Jirisan National Park

Last weekend, we had a three day weekend (wohoo!) and we decided to go to Jirisan National Park, which is one of two famous parks in the penninsula of South Korea. (The most famous NP is on an island south of the penninsula) A couple nights before we left, we went to the climbing gym to get advice from the guys there. We planned on doing the long trail (about 20 miles) along the ridge of this park, hitting the biggest peaks along the way. They told us we were only allowed to stay in the huts (which we all reserved) or to sky camp (no tent) outside of the huts. They lent us a tarp, beacause it was in the forcast to rain on Saturday night.

Thursday after school, we took a 2 hour bus to a city called Jinju, where we had gone before to get pizza and beer. We got in at 10p, got a hotel, then headed out to hopefully get pizza again. But they were closing down!! We were bummed. Next door was a wine bar owned by the same guy as the pizza place, and it smelled good, so we went in there...lucky we did, cuz we had one of the best meals since being in Korea...we had a delicious chicken salad, and some basil pesto nooodles, accompanied with warm bread and a bottle of wine. It was great!

The next morning, we caught an early bus to another town, where we transfered to a different bus, then to another town, then took a taxi up to the starting point. We starting hiking at around noon and it was hot!! For the first mile or so, the trail was very manicured...a flat peppbled road, which I was thinking (but not hoping) might be the trail the whole was acorss the ridge. A lot of things here seem to be manicured and it wouldn't have surprised me if the whole thing was like this...but after awhile, it changed...for the rest of our day (about 7 miles total), it was up and down, up and down, watching each step we took over boulders, loose small rocks, and pretty difficult walking terrain.

When we got down to the last 2km, I could barely walk...I have been running a lot recently, and blammed my sore legs on that, but I think it was just hard. The last 2 km took, literally, 1.5 hours...they definitely had their signs messed up, and it was very, very frustrating. I came close to tears, but right when I didn't think I could go anymore, we started hearing voices...

At about 7p, we came down a steep trail to a big space, a shlter (mountain hut), and probably 200 people everywhere...some were getting into sleeping bags, some were asleep, some were getting water from the mountain spring in the middle of camp, some were cooking dinner, and many were drinking and laughing. But it looked totally packed and we didn't know where to go. We filled up our water, which we had been out of nearly all day(another reason why I was having a hard time), and looked around a bit. We had kindof decided to keep walking until we could camp on the side of the trail, when a foreigneer came up to us and offered for us to sleep in the place he and his friends were hanging out. They had reservations to sleep inside the shelter, but were cooking and socializing outside...saviors! We went and cooked dinner and hung out with them, before setting up and getting into out sleeping bags around 9pm. As you can imagine, this was not a quiet night. Luckily Jared and I had brought earplugs, but it was still a very restless night. People were up partying late, others were getting up early (3am) to go hiking...then we were sleeping head to toe along a walkway, where people were shining lights in our faces all night. It was a long night, but I think I managed a few hours of sleep. We were up at 530a for a quick cup of coffee, then on the trail by 630a.

As we started hiking, it started to drizzle...nothing to worry too much about. We didn't get on raincoats and didn't worry about our packs...by about 9am, when we stopped to have a proper breakfast, it started raining pretty hard. We stopped at another mounatin hut and got out of the rain, but it was coming down pretty hard by this point. We hung out for about a half hour before getting our rain stuff out, covering our packs, and moving on...now with even more difficulty from slippery rocks...

Soon after starting out on the trail, we were soaked. My raincoat is not waterproof, and even if it was, I don't think it could have been avoided. The wind started picking up, and before we knew it, we were numb...I was carrying a hiking pole, and could no longer grip it because my hands were too cold.

Around 123p, we got to another shelter, where TONS of people were PACKED into a large room, and we were quickly ushered over by a group of nice Koreans who saw how cold we were. They had me sit down next to someone cooking and put my hands on the pot. They gave Jared space to put our packs, and he was able to get out our stove to start making lunch. They gave us coffee, and tried offering us meat and alcohol, but we politely refused.

