Monday, June 25, 2012

Gyeongu Trip with a whole lot of biking!


My last weekend trip I took with Seoul Hiking Group was the first one where I was going with out any of my close group of friends. Luckily I had made friends with other peple who took tripswith Warren so I was able to meet and get to know some people more. this trip started on Friday night, so right after work I left to finish packing and get on the bus! We stayed Friday night at a traditional Korean village in Hanok Traditional Houses of a UNESCO world heritage Yangdong Village. I met Hiley, a coworker of my friend Matt, and she and I walked around the village in the morning. THis was really teh first weekend where I got to see cherryblossoms and the gorgeous magnolia trees in bloom. :)

Saturday we hiked Mt. Namsam in Gyeongu before we went into the city and started biking. It was an awesome hike and pretty easy. The hike up to the top had tons of little Buddha statues to see as well as temples to stop and see. There was a nice ridge that you could follow along but I didn't want to spend too much energy climbing on rocks when I would need it for bike riding. The sun was shining and the temperature was perfect!
The Village we stayed Friday night. This is Saturday morning.

The scenery up the hike was gorgeous and was one that I would love to see again.



View from the top of Mt. Namsam of Gyeongu. Really gorgeous



I was not in acceptable hiking gear and the Korean enjoyed watching me walking around.


It was gorgeous at the top! A nice korean boy took my picture and changed some settings. He said my pictures were not right. Ha!


When we started biking we had about 6 hours to bike around the whole of Gyeongu. I started with a group of people I had met through Seoul Hiking group and we saw the tombs, which is shown in this picture. We also saw the observatory and then parts of the park. The group was about 8 people and we were biking around kinda aimlessly so I splintered off with Matt, a friend, and we biked around the Bomun Lake Resort. We covered quite a lot of ground and I definitely did not feel like an experienced biker!  It took us about 2 plus hours to bike around that whole area, which consisted of a lake in the middle. It was wonderful and a thoroughly enjoyable ride, even if I nearly took out a couple of Koreans whil I was out of it.







Even blurrly, this photo to me holds so much beauty.



Sunday morning took us to the beach at around 5:30 AM to see a sunrise. I went with Matt and other friends but instead of being greeted by a nice sun, it was overcast so we did not get to see it. Instead almost every one went climbing on teh rocks on the beach and just hung out on the beach for a while. After that we went to a nice scenic spot by a lake and temples of a ruin. It was wonderfully fun! The rest of the day was spent at another temple grounds where I learned about using my ISO and Aperture setting on my camera. I really love taking pictures with it!












The ISO is a bit to open for this picture, but you can tell more in this that I was playing around with the settings.




These are prayer or wishing stones. You stack them on top of each other and have a little wish or prayer to go with them. You don't want to topple the stack, otherwise the wish will not come true.







Some soju bottle at lunch we were all very...intrigued by.
After getting some food we got back on the road and I got home around 10 that night. It was such a great group and lots of fun! Can't wait for my next long trip with Warren and Seoul Hiking Group!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Jindo Sea Parting!

Wowza! By the time it got to be April 6th, I was beginning to feel the fatigue of going on these trips every weekend, but since the last weekend filled me with a genuine enjoyment of hiking I was really excited for the Sea Parting and hopefully seeing some cherry blossoms finally! Oh, and some really cute Jindo Puppies :)

Again, this is a very heavy photo post so I hope you enjoy!
The view from our pension window



The shoes we got to walk across for 10,000 won. Helped keep our feet nice and dry!








Bryan and I!


She did not have shoes, she had on dish washing gloves...on her feet.




The moon that night was unbelievable!



JINDO PUPPIES!

Me with the awesome jingo dog who did some neat tricks for us.


Did a hike later on that day, was tons of fun and warm :)





And before leaving we saw a wonderful performances of traditional Korean harvesting songs.


And we even got to be a part of the last song and dance!