Saturday: Up the Mountain and at the Seminar

Today was a busy day filled with lots of hiking, sweating, and sitting. We have been having a good but busy week at the kindergarden. We are working hard to learn all the children's names and to make classes fun. It is hard work as the children have so much energy and it can be dificult to keep up with all of them, especially when you get fresh classes every hour (or sooner like when we have morning classes).

Today was our second weekend in Seoul together and the principal already drafted us into going to a seminar about reading stories to children. When I asked her about it she said that it would be half in Korean and half in English... I don't think she knew what she was talking about as the whole thing ended up being in Korean and I asked myself why I was there and ended up trying to sleep through the whole thing... but that was later in the day! In the morning, Matt and I decided we wanted to check out the mountain that is near our apartment. It took about twenty minutes to get there by the subway. There were so many shops lining the street up to the mountain selling things for hiking. There were kimbop places (kind of like a sushi thing, only no fish, only rice and vegitables), numerous places to buy hiking sticks, pants, shirts, hats, bandanas, lanyards, backpacks, and anything else you could possibly think of. You could even buy something from the brand "Kolon sport" as you can see in the picture below. It is so close to the word "colon" that Matt and I found it halarious and we had to share it with you. Matt says he doesn't want to wear that brand ^^

The mountain is called Dobong San (도봉산). It was a hot and muggy day and the trails were steep so we were sweating quite profusely throughout the hike. I have never seen so many people on a hiking trail in my life. But I suppose that is what you get when you go to the most popular mountain in the second largest city in the world on a Saturday morning. There is no such thing at "hike at your own pace" on these trails. It is more along the lines of "go the speed of the pack or get trampled" type of hiking. Take a look at the pictures first of the people in front of us and then the people behind us:

Matt describes it as "The ants go marching!" If it were not for the people it would be a very beautiful and wonderful hike, but having so many people on the trail and being pushed around was not quite so fun as I had immagined. It was a very pretty area though as you can see from the following pictures:

The mountian side was also dotted with old Buddhist Temples. The first one we saw was quite elaborate and large. The gate was colorful and artfully decorated. I have never seen anything quite like it in my life! It was amazing architchture and lovely decoration in the way of paintings. Here are some pictures:

The last picture is of the ceiling of that entrence way.

After the hike we made our way back to our apartment, showered, changed, ate lunch, and hurried down to where we were supposed to meat the principal for this lecture. We arrived at the university a little before 1:30 which is when it was supposed to start. It ended up starting around 2pm. It ended at 5:30, and the whole thing was in Korean! Matt was having a difficult time translating as the speaker was talking so quickly and there were not any pauses in her speaking. He was having a difficult time keeping up, translating, and then picking up where she left off. I ended up with a general translation of what was going on. The whole thing was basically piontless and I don't know why the prinipal wanted me to go to it as I don't speak Korean!!!!! I nodded of a couple of times the seminar was so dang long. What a waste of an afternoon! But you have to make the boss happy. The only time I had fun was at the very end. There was a story in the pamphlet that we all received that was printed in English, I was able to read that. It was a folktale about how the sun used to roam around and would come and go. One day the creator of the Earth (forgot his name... it was a long name) decided to capture the sun so he made a giant net and the next time the sun came to the Earth he caputred the sun. But the sun was now too close and the Earth was getting too hot. So he decided to let the sun go if the sun promised to stay close to the Earth. No one could get close enough to the sun to release it from its bonds as it was too hot (why the roap didn't burn off I will never know). But the beaver was brave and chewed through the ropes that held the sun down and released the sun. Since it was so hot the beaver lost all his fur, and the creator thanked the beaver by giving him sharper teeth and a new coat of fur but the tail was left bare to remind all of how brave the beaver was.

Now I tell you this story so that the next part makes sense. We now had to create our own story and draw it out. The story had to be about a Beaver. Somehow I was stuck drawing our story (there were two other teachers with us). My drawing skills are not that great, especially when I have to draw something in five minutes. The story we created was largely Matt's invention. To modivate all those in the audience the group with the best story would win a prize. This was our story: Once there was a beaver who had a big bushy tail. One day the moon cam flying out of the sky and landed on the beavers tail! The sun felt bad for the beaver and took the moon off the Earth and banished the moon to the night. However, the damage had been done and the Beaver's tail was forever flat. That is why the Sun guards over the day and the moon is left to the night and the Beaver's tail is flat.

You wouldn't think it was that great of a story... but we won! Here are two pictures, one of me holding the picture we drew of our story and another which is a close up of the picture.

We decided our moon on the left looks more like a cookie and my beaver on the right (the far right was cut off) looks more like a peanut than a Beaver. Surprisingly I was complimented on my drawing skills... but I think they were just being nice. The prize was a little drawer which you can see on the top picture on the Left I am holding it. As I said to Matt "Well, I slept through the whole thing and won the prize at the end!"

We went out to eat with Mihe and the other teacher that came (don't remember her name) and we wore aprons to dinner! That was a new experience! Here are pictures. Mihe is the woman on the left.

And then we went home! I hope you are all doing well and I look forward to hearing from you!