**[By the way, Koreans pack a lot of stuff on the trail. Jared and I each had a big pack with stuff for three days and two nights for camping, but our packs were not even half the size of most everyone else on the trail. We couldn't figure out what they needed that we didn't bring...until we got to the mountain hut that afternoon, and saw people pulling out coolers full of frozen meat from their packs, and two-liter sized bottles of soju and other alcohol. They brought enough food to feed way more than the amount of people they came with. Just a side note.]

Our plan, in this shelter, was the eat lunch, warm up, dry our raincoats as much as we could, wait for the rain to slow down, then keep going to the hut before the highest peak, which we would do for sunrise the next morning. We only had 3 more km, but were told it took almost 3 hours to do, which meant it was steep. After waiting for an hour and a half, we decided we neaded to do something. The rain wasn't letting up any, and was coming down completely sideways. We talked to a few Koreans who spoke English and they said everyone was going down because it was suppossed to rain for the next few days...We decided there was no way we would be able to camp comfortably (not wet) that night, and that we better take the 6km trail down from there too.

After a pleasant trail down, along a river with many waterfalls, and warming up a ton, we got to the bottom, very wet and muddy. We were waiting around for a may-be bus, which there were rumors might come there at some time, when a man who also just got off the trail asked where we were going. We told him Jingu, or Ulsan, and he said he would take us to Jinju, a 2 hour drive. He was going there too and spoke a little bit of English, and didn't mind that his nice car got all wet and muddy. He was very nice. We got to Jingu and immediatley, still wet and muddy, got on a 3 hour busride home to Ulsan. We arrived in Ulsan around 1030p Saturday night. Right when I walked in the door, I got the shower going and finally got our of my wet, smelly clothes and got warm! It was amazing, one of the best showers I have taken!

Although we did not get to the top and do the full 20 miles we had hoped, we had an interesting experience, and were probably much safer and more comfortable by coming down early. We still did about 16 miles, and got some great exercise, and were sore the next few days. We also had some many people help us out throughout the weekend...the foreigneers at the campsite, the group in the shelter, and the man who drove us home. Out weekend would not have been as smooth if it wasn't for them. Overall, good trip...but I'm glad we came down early. We are planning another trip to go from the other side, to get up the highest peak, in September. Apparently now it is starting monsoon season that lasts through July.


It is now Saturday again. Tonight, our climbing group is renting a bus and we are leaving at 10p to go to Seorak Mountain, which is the other famous park here. We will drive 5 or 6 hours throughout the night, get there early morning, and start hiking/climbing to the peak. We finish early evening, then drive back and get home Sunday night...I'm pretty nervous to climb it, and may opt to go with the hiking group, but we will see...that will come in the next blog.

Weather here is colder again, with rain coming every few days. We often think of Chelan and miss the May/June wonderful weather is has to offer. Hope all is well!

Another week

Last Thursday, we had dinner with our climbing group. We all went to a seafood resturant where we sat on the floor, and they brought out big pots of seafood and they boiled it in front of us. It was clams, oysters, and full octopuses. If you know me at all, you know that it was even tough for me to sit there while so much seafood was around. I ended up trying a few bites of things, but ultimmately just drinking. We spent about 3 hours socializing there, while people kept showing up...after dinner, we went to a Nori-bong (the private karaoke room) and we ended up partying for a few more hours. It was a really fun night and I felt like we got to know the other climbers much better, although we still can't communicate well...like they say, "hand motions" are how we mostly get by.

The next day, Jared had a follow up doctors appointment, so he got to sleep in and skip the classes before lunch. I, on the other hand, had to wake up early and go to a school picnic. Luckily, I felt okay. I spent the day with my January class, the youngest, running around and herding them together. There were 13 of them, and they definitely were interested in just about everything besides getting together for picnics or lunch. But it was a lot of fun and I got tons of good pictures.

This week, our directores took us to an all you can eat buffet. It had tons and tons of seafood, and quite a bit of meat. Jared was so happy to see so much sushi...between us, I think we ate 7 plates of food...we kinda went crazy! It was delicious...afterwards, we went our for a beer with our foreign coworkers, spending some outside work time together. Another fun night. Seems like we've had a lot of little events recently.

