Kates birthday and more!

Last week, we had Wednesday off school because of National Voting Day, which happened to fall on a wonderful day because we could celebrate my birthday the night before. We told our climbing group, all the the teachers at our school, and the few foreign friends we have, but we didn't know what kind of turn-out to expect. We reserved the back room at a Korean meat restaurant, where you sit on the floor around a long table that has multiple grills throughout it.

It turned out that almost everyone we invited ended up coming. We had over 30 people, and we were definitely the minority with less than 10 of us white...it was such a fun time! Inevitably, when you have that many people, it is a good time, right? I even had 3 birthday cakes!!

This past weekend, we ran an English camp for our climbing groups' children. There were 17 kids signed up (ages ranging from 5-15), and 4 of us "white people" running it. On Saturday, the guys picked up us at 230 and we headed out into the mountains to a beautiful valley that was just amazing....rivers, paragliders, tons of trees, gardens everywhere.... We had a large campgroup to ourselves, and the parents camped a few campgrounds away from us.

Going into the day on Saturday, we had it all planned out...games, times, meals..but it turned out to go very differently than expected. I guess we didn't account for the wide range of ages, but every time we tried to do an activity, it was quickly over, as many kids got bored or tired easily. We ate dinner (mac n cheese from scratch...a new one for the kids)earlier than we had plan, then scrabbled for more things to do. When it started getting dark, we made s'mores, which they loved as none of them had tried it before. They were all in their tents at 930 when their dads came over with beer, soju, and makalie...haha, I guess they know how stressful it can be to take care of children. Also, throughout the day we had 22 kids and just thought more kids came along...but apparently we picked up kids from neighboring campgrounds...haha, and we had no idea!

The next morning, we were planning on the kids sleeping in til around 8. They had stayed up chatting until around midnight...but no, they all woke us up at 620AM!!! We were not very happy, as we had also stayed up late hanging out with their parents.

When we got up at 620, I decided to take them on a run. On my training schedule, I had only a 15 minute run scheduled for that day, so I figured I'd punish the kids and make them run too...haha! It went pretty well, and we stopped for stretches, and other exercises to make it longer. When we got back, Jared and I made them breakfast (eggs n toast), then we took them on a LONG walk...it was so beautiful...there weren't many people living around there, but the ones who did had huge gardens, rice patties, and greenhouses. We sung songs and talked about different things. It was really fun. When we got back, it was already 10am, and was hot, hot hot! There was a small river behind out campsite, and for the next 2.5 hours until the parents came with pizza, the kids played there, as well as painted with Jared (they loved that!)..A nice, relaxing day compared to the day before.

Like I said, the parents came around 1230, we had pizza and cake, then we played joke-goo, the soccer-volleyball game that I love so much. We were in the sun for the rest of the day, and running around...so tiring. After playing, we had dinner and drinks, compliments of the parents, and they gave us gifts for taking their children for the past 24 hours. They gave us a really nice swiss army knife, and a woven model of a traditional rice planting tool, now used for goof luck. It was very sweet of them.

When we started the English Camp, we were a bit nervous. We did have some incidents with a few boys, but nothing too big. Afterwards, I was really happy we did it. It was a great way to support such a great group of guys who have been really helpful and wonderful to us for the past few months.

We are now well on a way through another week, with tomorrow being Friday again. (wohoo!) On Saturday, we are going to a Korean baseball game, then finding a bar to watch the first World Cup soccer game for us here, Korea vs. Greece!

Good luck, USA in the World Cup!!! It should be an exciting next couple weeks.

We started a karate class this week and are going three times a week for a little over an hour each time...it's been awseom for our bodies so far...very hard, but great exercise, and good for the mind (I think). We will let you know how that comes along.

SeorakSan

Last Saturday night at 1030pm, our climbing club picked us up in a big bus...it was all decked out with party lights, frillies, and a water/coffee table. Our destination was Seorak Mountain and half of us would climb, and the other half would hike to the top (different peaks). I was still undecided but leaning towards climbing at that point. Jared was defintiely climbing.

