Take a Hike

Take a Hike!

My first few days in Geochang South Korea went by very quickly. I would wake up, go to work, go home and go to bed. I was still recovering from diving in at the deep end so I was really looking forward to the weekend. The school director has a tradition of inviting the new teacher up to her cabin in the mountains with some of the students and their parents – this year was no exception. They even asked me if I need to go to Church on Sundays because of my religion – I then had to explain to them that I was not a Catholic or Christian and I was in fact a pagan – they had no clue what the f**k I was talking about. The best way I could explain it was to say that I love nature and nature loves me.

So... after establishing that I am a tree hugger (AKA a dendraphiliac – joke!) we arranged to meet at the school at 10am and I am told to wear a jumper because it is very cold up there. They also gave me a T-shirt which says 'Ivy League English Language Academy' on the front.

Sunday morning – I wake up, I shower, I put on a strap top, my T-shirt, a jumper and a jacket along with my jeans. I get to the school on time and I look up into the scorching sun with not a single cloud in the sky. Okay... so I wondered if maybe they were wrong about the weather, but then thought well these people are Koreans so they must know their own weather patterns. I'm not going to dictate to them that it isn't cold even though I've never been up in the mountains. So for now, I take my jacket off and tie it around my waist. Other people start to turn up and they too are wearing jumpers/sweaters etc so I don't look like an odd-ball. I'm happy.

I watch the many students getting into the cars and it is very clear these people have no road laws. They have like 7 people climbing into the back of one car and have 4 people sat in the front (these are regular cars) and I wonder to myself what would happen if we got pulled over by the police. Then I realised I had in fact not seen a single police car since I had been here and would not be able to tell you what one looked like so I didn't even know if I had seen a police car. Who knows the vehicle outside my apartment may be a police car and I've not even noticed. Not only are these cars stuffed full of people – but on the actual drive, we do not follow the traffic lights! When they're on green we go, on amber we go on red we still just go straight through them! I asked the teacher if we should have stopped and his response was “We can go through and hope for the best. Other traffic will stop.” My thoughts? 'WTF happens if the other driver thinks the same and we just collide into each other?'

Anyways – I'm sure you're more interested in my journal for the mountain sights and not the crazy mentality of these people. We finally got to the cabin and it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. To get to it – we drove up hill through this forest on a little dirt road which has enough space for one car to drive down. There is a clearing and there are what looked to be 3 massive ponds (I found out later none of them contain fish, one of them is a swimming pool, and the others are just man-made water flows surrounded by rocks.) To get to the cabin you must climb up these huge steps and next to it there is a little wooden shelter with a table. (There is another one of these wooden shelters down by one of the water flows.)

Okay – so at this point I am still sweltering in the heat which my 3 layers of clothing! The sun is beaming and we are just about to go on a mini hike with the children. I don't want to take any layers off because knowing my luck, it will be absolutely freezing in the mountain and we're not too far up at the moment – so I leave my layers and sweat like crazy as well as dehydrating! Luckily we didn't walk too far (the young ones are only like 3-4 years of age after-all) and we were back at the cabin before noon!

Now – it is time for the food!

I was told this was going to be a picnic so I had no clue what to expect as Koreans do not have sandwiches, pork pies, quiche or scotch eggs. (Which are some of the ingredients to an English picnic) What we started with was a bowl of strawberries and a huge platter of cherry tomatoes (which are absolutely delicious over here! The remaining tomatoes I took home in a massive bag and have been living on ever since.) During our mini snack fest, the parents took it in turns to ask me questions (This was actually them staring at me spouting Korean and me looking scared waiting for somebody to translate what they were asking.) most of it was just related to England and what are my hobbies/interests, what do I think to Korea – etc etc!

During this time, the children at the other side of the cabin produced pictures of the forest and mountains and wrote mini essays about how excited they were, the plants and the flowers and the fact that a new teacher (moi) was here with them. After our little snack fest I went to see the children and I played with them and listened to music. Most of them love Westlife and The Beatles and know most of the words to the songs. Once the work was over – we ate Gimbap/Kimbap which is a traditional Korean food. It is a roll made from seaweed and inside is packed with rice and other ingredients such as ham, onion, vegetables – and it is very very tasty. Then we ate fried chicken and pork :) hmmmmm yum yum!

After lunch we played games including some strange tigging game, spoon and egg racing game (except instead of an egg we used golf balls) and a letter association game. They got me on the Karaoke singing Bon Jovi and I recorded them singing the Beatles.

I even went on a much longer hike with some of the older students and the parents where we went so high up I got to take some fantastic pictures of Geochang from the mountain.

The only crazy/insane moment of the day was when one of the younger children Clara (who I think is 4 years old) decided it would be a great idea to dive into one of the ponds. What did I do? I stood and watched. Not because I didn't want to help or anything but there was 10 other adults next to her and a medical doctor so I figured my English panicky assistance was not required.

All in all – it was a very good day!