More climbing!

Another two weeks of rock climbing have gone by, and I've been slow on the blogging recently. Two weeks ago, we left Saturday night to camp out about an hour from here, in a bigger city called Busan. We were up on a hill over the city, and it was much warmer than the week before. It was supossed to rain Sunday afternoon, so the leaders decided we needed to wake up at 5am to get going earlier and avoid the rain. Good thing was, we didn't have to run and do exercises when we got up. We instead hiked for awhile up the mountain til we got to a long rock wall...we ended up climbing up all day. It was maybe 10-15 shorter climbs, all different types. The climbing part was pretty fun, but it was so windy and absolutely freezing up there. We were split up in smaller groups, but still had a lot of waiting around time. I was wearing a tshirt, two long sleeve shirts, a heavy fleece, and a rain jacket, and was still very cold...I ended up getting scrapes and bruises all over my legs and hands and didn't feel any of them happen because my body was numb...so I guess that was a plus. The rain held off and we ended a little early...nice to get home and make dinner and get a good nights sleep before school the next day. We were exhausted and were both asleep by 930p

This past weekend, I got sick. A few people in our office had the flu last week, and I think I got a bit of it. I decided to skip camping Saturday night (after laying in bed all Saturday) and ended up waking up early Sunday morning, to Jared's call (he did go camping) and felt a little bit better. I took a bus and a taxi and met up with the climbers here in Ulsan, at Munsu Mountain, a place Jared and I have been hiking quite a bit. I arrived around 9am and watched during the morning. I didn't feel strong enough to climb but wanted to be there to learn anything new. During the afternoon, I climbed a few times. It was one very tall vertical wall and it was really hard for both Jared and I. They had him on a harder route that was rated 5.10a. When I went, they basically pulled me up parts where I got stuck. It was interesting that they didn't give me much time to try, but like I said, I didn't have much energy...maybe they felt that. We got home around 6, not as tired as the weeks previously, but still tired enough to be in bed by 10. I felt much better and was fine by Monday morning.

I forgot to metnion a few weeks ago that we got a scooter. When our friend Daniel left, he sold us his 125cc scooter that we have been scooting around town with. It's pretty fun. I'm too scared to drive, so it's only been Jared so far, and he's handling it well.

School is still trucking along. I still enojoy my young class, and a few others. The days are getting warmer, but it goes it cycles of warm, rain, then cold...all for a few days. We are waiting for it to stay warm.

Our director gave a us tickets to a symphony orchestra tomorrow night so we will go to that...something exciting mid-week...so weird!

Hope spring time is beautiful back home!

Rock Climbing and Goodbye Daniel Teacher

We've had an eventful past week or two. Two weekends ago, we went to archary on Sunday. It is free for a couple hours every weekend and they have all the gear for you to use. When we started, I didn't like it much cuz I hit the side of my arm a few times. By the end, I enjoyed it a lot and got a lot better. On our last few shots, I got mostly in the bulleye...granted, we were only 10 meters away, but still...

This past week, one of our closer friends in Korea (and coworker) left to go back to Utah. We had a big teachers dinner for him one night, then went out to a bar the next night where he was playing music. We didn't like to see him leave, but he may be coming back in a few months.

This past weekend, we had our first rock climbing lesson. On Saturday, we met at the climbing gym at 5:30 and got a ride to where we were camping that night and climbing the next day. When we got there, it was a bit awkward as we were the only two who didn't speak Korea in about 50 people. We stood around until our other foreign friends got there, then played a bit of cards and waited until dinner was ready. After dinner, we had song practice, where we were (and still are) required to yell out Korean songs that we have no idea what they're saying. We instead make up lyrics or sounds...hahaha, it's interesting. But for this week, we had someone write out two of the songs in English letters (romanized Korean), so we are trying to memorize that.

We went to bed around 11pm, while many of the men stayed up drinking heavily until after 1am. Everyone was up again at 530am to go for a run and do other exercises...the physical part wasn't too bad, but not fun to do at 6am! When we finished, we had about an hour to break down camp and eat breakfast (rice and soup).

We were climbing on a 60-80 degree slab rock. It was a lot of flat hands and feet pushing up, as opposed to holds and pulling up. We were there until 4pm and got 3-4 climbs in, as well as staying on top for awhile and doing some skills things. We had to do some thing called a body belay, in which we had to wrap a rope around our back and hold with two hands in the front, while the biggest guy in the club (not big at all to US standards) climbed up, then yelled "anchor!" and fell, and we had to hold him up...wow, it was so tough. He did it a bunch of times, and by the last, I had tears in my eyes and didn't think I could do it any more. Luckily, it was when he decided I had passed the test.

Climbing was fun, but very tough on the feet, wearing new climbing shoes that are made to be extrememly tight for you.

We go again this Saturday and camp and do it all over again, but this time with a vertical wall. I'm looking forward to it, but hopefully won't be so sore the next day..I think it can be avoiding if we don't so the body belays again. I never want to do that again in my life!