愛 Korea: Surak-san [Surak Mountain] Hiking Trip

So, Bumi (one of the Korean teachers) asked me to go hiking on Surak-san. I, of course, said that I would love to go. Surak-san is very famous and is especially popular in autumn because of the fall foliage. The colors were so beautiful and the weather was perfect. Warm, but on the cool breezy side of the spectrum.

I left my apartment at 6:30 to catch the 7 am bus. There are several tour buses that are organized to go to the mountains, so I went as a part of one tour bus group. So, anyway, we were off. It takes 3 hours to get to the mountain, so we were in for a long ride. All the new people had to do introductions, so I practiced some Korean phrases and did my spiel and sat down as quickly as possible~! Everyone was thankful that I had spoken in Korean and everyone was so nice to me. I was given coffee, roasted chestnuts, rice cake, a sweet chinese pancake with some type of sweet potato filling, etc. I LOVE the food culture here. Everyone shares their food--if someone brought anything, I got a piece of it. I was very thankful to them for their generosity towards me.

So, we stopped at a rest stop about an hour away from the hiking trail to eat and go to the restroom, etc. We ate a spicy soup with beef and vegetable with a spicy, watery broth poured over rice. It was super yummy~ and really hit the spot on the chilly morning! Thankfully, it warmed up a lot when the sun came out, but the morning was CHILLY. Brrr~!

So, a TON of people came to Surak-san. We went on the 4-hour hiking course, but it took us closer to 5 1/2 hours just because of the number of people. Everyone looked out for me and again, I felt grateful for everyone's support.

So, we arrived at the mountain around 10 am and we didn't leave again until a little after 3:30. Then we hit traffic. We didn't get back to Songpa-gu until 9 pm. But, we amused ourselves by singing karaoke on the bus. It was fantastic~! Then, after we arrived back at our starting point, we went out to dinner and ate pork spine soup. SO DELICIOUS~! Everyone was again worried about me, "will she like it? will it be okay?" Bumi assured them that I had it before and that I loved it (which I do)! <3

So, that was it. My adventure to Surak-san.