Productivity and what not.

What have I been up to these days, you ask? Getting stuff done!

I have signed up for Korean classes which make me feel wonderfully productive on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm not really learning anything that at this point of my Korean experience I couldn't learn from reading in a book or online, but I just love the feeling of doing it in a classroom. I like tests, and you can't really give yourself those. I make cue cards and force Mike to hold them up for me while I proudly say the right word. Yes, geek, but this is not new to you.

The weather has actually got to a place where it's cold. Almost too cold for me to want to go outside and run, so that hasn't happened in a couple of weeks. This weekend Mike and I went looking for a guitar for him. He saw some ok ones, but we went to a store and he asked if he could try a guitar out, and the man refused. He said you could only look. Does anyone buy a guitar they havn't played? That's like buying a really expensive pair of jeans and not trying them off first. Lost sale, buddy.

We also went to see 2012. This movie is ridiculous. We almost felt like it was making fun of itself through it's entirety, but since we knew it wasn't it was really entertaining.

Afterwards we met up with some friends for delicious Middle Eastern food and had some cocktails. Well, I had half a cocktail, as my first experience with a Mojito was a failure. The next day I went back to the same bar as they serve all day breakfast, and all day veggie breakfast, at that.

I then fell asleep really early, and got an angry email from my mother because I missed our skype date. Sorry!

Below is the sign to mark the bathrooms at the movie theatre we saw 2012 in. I never knew peeing was such a stressful thing for you guys. And here we girls are, sitting blissfully on our toilets carelessly peeing away. Sorry, again!

Seoraksan

This past weekend Mike and I decided to do something we've meant to do for years and that's to go hiking on Seoraksan. We managed to catch some of the fall colours before they finished changing and it was beautiful. We had intended to take a cable car up, but after realizing there was a few hour wait decided to hike to Ulsanbawi.

The first leg of the trip was pretty easy. And pretty. We got to another Bawi which is a large rock that apparently you can shake, but can't roll over. We didn't try. It's probably a good thing because with my luck it would roll down the hill destroying everything in it's path. Anyways, we decided to continue on, and it got considerably harder. This is where the stairs began. I remember reading about a trail on Seoraksan that had a lot of stairs. I guess this was it. All told there were 888 almost completely vertical steps. That's not too bad, except that at points the stairs would end and you'd have to climb ladders, or up a rope, or just on your hands and knees over rock. This is all ok, except that you're trying to go up when others are trying to go down, and the whole way you're dealing with really strong winds. Eventually, when I did reach the top (and yes, it was beautiful) I stayed for about five minutes before just wanting to get down. I don't have a fear of heights exactly, but I don't like being on a very small area, really high up with nothing stopping the wind from knocking me over. I don't like that at all.

I'm proud of myself for making the climb, though. Yesterday was spent much more relaxingly. We plan to go back to Seoraksan, but next time to check out a waterfall. Yay for fall!

Oido 의도

A few weekends ago my school went on a weekend trip to Oido. Oi, in Korean means cucumber, and Do, island, so I guess Cucumber Island? We had some extra money from winning some contest. It was a bumpy trip over, which should have been 40 minutes, but with Seoul traffic ended up being around 2 hours. It didn't help that I get carsick, or that our bus got into a minor accident. Once we got there, a lot of live seafood was to be had. Now, I like seafood. When I'm in Canada I'll get my Red Lobster on just about any day of the week, but live seafood isn't my thing. My stomach isn't brave enough to chew anything to death. In the end, it was a cool experience and I got a chance to chat with my partner teacher more than usual, so that was nice. And really, what's a South Korean experience without seafood?