Also, I cut Jared's hair the other night. It was getting long and he was starting to feel sloppy for work. I think I did a really good job cutting it, although I don't know how Jared immediately felt about it. I think he felt reassured after going to school the next day and getting many compliments on it.

This weekend, we are planning on climbing on Sunday.

Last week, we booked our ticket home! We are flying to Frankfurt, Germany, on September 20 to visit my brother. From there, we will go to Amsterdam for 4 or 5 days, then to Oktoberfest in Munich for a few days, then back to Josh's house for a fews days before flying to Minneapolis on September 29th. After that, I don't know how I will get back to St. Louis yet, but I do plan on taking a trip out east with Katy to visit Susan and run a half marathon, which I started training for about a month ago. So yeah, lots to look forward to there.

We are still planning to go to Thailand for our summer break at the end of July, but haven't booked the ticket yet..hopefully we will get to that soon.

Miss everyone so much! Hope these blogs aren't getting too boring...I feel like I ramble a bit.

fun in hospitals

So 2 weekends ago was the fourth and final rock climbing lesson/boot camp. We had a long day in the hot sun climbing a shorter, vertical wall. We were also learning how to lead climb and it was pretty nerve wrecking for me. We ended around 4 and headed down the road for our finishing ceremony and dinner/party. We started by playing joke-gu, a fun Korean game. It's like volleyball, but with a soccer ball, and using your feet. It can bounce once in between hits...it's so fun. And I turned out to be pretty good at it, with my soccer background. As I was playing, Jared was sitting on the sidelines being encouraged to drink, drink, drink...but he wasn't feeling very well. He eventually asked someone to go sit in their car. I thought maybe he was dehydrated from the sun and needed a little rest, so I stayed for the final ceremony (I got MVP and a nice backpack as a reward!), then went to check on him. He was having a hard time breathing, and was really hot. He was feeling really bad at this point, so we decided to head to the hospital.

2 hours later and after Jareds temperature went from about 103 degrees back to normal from an IV, they let us go home. Jared was feeling fine...we took the scooter out, got pizza, watched a movie, then went to bed around midnight. At 2am, Jared woke up shivering. He was so hot to touch, but was bundled up in two blankets and a hat. We were deciding whether or not to go to a hospital again when he started throwing up...this made our decision. We caught a cab to the ER and spent the rest of the night there, with Jared hooked up to another IV. They had to wait until morning to take a ct scan, so we slept for a few hours until morning. The scan showed that Jared has semi-serious pneumonia and had to be transfered to a larger hopsital that specialized in the respiratory sytem, as he had started coughing up blood. We spent the morning in the ER there, until after noon, when they checked him into a room and said he would be there at least a week...wow! So it was Monday afternoon, and I headed back to school to work the last few hours of the day. We have to pay people to cover our classes when were are sick, and I knew we would be paying a lot for Jared to be out, so I figured I should work as much as I could. After work and picking up stuff from home and snacks for Jared, I headed back to hospital for the night. We watched "The Office" and ate cake and doughnuts from people who came to visit. In the morning, they woke us up before 7, and I headed to work, then came back after work for more tv shows and treats. This is how the whole week went. On Friday, after being on an IV for a week and taking multiple chest X-rays, they let Jared come home with a weeks worth of pils...and lots of them. I think he has 22 pills a day to take, without knowing what any of them are!

So yes, it was an interesting week. Jared had 5 other roommates (men) and a couple of them spoke a little English and were very into helping Jared with anything and everything he needed or didn't need. One of the men's wives stayed there all the time and slept on the floor, and I stayed and slept on the floor, so there were 7 of us in all...we watched a lot of "The Office" and ate a lot of food, and it wasn't too bad, but it was nice to come home and sleep in our bed again on Friday.

This past weekend, we took it easy. We scooted out to a few beaches, walked around town, and had dinner at a few new places.

We are both back in school full time now, and enojoying every minute of it (maybe an exaggeration). :)