This weekend, I went to the southern part of Korea to see one of the most beautiful regions of the peninsula. I went with Heather on an Adventure Korea tour of Jirisan (Mt Jiri) and the Hadong Green Tea festival. I had heard of Adventure Korea from my friend Maggie, who I had met in Thailand. She teaches in Korea and is good friends with the owners of this tour group, so she gave it her recommendation. Sadly, Maggie couldn't join us for the weekend, but we had an amazing time.
The adventure starts at 4am Saturday. We had to meet the tour in Seoul by 8am to catch the tour's bus. We met in the lobby at 4:45am to walk to the subway. When we got to the lobby, we saw that it was completely deserted. It was eerie to see the usually active and busy lobby desolate. We also saw that the security guard was also absent. He wasn't in his office that overlooks the front door and lobby. We thought this was quite strange, but proceeded to the door. It was locked! The dorm has a curfew from midnight to 6am, but the front door usually unlocks earlier. So, there is no guard present and the door is locked, we decided we would have to escape the fun way: out a window. When students reach the dorm past curfew or if they need to get out early, they will climb out of the several secret escape routes: the few hall windows that don't have bars on them or out the second story via ladder. We first tried the hall windows. They wouldn't budge. The usual way to outwit the curfew failed, so we tried to call Danimal, who has the famous ladder as a means of escape from the second story. He didn't answer his phone. We tried to call him several times, by this time it's 5am. We need to catch the 5:30 train or we will not make it in time for the bus in Seoul. At this point, we are about to panic. The one thing getting in our way from Jirisan is a locked door. In desperation, I went to the security guards office/watchpost, knocking frantically and yelling at the absent guard. As I continued to yell, we heard a click. The front door unlocked! I don't know what happened, the door unlocks at 6am, not 5am. I think we have a phantom guard who works the night shift or something. Weird stuff, but we didn't have time to consider the different explanations for this, we had a train to catch!
We walked to the subway station, making it five minutes before the 5:30am train. To get to the bus terminal, it would take about 2 hours. We also had to make two transfers, which could add another 20-30 minutes to the trip. We would be cutting it really close! We made our first transfer in ten minutes, the time was now 7:15am.
As we reached our second transfer, we ran to the platform, just in time for the train. We reached our meeting point for the tour at 7:55am, and we haven't even started the trip yet!
We left Seoul, made a few stops as we drove south towards Busan. We reached Mt Jiri around 12:40. Mt Jiri is the third tallest mountain in the Korean peninsula. We reached a point on the mountain where we could reach the top in a few hours hike. The tour group gave us four hours to hike to the summit. Koreans love to hike, so there were a lot of hikers decked out with bright jackets, hiking sticks, and all those other "hiking" accessories. It was interesting, as we hiked closer to the summit, the leaves on the trees became smaller to nonexistent. I felt like we were going back in time week by week as we got closer to the top.
The hike was absolutely beautiful. We were surrounded by breathtaking mountains, everywhere you turned the view was more gorgeous. We reached the summit and what was there? A cell phone tower, so Korean! After paying homage to this display of modern Korea, we walked around the top of the mountain. We were glad to see that along with the tower, there was a memorial to what appeared to be a Scholar or Yangban. The views from the summit were unbelievable. I could have stayed there all day.
After we returned to the bus, we drove to the hotel where we would stay for the night at the bottom of the mountain. I think it is safe to say that we thought we were going to fall off the mountain on the drive down. It was an adventure! The roads were narrow and the turns were not made for a bus. We had a great driver that got us there safely, but it was still frightening.
At the hotel, we were joined by two other people from the tour in our hotel room. Korean hotels do not have Western beds, instead you are given mats to sleep on. Our roomates names were Kim and Brianna. They are teachers from USA teaching in Incheon. They were a hoot! We had dinner together at a local restaurant and sang Noraebang (karaoke) afterwords. At Noraebang, you rent a singing room, which is a small room with couches, TV screen, and a Karaoke machine for an hour. We were rocking some Evanescence, singing some Katy Perry, and rapping some Eminem (Kim was an amazing rapper). It was epic! We had so much fun spending time with them after only meeting earlier that day. It is incredible how sometimes you can feel like you have known someone for years even though you had only met. After Noraebang, we went back to our hotel and played some card games. We learned Chinese Poker, which is very similar to Poker.
The next morning, we awoke to the sound of a Korean tour group leaving in the parking lot below. A group of Ajumas (older Korean women) were arguing about how to pack the bus, which would have been humorous if it wasn't at six in the morning. We went down to eat breakfast, which was toast with jelly and peanut butter. I was very happy for this, one because it was free, two because peanut butter and good jelly are hard to come by.
We then went from the hotel to a local school. The day prior, we volunteered to learn the form of a traditional Korean tea ceremony to perform in the festival. We were joined by fifteen others to learn this ancient ceremony. I absolutely love Asian Tea, so I was beyond excited to learn this process of presenting tea. Here are a few interesting things about a Korean tea ceremony: Like with anything, you either carry out the actions with the right hand or both hands, never the left. You also must warm the cups with warm water prior to pouring the brewed tea. When serving the tea, you always give the first cup poured to the most respected person partaking in the ceremony, whether it's the king or the oldest person.
After about a thirty minute tutorial, we were whisked to the festival. We were taken backstage to be dressed in Hanboks. Only then did we learn that this would be a judged competition between the 15 of us and that it would be televised. After we were dressed and given last minute tea coaching, it was time to present what we learned. We each had a Korean woman sitting next to us to guide us in the ceremony in case we forgot something. My Ajuma was not too helpful sadly. She gave me conflicting instructions and at one point, she had moved along so far in the ceremony that my tea was poured before I was supposed to. She told me to pretend I was pouring my tea as the rest of the other competitors were gracefully pouring their tea. I smiled as I poured my invisible tea into my already filled glasses. I had a blast "competing." Everyone was really easygoing and I don't think the judges were even taking it seriously, one of them was laughing the whole time us foreigners attempted to perform this ceremony while another was taking pictures instead of taking notes. I was smiling and joking with my Ajuma the whole time because I was not graceful at pouring the tea at all and I kept doing things so wrong, that she would reach over and do it for me. Oh well, I learned a lot and I made good TV! I did not win, but everyone got a consolation prize, which was a traditional tea cup with a strainer for tea leaves, perfect!
After the performance, we had lunch with the other competitors. As we ate Bibimbap, we talked about our experience performing a tea ceremony. After lunch, we had time to explore the tea stalls. The area around Jirisan is famous for Green Tea so many local farmers were displaying and selling their tea. We were able to taste a variety of teas, listen to a group of children play traditional drums, and watch mechanical characters pull buggies around the festival. The variety and quality of the teas were fabulous. We didn't have enough time to see all the stalls, but it was enough time to see a lot.
At 2pm, we boarded the bus for the long drive back to Seoul. On the way, they showed the movie Avatar, which I had not seen before. The story was predictable, but the imagination and special effects were incredible. We reached a rest stop near Pyeontaek, which is about halfway between school and Seoul. A few of the teachers that live near our school that were on the tour suggested getting a taxi to the subway from there, saving us several hours. We reached Pyeontaek station, bought a pizza for dinner, and boarded a train back to school. We reached school before the curfew, so we wouldn't have to scream at the real or phantom security guard to let us in. It was an amazing trip filled with so many things that were completely unexpected, but that's what made it an awesome journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment