A day of hiking

Seeing the Pacific Ocean. Check.

Hiking a mountain. Check.

Running down a mountain.  Check.

I'm on top of a mountain!

On Saturday morning, I left my host family's house and walked through the streets of Seoul to meet my team at YPC, the church that frequently hosts Taylor students. Some members of the church volunteered to take us hiking up a small mountain, Bukhan Mountain. This hike normally takes 3-4 hours and has beautiful scenery.

Metal cleats saved Sangbin's life this day.
He was sliding everywhere.

Needless to say, I was excited. I love mountains, and now we officially had the chance to really spend time on one. I knew that I would have to really bundle to enjoy this hike. I wore four shirts, one winter jacket, leggings, jeans, two pairs of socks, a headband, scarf and mittens. In my backpack, I carried my camera (of course), bottle of water and the thoughtful "day's survival kit" provided by my host family. My home stay father gave me metal cleats to put on my shoes for slippery areas and my home stay mother packed my lunch: instant noodles, two tangerine-looking fruit and a healthy sandwich. I was ready for my hike.

snowball fight

Some of our host family leaders.

We had fun from the start. As we followed our hiking leader, a host family dad with a great sense of humor,  led us to a rocky pathway with railings along the side. He kept a good pace, which, thankfully, kept me warm (trust me, I did not want to slow down). During the hike, I noticed the leader eying the railing. I didn't understand why he kept looking at it until he slid his hand on the railing, accumulating a decent amount of snow, perfect for a snowball. I slowed down and took cover behind a friend. The leader turned around and launched the snowball at our team. Quickly, we gathered snow to fight back, but our snowballs were not packed tightly enough. We were literally throwing snow in the air. We laughed and continued our hike.
As we continued hiking, the pace no longer kept me warm. Once again, I couldn't feel my fingers or toes. Thanks, Korea. I kept on hiking, though, hoping there would be a coffee shop or something with heat at the top of the mountain, like the other mountains we visited.

When we reached the top, there was a small shelter. It had a platform and a roof, but no walls.

"This is where we will have lunch," said our hiking leader.

Our first break: a visit to Pine Tree Park

I hoped he was kidding and kept looking around for an actual building. There was none. Our team gathered near the shelter and waited for instruction. Another leader took off his shoes and jumped on to the large platform. The rest of us sat down on the edge of the platform, awkwardly turning the top half of our bodies to face him.

He laughed.

"No, no, we have lunch now," he said, motioning us to join him. "Take shoes off. Here, this is where we eat lunch."

 Our team looked at each other for support, but had no choice but to join the man under the shelter with no walls to block the wind and no heat to warm us. With no way of escaping, our team, slowly unlaced our shoes, jumped on the platform and made a circle to have lunch.

Josh's exercise break
on the mountain.

The hiking leaders brought portable water boilers for the instant noodles and handed out chopsticks. I had no control of my chopsticks or appetite. I was so cold and more than willing to skip lunch, but they kept giving us food. One food item was yogurt . . . cold yogurt. I politely said, "no thank you." Another team member's response was more straight forward.

"I'm so sorry," this student said with an are-you-kidding-me-look in his eyes. "That's yogurt. I really can't . . . Its really too cold."

Throughout the hike,
there were exercise stops.
The machines did most of
the work, though. 

Shivering, we laughed for probably two reasons: one reason being that his response was genuinely funny and the second, out of nervousness (fear of what was next). I couldn't believe our leaders were not freezing and couldn't understand why we were so cold.

When they offered us coffee at the end of lunch, I said "no" to the coffee and "yes" to holding a small cup of hot water. At this point, my whole body was shaking and the hot water wasn't really doing anything for me. The leader next to me kept asking me if I was okay. I told him "yes" each time, but I don't think the uncontrollable shaking of my body was convincing. He filled a water bottle with the rest of the hot water and switched it with my little small cup.

The north side of Seoul.

"There," he said. "That's better, no?"

I smiled because, still shaking, I couldn't even get a "yes" out this time. Then, I continued hiking. We walked through beautiful parks and saw the north side of Seoul on the way down the mountain. Near the end of the hike, some feeling came back into my hands and feet. I was good to go, which was perfect because the last part of the hike involved taking the stairs all the way down to the street. Our hiking leader, who started the snowball fight, started running. He grabbed my arm as he passed me.

"Run," he said, quickly and happily skipping down the stairs, "run, run, run . . . run!"

For some reason, I thought this was a good idea. There were a lot of stairs and, with my camera in one hand and my no-longer-hot water bottle in the other, I took off racing this leader down the stairs.

"Run," he kept shouting, trying to get other people to join the adventure.

Half of the rest of the team joined in. Laughing, which is not helpful while trying to run down a mountain, we wondered why we were even running in the first place. The leader later gave his reasoning: it was a faster way to get down the mountain. Pretty practical. And once you committed to that decision, it was hard to back out of it ...When you started running down the mountain, you really couldn't stop. My speed kept increasing and my backpack kept flopping, following me each time I fell forward. As I took corners and hopped from rock to rock, I could think of five reasons why I shouldn't have been running down a mountain.

Our group by a memorial for Korea's historical student uprising.
We saw this memorial in the middle of our hike.

I was thankful that by the end of the day no one on our team was injured. It was a great day that started with a great hike.