Return To Gwangju

Okeydokey. The blog is now a mere month and a half behind, so any week now we might actually catch up with current events. We might stop doing fun things for a little while just to allow this catch up to go a little speedier. Today has so far been spent in ways that couldn't be described as exactly enjoyable, but that is a tale for a later post.

After ditching our bags in our apartment and showing our house pests to their (our) room, we went straight back out and took the girls for shabu shabu, the perfect meal after a tiring day of Communist spotting and sitting on buses. As always, we ate far more than could be considered healthy, drank beers and bokbunja, then left barely able to walk. So we got a taxi.

The next day we managed to rouse the girls from their slumber at about 12pm, got some lunch, forced them to dress and took them to Muduengsan to do the nice easy little climb we did on our last trip. Unfortunately, the amount of snow fall in Gwangju wasn't taken into account while describing how fun and easy the walk was. This, plus the lack of any kind of sensible footwear between us (Converse do not make for great ice climbing shoes), turned what had previously been an hour and 30 minute stroll top to bottom, into a slightly stressful and considerably longer hike, involving a fair amount of sliding backwards and falling over. The change in the length of the hike meant we kind of lost all concept of how far up we'd actually gone, so shortly after every attempt to assure everyone it wasn't far to the top, we'd go round a corner and realise that actually, it was quite a long way to the top. Despite all this, we managed to reach the top at the start of a beautiful sunset and felt rather pleased with ourselves. Aside from the nagging suspicion I was harbouring that if we didn't hurry we were going to be on the mountain in the dark, which was far from appealing, coupled with the worry that the descent was going to be far icier due to the fact it had been hidden from the sun all day. Meaning if we hurried we were likely to spend a lot of time falling over. Fun!

Eventually we reached the bottom safe and sound, just ahead of total darkness. Feeling a little guilty for misleading everyone, we took them back to the warmth of the apartment and forced them to drink copious amounts of soju with a few of our colleagues. More drinking game style debauchery took place, followed by another trip to the Turkish bar and Speakeasy, the details of which shall remain mostly secret.

The following day we nursed our hangovers and went for a huge meal of pasta and pizza at a nice (and well priced) restaurant downtown which has become one of our regular eateries, Mi Piace. This was followed by a well deserved quiet night in, while Becky and I sulked about having to go back to work the next day. Over the next week we were only able to see the girls for a short time, but managed to pack them off on various exciting excursions. They also managed to make us a tasty dinner to come home to one night, which was rather nice. Sadly they had to leave us on Friday morning, so we took them to the bus station and, after a final ludicrous over-eating style lunch and emotional goodbyes, nipped off to work.

It was ace having them here, we had all manner of fun and they proved to be far more house trained than expected. It is very sad to think how long it could be until we see them all again, aside from all the other people at home. Now we can't wait for the rest of our visitors to get here!