, the money is pretend and time moves in fast forward)

Anyway, today was our first field trip with the school, we went to an arboretum which was fun despite the fact the arboretum was pretty small and we walked around it twice in a very short space of time. We had a picnic - picnic food here is gimbap, Korean sushi, but they brought us foreigners some sammies, and the kids kept feeding us all their delicious treats - and played some games and despite the following photos, where most of the kids do not smile (as is the style of Korean photos in general I think) a good time was had by all.
This is Brandt - of the "I love your mouth" card - bless him but he is a weirdo, him and another kid spent so long trying to pick me up by my legs today until he declared I was "heavy teacher" - well yes, you're 7 and I obviously weigh more than two of you.

co-worker Carp using a child as a weightlifting machine, as you do

This is the prettiest photo I have ever seen of Abigail, who usually squints, winks and makes herself look very unusual in all photos.

My school - aren't they a happy looking bunch! But the cuteness, oh, the cuteness

Me with Kenny, who has a misshapen, slightly cone head.

Kai and Sam in full flight playing a game

LOVE this photo - William is midair! And I love how all the kids are running in across the fields, it's so the Sound of Music!

Sophie Teacher and her class enjoying some gimbap (which last week I started singing to the kids in the tune of "Mmmbop" and it seems to have stuck, they ask me to sing it a lot - despite it really being a song with one word)

Who's sick of photos of my classes yet?! I honestly can see why parents take so many of their kids, it's hard not to.

But the creepiest thing of the day were we must have been right by an airbase because the number of jets was phenomenal, they were constant, and low flying and unbearably loud (cue lots of squealing from the kiddies) and I had a moment where I felt like we were in a natural disaster/war movie, happy school playing in a field before being bombed to smithereens. Unsettling for sure.

Feeling nibbled at Dr Fish

The absolute terror at the thought of having small fish eat my flesh didn't seem to be enough to hold back the peer pressure of being taken to Doctor Fish in Seoul. For those who don't know, these wee piranaha-types love nothing more than to nibble away at your skin, taking off layers of dead skin and leaving things lovely and smooth after.
My first encounter was at an aquarium where you put your hand into a tank of them - these were the size of whitebait and I couldn't handle it, but besides intentionally eating dog meat, I'm prepared to do almost anything once while I'm here so away we went to this lovely looking coffee shop, where we paid about $5 for a cup of tea and $2 for the Dr Fish.
Here's a lovely view of some latching on to Kathleen's leg (they seemed to prefer that to her feet, understandably)

Pretty gross right? So we got our feet cleaned then plonked them straight into this little foot spa brimming with fish which I had expected to be itsy bitsy but were actually the size of regular goldfish - and there was another tank with larger ones too!

The first five minutes I could not control myself, I had to cover my mouth so as not to scream and scare off the other people in the cafe, and it was the most unpleasant ticklish experience of my life. I was prepared to pull out and write it off but I persevered and after that it was actually rather nice! After about 10 minutes I was actually able to handle looking into the tank and seeing why my feet were so damn ticklish.

Happier than the start

Just prior to the first plunge, the grossest bit was watching their little mouths hit the surface of the water almost begging you to give them some grotty dead skin to live on.

Yes, all these photos are backward - this is Laura in a fit of laughter at the beginning.

Afterward my feet were definitely improved and I almost wish I had a tank to keep them looking nice everyday - living in jandals does not make for pretty toes (nor does having my feet)Apparently you can also do full body, I don't know if I am ready for that though.

A Korean Birthday Party

Yesterday I experienced my first Korean birthday party at school. They combined all the kids who are having birthday in the next couple of months into one birthday extravaganza. There were the usual suspects - pretty party dresses, birthday cake and whole lot of food for the children to get hyped up on sugar on - and the less usual - with kisses from their crushes. If my five-year-old self had had to do that (which would have been from the dashing Phillip from the Philippines) I would have freaked out. They start 'em young in Korea however.

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This is Julie receiving some lipstick - I assume in case she was requested to pucker up from one of the birthday children.

