Last weekend was a lot of fun.
On Saturday I went on a bus tour of Andong with the other teachers, ladies from the school, and their families. There were also many other Koreans on the tour that we didn't know.
Andong is about 3 hours by bus away from Gangneung, it took us a lot longer than that to get there because we had 2 rest area stops on the way there and coming back. That seemed like too many stops to me.
The first place we went in Andong was to a cliff that over looks Hahoe traditional village. The view was really nice, you could see people taking little boats back and forth across the river.
Next we went to the "starter" village and had lunch. Us teachers and the ladies from school split Andong Chicken. It was delicious! It was chicken, clear noodles, mushrooms, and other veggies in a very mild sesame seed sauce. One my new favorites, but I doubt I'll get to have it again since its an Andong specialty. After that we took a very crowded shuttle bus to the real village.
The first thing they took us to was a special museum dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, she spent one of her birthdays in the village and they set up a museum to keep everything related to that visit in.
We had a guided tour, but it was very boring for us English speakers because we couldn't understand anything. The ladies from the school were bored too so we all just wandered off and explored.
Somewhere along the line a Korean lady from the bus befriended Chris and hung around him for the whole day. That became a really big joke for the rest of us and kept us laughing all day long. We are still making jokes about it.
One thing that I did get out of the tour was that the rich people live under the black roof homes and the poor live under the straw roofs.
My favorite part was seeing this 600 year old tree. Those pieces of paper tied up around it are wishes and prayers.
We caught up with the group and walked along the river back to the bus. You can see the beautiful cliff where we were when we first looked down on the city.
Director family.
I tutor the girl at night and
the boy is in my returnee(advanced) class. 
Teacher family.
Teacher family.
The next place we went was to a museum. Only us teachers had the strength to go on, everyone else from the school stayed on the bus and napped. At the museum we watched a really cool 3-d movie that told about the history of Andong. Then the curator pulled us teachers aside and gave a special tour in English. The museum wasn't like any I've ever seen before. All the exhibits were digital and interactive. You could put on a mask and dance in front of a blue screen and see an image of it on a monitor. Or you could make a digital block print, or walk over a map of the area and it would zoom in and out and show pictures. And there were many games and things like that.
The bus ride home was very long. This was a classic bus tour and had everything that I don't like about bus tours. The director said "No more bus tour," I guess she isn't a fan either. She said that maybe sometime in the summer we could go to the Korean version of Disneyland. I think Korean buses make me more sick, maybe the air circulation isn't very good. Anyway, I'm still sick. I feel ok but am having serious mucus and snot problems.
On Easter Sunday Chris and I went hiking together. The plan was to go to Odae-ssan, a nearby national park. However Chris ended up seeing a stream on the side of the rode on the way there and decided we should hike up it. I agreed because I thought eventually it would become impossible and that we'd give up and move on to the park.
Well, it did get impossible but we kept going and we actually made it to the top of a freaking mountain by pulling ourselves up on tree roots and hanging onto rocks. The scenery was really pretty, there were many little waterfalls and peaceful pools.
I wanted to jump in many times but the water is still too cold.
On the way up I got scratched up nice and good on my arms (they are already mostly healed), Chris's legs got a lot of scratches because he wore shorts for some reason. My face ended up getting the worse of it, I ran/fell into a pine tree. It looks a lot better now thanks to neosporian but I was feeling ugly for awhile.
The view from the top was anticlimactic. Mostly we could just see trees and more mountains. At the top we had a small lunch of rice cakes and yogurt.
The way down was scary. We went down a different way than we came up so I was worried that we wouldn't be able to find the road again even though Chris had a compass.
"Which way down, Chris?"
The way down was extremely steep. I had to use a branch.
We had to slide down on some parts. There was some ice and snow under the leaves making things slippery. Finally the steep ravine turned into a little stream and we started jumping from rock to rock. Eventually we came out to the road at an area that we had stopped to take pictures at before we started the climb.
It was about a 15 minute walk back to the bike. We checked the time.. We spent 5 hours up in the mountains!
Here's a picture of the legendary "bike" if you were wondering about it. I really like this scooter, we have a lot of fun riding around on it. I don't think my adventures in Korea would be anywhere near as fun if there wasn't a scooter. I may buy it from Chris once I get a paycheck, he wants to get a zippier one.
It was a memorable way to spend Easter (although I do wish I could have had some crawfish). I climbed a mountain! Climbing a mountain leaves you with such a good feeling.
No plans for this weekend yet. Stephanie is going to visit some friends in Seoul, so it will be just me and Chris again if we do anything. I've only briefly met 2 other oeguk (foreigners) here. I'd like to meet some more people, but I think my co-workers are really awesome so I'm not dying for company.
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