Dane and I, two chemical engineering students at UF, were sent to South Korea for two months.
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Saturday, June 17, 2006

Hiking ain't easy

Our journey to Jeungwsang mountain began at nine am (two hours behind schedule), and this was reminiscent of my days in Guatemala where everything begins if not an hour later, then three behind schedule. I stayed in the lab the night before so that I could have the maximum amount of sleep, but Jeff managed to wake me up at six thirty am for the damn thing. Jeff and I went to the first floor where the shuttle was already there and a modern day-Buddha was amongst the gathered delegation:

I took over three small cups of coffee, believing that that would alleviate the pain that sleeping on the ground had imposed on my back, and even though it did (just a bit), I was still annoyed at the fact that we had to stay there standing for over two hours, waiting for everyone to arrive. At the aforementioned time, we parted towards our destination; the trip to Jeungwasang took approximately two hours. On our way there, I learned that the Korean word "chara" means to sleep (the only reason I remembered that is because the same exact sound is Guatemalan slang for beggar!).

When we arrived, it was time for modern-day buddha's true colors to reveal themselves; despite his lack in height, his chubbiness to the point of rotundness, and his non-imposing, overall figure, there was no mistake: this man had "buddha balls," and he knew it:

He was the man in charge, and began giving orders about how that day's hiking was going to proceed. He gave everyone a map, and ordered each one to take their survival kit from the bus:


The day's trip seemed promising, as the sight from the very beginning was quite grand.


And so we began!


The initial slope of the mountain was rather flat, and i was beginning to feel disappointed at the lack of physical demand, but Confucius knows best: beware what you wish for.


The slope started getting progressively more steep, and the track way more demanding. However, this seemed to bother little to nothing to one of the professors who seemed to be floating, as he was practically running his way up the mountain; being young and naive, and thinking that one month's worth of training in the gym could outperform an entire lifetime of hiking, I decided to catch him and keep up with his passe. Ten minutes into the delusional endeavour, and I was destroyed; this is what I looked like:

I kept on taking rests as the mountain seemed to get rougher and steeper.

But we did not falter, and we kept on hiking!

And the sights kept on getting better:

And we kept on hiking for approximately two hours before we reached the top. When I finally did, I was completely soaked in my own sweat, and I watched with envy the professor who was just chill'n as if nothing had happened. After a few moments of rest, we began our photo session of the day's achievement:



We began eating, and some random group of people called me over and invited me to a drink. I had some soju and some vegetables, and a photo with them:

We chilled for about an hour on the top of the mountain, eating and talking, before we began our descend to the waterfalls. If it's hard to go up, make no mistake, its hard to go down too!

At some point in my descent, I got lost, and I ended up in some cool waterfall. Deciding that panicking was of no good use, and that sooner or later someone might show up, I decided to take a quick nap and enjoy the scenery. When an hour passed and no one had passed by, I started to roam the mountain frantically, searching for my fellow brethren whom I finally found about a half an hour into my search.


We took some pics and headed to the exit gate, where yet another reward of the day's demanding hiking was waiting for us. Enjoy:





We kept on walking towards the gate, and we finally met up with the professors who were having a blast drinking the traditional Korean rise beer, makuli. I proceeded to get drunk with them, and I managed to get the Chairman and two of the professors of the Chemical Engineering department drunk too; the former popped the question: how do you like korean girls? I informed him that I couldn't say, as I hadn't met any during my sojourn in Korea. He was (aside from drunk) dumbfounded at my response and quickly called one of his graduate students. The chairman ordered him to take me to a club ASAP, and then told me that I shouldn't worry, that his graduate students would "take care" of my situation. I thanked him and we kept on drinking more beer!

The day kept on getting better, as I actually won a raffle! My prize was a 256 MB USB cable!

We finished our dinner, and we headed back to the shuttle bus. On our way back to the University, the professors decided to delight us with their karaoke abilities. I passed out and the rest, I'll leave it for my next post; enjoy the pics.


...and what the hell, I know many of you liked the buddha, so enjoy him some mo':

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