Ho hum. So, another series of months has passed with no update from us. Oops. Can't blame it on us having too much fun really, given the amount of time we spend sitting at computers at work now! I blame internet-blindness. So much time looking at pointless things on the internet can wipe your brain of anything really constructive (although it does lead you to amazingly pointless and fun websites like this... http://www.cowabduction.com/ ). But this last week has been especially good, and definitely warrants an update.The weather has finally started to turn after what feels like the longest winter in the history of winters. Not counting the ice age. That must've been the most depressing time ever. Um... Yes, so the arrival of warmth in Korea means the arrival of camping and shorts and general fun in the outside world. In order to welcome the good weather, we went for a weekend away with our friends, Nat and Nick. They've just bought a super cool van which goes by the name of Dolores, so after stopping by the park to watch my students at sports day, they gave Becky a break from the driving and took us down to Buan, a little south of Gunsan. There's a few nice beaches, some waterfalls and amazing temples in the area, not to mention all manner of odd theme parks and museums.
We skipped all the indoor options in favour of jumping around on beaches, and visiting the somewhat odd Chaeseokgang. According to the tourist information, this is a cliff which is not to be mistaken for a river. Hm. Apparantly, many many years ago in China, a man was drinking too much wine on his boat, when he saw the moon reflected in the water. Being drunk (and, let's face it, clearly pretty stupid) he thought the moon was actually IN the water and dived in to grab it. He drowned. Again, hm. Anyway, Chaeseokgang looks like the place in China where this fabulous story took place, which is why it has a name that means river. Hooray! We struggled to see any resemblance to a river. It's a cliff! Rivers are not made out of cliffs, they are made out of water. Usually.
Following that excitement, we drove around a little more, jumped off some things (it's the latest thing! Honest) then checked into a motel for the night. It hasn't quite got warm enough for camping yet. The next day we went to one of the temples, planning to head to a waterfall for some swimming. Unfortunately after we'd walked around for a while, we realised we'd gone to the wrong temple. It was a very nice temple though, and we finally got around to donating some money so we could right a message on one of the new roof tiles. Abandoning our plans for waterfalls, we went off on an exploratory drive and came across a really beautiful river. After parking up, we spent quite a long time trying to get down to the river from the road. Much more difficult than you might expect. Much crawling around in bushes later, I stumbled across 6 handbags in a little pile. Having rifled through them all we concluded that they must've been stolen and dumped off the road. For reasons not entirely clear to me, the fact that I'd got my fingerprints on them all made everyone panic and worry that I was going to get myself arrested, so we decided to take them to a police station before we headed home. In the end, the struggle down to the river proved entirely worthless, as there was a raging gale blowing through the valley and the water was freezing. So we took our new handbags to the police, gave our details with the help of Lokhee via telephone, and fled the area.
Two days later we made our way up to Dangjin, where Nat and Nick reside. Wednesday was Children's Day in Korea, and a national holiday. Hooray! We piled into Dolores and went straight up to Mallipo, a beach town on the north coast of our province. A group of teachers from Dangjin joined us for a barbeque and some jumping around on the beach with fireworks, before proceeding to play drinking games and talk nonsense for a few hours. The next day we struggled out of bed and went out for some lunch. Our hangovers meant that fish was not an option, so we wandered around for a while trying to find somewhere that sold something else. Eventually we found a place selling a few other options, but regretted it somewhat when our food still hadn't arrived close on an hour later. Most of us had ordered bibimbap which requires literally no cooking, so we were a little puzzled and irritated by the delay. It was pretty good when it eventually arrived anyway, but sadly what little sun had been allocated to the day had all but disappeared by the time we left the restaurant. Unphased, we headed for the sand and sat around for a while. Nick and some of the other guys developed a fun new game called 'One Hit, which is basically volleyball without teams or a net. And the loser has to go in the sea. Just like normal volleyball! Good times were had by all. Except Danny and Dave who kept having to go in the sea.
The weather forecast was looking good for the weekend, so we made plans to go another beach on Saturday, this time with Jimmy, Dan and Maggie as well as Nick and Nat (who have become our siamese twins. But without the health issues or discomfort. Good siamese twins). We picked up Jimmy from the train station at Nonsan, and spent the afternoon in the sun playing more One Hit and eating pizza. In the evening we went for dinner and drinks, followed by a good couple of hours in a noraebang. The evening of fun was only dampened a slightly unpleasant experience in the noraebang. At some point I went out to pay for another hour, and got semi-chatting to two very friendly happy Korean guys who didn't really speak much English. After I'd been back in our room a little while, the door opened and a Korean girl walked in, followed by the younger of the two Korean guys. I walked over to say hello and see what they wanted, just in time to see the young guy punch the older manin the face, knocking him unconcious instantly. He dropped to the floor like a stone, with blood spilling from his mouth by the time he hit the floor. The younger guy just walked away with his girlfriend, who didn't seem to react at all. I ran to get the owner, while Nick very sensibly put the unconcious guy in the recovery position. We decided it'd be better if we then left them to it and carried on with our awesome singing demonstrations. Odd.
Although having read this post again it kind of seems like we didn't really achieve very much at all, we did it all with good friends and decent weather, which makes it fun and good times. So... I don't care. And there's still four months until we leave for us to do loads more good stuff. Excellent. We might even blog about it.
Although there are still hundreds of posts which should be written to fill in the gaps of the last year or so, the events of the last week are much clearer in my memory, therefore much easier to write about! After the months and months of seemingly endless winter lead us to drink our weekends away, we decided it'd be nice to wake up on a Sunday and not be hungover. So, accompanied by Nick and Nat (surprise!), we made our way to Daedunsan, a mountain standing at 890-ish feet which is only about 40 minutes from us. The day started out a little grey and unwelcoming, but cleared up quite nicely and made for good hiking weather. We started out after lunch and tried to take it easy, seeing as we are a little less fit than we'd like at the moment!
The start of the hike was a little taxing, as there were somewhat irregular steps made from rocks for quite some way up, but we managed to keep going, despite the constant distractions of chipmunks scampering about and gym equipment to play on. The main reason we decided to hike Daedunsan was the fact that there are two suspension bridges to cross which looked quite fun. The first was a standard bridge between two small peaks which swayed and bounced satisfyingly as we jumped up and down on it. The second was a little higher up, and was more of a suspension staircase than a bridge. It was very narrow, very steep and very wobbly. And quite unnerving. All good fun though!
It's quite secluded and not overly upkept (is that a word? I'm not sure it is. Hm. I mean it's nicely run down), giving it a somewhat more authentic feel than many temples in Korea. We're also drawing very close to Buddha's birthday (I'm not sure how old he is this year. Must be knocking on a fair bit though), so there are brightly coloured lanterns on display everywhere we go, which make everything seem very cheery and nice.
We followed up the walk around the temple buildings by crossing some extremely unsafe stepping stones across a tiny tiny river and jumping around off rocks and benches as part of our current favourite pastime.
This week should be another good one as we get Friday off and are going for camping fun. As long as the volcano doesn't send it's ash any further towards the Uk, we should be joined by Nat's little brother on Thursday night, and a big group of other later on, so many good times shall follow.
