I’m sure everyone is very excited to read yet another extremely long blog about our action packed weekend! BUT this week’s entry will be shorter because we have something new to show you. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a million.
As you can conclude from the video, we went paragliding this weekend. It was a really amazing experience despite the fact that it was absolutely freezing and windy enough to have blown us off a mountain… oh wait, it did blow us off a mountain! But before I explain the great time atop the Korean mountain, let’s start from the beginning shall we?
Saturday morning Courtney and I woke up bright and early at our respective homes, and hurried to get to the train station at 7:30 am. We were the only 2 Pohangians going paragliding, but we were meeting others from Daegu and Yeoncheon. The plan was to get on the 1024 train, and the others would get on the same train when it came through Daegu. Of course, things never go as planned so when the train stopped in Daegu and none of them showed up, we called to see what was going on. They JUST missed the train. Our final destination was Gumi, and Daegu is not far from Gumi, so they assured us that there was another train coming in 10 minutes, so it was not a big deal. Courtney and I weren’t worried; knowing that we would find something to amuse us while we waited the dreadful ten minutes. So as our train was leaving the Daegu station, we once again got into some random discussion, and before we know it, 30 minutes later we are in Gumi. Now what happened next can be construed as our fault, but we still both stand by our defense. So the train stopped in Gumi. We were talking about something, and shortly after it stopped I realized that we were at our destination, and that we needed to get off! I jumped up from my seat and booked it for the door. I was blocked by a couple people getting on the train, but I made it to the exit in time. Courtney on the other hand was helplessly stuck in her seat with no way to move because no one would let her through. Before I could do anything to help, the doors closed and I just watched in panic as the window in the door changed from a photo to a movie. We had missed our stop!
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Train ride - we are smiling even though we forgot to get off.
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We sulked as we slowly slumped back into our seats. Everyone else was going to be 10 minutes late, but now we were going to be much later! We got the attention of a ticket taker, who then kindly told us to get off at the next stop (in 15 minutes) and get on the train going to Busan. He was very understanding and told us we didn’t have to worry about buying another ticket. We called the others and told them what happened. The whole plan was to meet the paragliding guy at the train station, and Ashli (the one who coordinated this trip) didn’t know if he would wait for us if we were going to be so late. Luckily, he said he would and our Busan train came about 15 minutes after we got off our first one. All in all we were 45 minutes later than we wanted to be, but the other group only waited about 30-35 minutes for us.
When we finally made it, and found the others, we all hopped onto a little bus with a bunch of paragliding photos on it. The drive to our final destination was about an hour long but it was nice to look at the mountains pass us through the windows. When we got to the base of the mountain we stopped for a bathroom break and we got our first glance of people paragliding. We were at the landing spot so we saw people descend from some unknown mountain top. The van then drove us up the mountain quicker than I would have liked, but we got to the top all in one piece and one by one we jumped off of a mountain successfully! We were up there almost all day, not finishing until around 5.The whole experience was really amazing! It was scary at first, just the idea of voluntarily jumping off a mountain, but once I was up there it was like time had stopped. I felt like I wasn’t moving at all. I just sat in my “turtle shell” looking seat that was strapped to me, and took in the most beautiful view of Korea I had ever seen.
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This is legit! There are even para-gliders on the bus!
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Sam didn't like the story I just told her
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| The chute packs were pretty big. The boys had to help carry them. |
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| Geoff was sleepy. |
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| While waiting for our turns to go, we hid from the wind. |
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Another awesome group shot
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| Taking a picture of someone taking a picture of someone. |
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Portrait shot! Thanks Geoff!
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| Courtney and I both went tandem with the same guy! |
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Courtney is so jealous she didn't get to go first.
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Courtney and I knew that we weren’t spending the night in Gumi so we had made plans to go camping that night with our climbing friends Jonny, Tony and Minjung (민정
). Things ended up falling through with camping at the last minute, so when everyone planned to have dinner in Gumi before catching the train home, we agreed because we had no longer had to rush home. We had dinner at some fusion Japanese place where we spent quite a while eating and drinking, and by the time we left, I didn’t realize that it was already 9:30. Last time when we were in Daegu we missed the last train to Pohang and had to rush to catch the last bus. We didn’t want to go through that again! When we got to the train station, we tried to get tickets from the automatic machine but something wasn’t working right so we went to a living ticket seller. He told us we just missed the last train to Pohang. When he advised us to do, was buy tickets to Daegu, and then take the bus to Pohang. What a hilarious coincidence. The train we were supposed to take to Daegu was leaving in 2 minutes, so we played out the cliché running to catch the last train home scene in our movie of life, and sat on the floor of the train café car for our 30 minute trip. When we got to Daegu, we took a taxi to the bus station, did a bit more running and somehow managed to – yes – catch the last bus to Pohang, 1 minute before it was supposed to leave. We decided – once we got on the bus – that we had officially learned our lesson about timing out travels home better. The rest of our Saturday story ends with us going home and getting some sleep to prepare for our Sunday story.
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Riding the train next to garbage cans
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And next to people who have a slight staring problem
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There is a mother f****** snake on this mother f****** bus!
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The next day we met up with Jonny, Tony and Minjung downtown, and we all headed to the mountains to meet Minjung’s monk! She studies under him, as a spiritual “fortune teller” (not the kind with a crystal ball) and she invited us to have lunch with him. When we got there, we met him and did a prayer with him. Then the 5 of us and Minjung’s tiny dog Shu went on a 2 and a half hour hike up to the monk’s temple. This was my first official hike and it was pretty good. There were definitely times when I thought I was going to die, but the end result was absolutely worth it. The view from the peak of our hike was astounding, and what made it better were the intense colors of the leaves all around us. Living in Florida most of my life, I’d never really seen the leaves change colors. TO be honest, it was never something I cared too much about, but now I realize that I didn’t realize what I was missing out on. I can not get over how beautiful the trees are here in Korea. They are all different shades of red and yellow and orange, and they just make the world nicer to look at. We hiked back down the mountain and had lunch with the monk around noon, and then headed back to Pohang.
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| The leaves at my bus stop. |
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| So many different colored leaves. |
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| Korean National Treasure. This rock has Buddha carvings on it! |
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| The national treasure! |
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| This red tree stood alone in a sea of green and yellow. |
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| We were so excited, we bought this hat! Its going to be a birthday present for one of our Korean friends! |
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| Where the Monk lives. |
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| Who else's dog has climbed a mountain? I didn't think so. Everyone, meet Shu. |
The rest of our Sunday consisted of some shopping downtown, helping scrub down the climbing gym, and spicy chicken dinner with some friends. All in all, I would say this has been another successful, amazing, awesome, fantastic weekend!
Oh and that earlier tidbit about this not being a long post…. Yeah well who wants a short one when they can get a long one!
I love it!! Make more movies!!
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