After they picked us up, there was one more stop before we were on our way. Afetr that, there were announcements and introductions, and more announcements, all in Korean, mind you. Jared and I watch them and nod like we understand, but they know we have no idea. Around 1230, announcements were finished and they tunred the lights off. We rested for a few minutes before they stopped the bus for a bathroom break, around 1am. When we got back on the bus, I was tired. We fell asleep until 3am, when the bus stopped again. I got off to the go the bathroom, then was planning on getting back on and sleeping for a couple more hours. When I got back to the bus, everyone had got off and were huddled together. Apparently it was breakfast time, and there's no better breakfast at 3am than rice, soup, and kimchi! We were told that we would drive about 30 minutes and then the hikers would start...then the climbers would be drivie another 30 minutes and they would start. Wow...2 hours of sleep was all we were going to get! We were also told that it was going to rain.

So when we got back on the bus, I had to figure out what to do. The climbing was going to be 10 pitches...very long, but not too hard. But it was going to rain, and be very windy. Hiking was 16km up to the tallest peak in the park, and all I had were my knock off NB tennis shoes, which I thought might give me blisters....

Well, in the end I chose to hike. I talked to a few other people and they said it was pretty scary to climb, even though you're obviously strapped in the whole time. With that, and it predicting to be rainy and windy, I figured I would be more comfortable hiking.

So we started out hiking at 430am, and went up, up, up til 830, when we reached the peak. It was a tough hike, but I was going at a slower pace, staying with one of the 9 yr. olds, that it wasn't too bad at all...it was also beautiful...starting below the clouds, and rising up above them, with moutain tops peaking out. The side that we climbed up was rolling hills. Once we got to the top and went over to the other side to go down, it was a valley full of jagged mountains, which is what SeorakSan is famous for. It was so nice! So when we got to the peak at 830, we had to wait for all the hikers to get there, about 20 of them. I bundled up in all my clothes and layed down in the sun, out of the wind. I was so exhausted, and just fell right asleep for about half an hour, a much needed nap. Around 9a, I was summoned to take pictues, then go down about 6oo meters to a hut for breakfast. It was here I understood why two of the guys had huge, heavy packs, while the rest of us had little day packs. They pulled out mulitple beer cans and started passing them around. So yes, at 9am, I had a beer! We hung around there for awhile, then at 10, started hiking again, just a couple more kms down to another hut for lunch at 1130. I took abother nap since I wasn't too hungry, and then left to hike down at 1230. It only took 2 hours for the last 6 km..and was one of the most amazing hikes I have ever been on....and it never rained! It ended up being a beautiful day, with lots of sun and perfect cool hiking weather. On the way down, it was waterfall after waterfall with a 360 degree view of jagged mounatins all around..I had my camera out the whole time and took tons of pictures, but still managed to get down the mountain wihtin the first few people. Here, we met up with the climbers who had been finished for about an hour and were at a makalie resturant (rice wine). We joined them for a few more hours until everyone was off the mountain. After getting us good and buzzed, we got back on the bus, promptly fell asleep, then were restled awake again about 45 minutes later to get off the bus and have dinner and more makalie..they made cooked rice, had some pig, kimchi, and greens. Around 6, we were able to get back on the bus to head home. It only took us 4 hours to drive to SeorakSan, so we thought we would get home about 10p, a reasonable time. I guess there was a lot of traffic, and we ended up getting home at 1230am..and after eating (we were both startving), didn't get to sleep until around 130a, with school the next morning at 930a...ahh! At least we slept a bunch on the bus.

Jared had a fun time climbing. There were 8 of them total, and he said it wasn't too cold or windy. He also got some great pictures. Even though it didn't rain, I didn't regret hiking at all. I got to see so much more of the park, and was very impressed the whole day!

The next day, we were tired, but not too bad. My calves (I think from waering tennis shoes instead of hiking boots) were ridiculously sore and stayed that way for 4 days. All in all, great trip!

Next blog: Kate's birthday party, which happened a few days after SeorakSan.

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). :)

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!