This is Abigail and Sam. At six-years-old, they have found each other - some people look their whole lifetime for the man (slash infant boy) who wants to buy a house so he can live in it with the love of his life. But Abigail was lucky. They are engaged, and Sam actually has asked his father to buy him a house so they can live there. And doesn't she look thrilled at the prospect?! Actually, come to that, so does he.

So at this party, the birthday boy/girl picks the person to kiss them and everyone counts to five and that's how long they kiss for.

Olivia chose Ryan teacher - And I think she looked the most thrilled of any of the kids receiving their cheek pecks. Damn cute and I love Abigail laughing in the background.

These photos kinda go backwards, but this is them pretending to blow out the candles - which they had done in the seconds prior but the chief photograph taker wasn't ready and missed the magic moment.

And here are the happy birthday kiddies, Kevin, Amy, Olivia, Abigail, Andrew and Kyle, surrounded with pizza and fried chicken, deelish! prior to the kisses, they each came out in front of the table and said what they wanted to be when they grew up. There were three policemen (guess which), a singer, a cook and a nurse. Bless

I haven't quite figured out if this is a typical Korean birthday party or just what we do at ECC, but I can't wait for the next one!

On Tuesdays the animals get let out of the zoo

I am really loving my school - and the more I hear about other peoples (not allowed to sit down, not allowed to eat, not allowed to play hangman -my run-out-of-work fallback) I am more pleased with where I have ended up. The hours are awesome, start teaching at 10am and never work later than 6pm, but inbetween that I usually have several 1/2hr - 1hr breaks, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I finish about 4pm and on Fridays I don't start until midday. Can't complain. The other teachers are really nice, Sara started the same time as me which is cool and Ryan has been there for 6 months so knows the ropes, very helpful. We also have four Korean teachers, who all teach English too and I really like them (one less so, but she was very nice to me today so I'm hoping I've gone through my initiation with her and she'll be friendly now.. we'll see) On Tuesdays at lunchtime we get to take the kinder kids outside for 15minutes. That's all the fresh air they get in a week of school - I totally took NZ school for granted! But it's fun, we usually play duck duck goose (they have that here too!) and it tires the kids out for the afternoons, love! Here's the cuteness:

Sam, Olivia and Julie
Stephanie:

Abigail cutting some mean shapes:

Olivia and Julie, BFF's

Sean - cutie!

THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL AT SUWON ECC

-Last Friday was Teacher's Day, where kids bring their teachers presents. Because I am so new I didn't expect any but I was overwhelmed with presents! My most favourite was not the present, but the card from a boy named Brandt - it went a little something like this:

"Ms Sophie. Dear Sophie, thank you for teaching us. I love your mouth. I love you, Love Brandt"

It killed me! I love your mouth?! I can only assume he meant smile?! Very funny. Otherwise I got a whole buncha nice smelling moisturisers, body washes etc - I think they're trying to tell me I smell bad? And a fabulous towel with monkeys on it. Very cute.

-Yesterday a 6-year-old boy sat in my class singing "sexy sexy sexy" for some time - not sure whether he is aware of what it means, because he grins cheekily at everything, and he loves words with 'x's in them. Giggled inwardly though

- I also recently was marking a spelling test were several students misspelt "Counting" - most forgot the "o" - another inward giggle for that one!

- Lots of the kids are getting married, they're all engaged to each other, it's very cute, and so far I have had one marriage proposal, so I asked when we were going to get married and he said "When I am big. When I am 900 and you are zero".. I feel I may be a jilted bride.

-I've had my nose prodded and poked more times than I'd care to count, they are fascinated by its pointiness

-I have also spent a class being called fish teacher because I have big eyes - a rarity here

-A wee girl Cherry is convinced I am having a baby. On the second day she came and rubbed my belly and said "baby?" and I said "no baby" (I wanted to say food baby but I think it would get lost in translation) and then about a week ago, she did it again, and I rubbed her belly and said "baby?" and she said "Noo! No baby, you are a woman!". Bless her wee cottons, I think she's been learning about the birds and the bees at home!