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':

Korea plays

And I was ready to watch them; I had my Korean Team items, along with Won Chul's gift (a red devil shirt) on. The pilgrimage began at six pm.

We took the free shuttle from the university soon after meeting up at the science library. Traffic was extremely bad, so the usual fifteen-minute ride took forty long ones. We ran to the closest Walt mart, because just like in America, Walt mart is the cheapest when it comes to beer; so we bought some Hite.

We also got some chicken and pizza, and we walked to Sawol station to get to downtown, where four big TV screens would be showing Korea's debut to thousands of Koreans and a Guatemalan fan. The subway was crowded and it took about ten minutes to get my metro coin. Once on the metro, some Korean women kindly asked me for a picture, and you know, despite the effort needed on my behalf, I conceded, and I asked Won Chul to take one for my personal documentation:

We kept on taking pictures and getting anxious about the upcoming game.

Once in dowtown, we walked on one of the main roads towards the interception with another major road, where the four TV screens would soon project the fate of the Korean Team. As we kept on getting closer to the interception, the road kept on getting more condensed with red devils, and when we were on it, red was the dominating color, and a sea of red stretched approximately half a kilometer on all four directions from the interception, where there was a stage and some Korean cheerleaders doing their thing:



The game and drinking began, and we also got the food out to start stuffing ourselves with good old American food!


The game wasn't going so good, as Togo scored first; however, the Korean fans did not falter. Their cry kept on resonating throughout downtown as they screamed "Taehan-min'guk," the name Koreans call their country. But despite the yelling and the wishful thinking, the first half of the game ended in a tragic 1-0 in Togo's favor.

However, the second half began with Korea proceeding to kick some mayor, African ass! The first score was from a free shot and the multitude went wild! It had been a long time since I had been bathed in beer, so seeing the elixir rain from the skies as all the drunk Korean men threw it in the air, also incited me to go wild myself!

Soon after, a second goal arrived, and with only twelve minutes left on the clock, Korea's victory was so certain that people got off their asses and started dancing, and stopped paying too much attention to the game and began enjoying each other as major hugging sessions spread across the asphalt. Sure enough, the game ended victoriously, with a 2-1 in Korea's favor! And the excitement, well, it just emanates from the video:


Everything good, however, must come with its prize, and I sure enough had to pay for the good time we spent in downtown. Won Chul and I had to walk for over an hour at one am towards his studio. There were no buses at that time, and we were too cheap to pay for a cab, but the walk was good as watching the pictures made us reminisce on the Korean victory.



Success...

Good Weekend Part Two

Gonju is spelled Goungju, and it's about an hours-worth drive away from Kyongsang, the resting place of Yeungnam University. We got to the symposium at about ten am and things seemed a little bit boring; Dane and some of the Korean fellows that came with us used it as the perfect opportunity to sleep and snore; hence, I was unable to hear Korean Doctors give their presentations in broken English. Nonetheless, things got a little better when we were able to take pictures once the first part of the symposium had ended.



We never came back for the second, third, forth, nor fifth part; we bounce to see some Buddhist temples! Got to see, in the words of Dane, some "Buddha balls!"

The first temple we saw was the Precincts of Bulguksa, which was constructed by Prime Minster Gim Dae-seong and completed in 774. The temple was no different than the other four I had seen thus far; you know, the same colorful elaborate architecture, the nice roofs and all that, but this place had some cool, huge statues that I hadn't seen anywhere else, some of them majestic, such as:


Others, not quite, just like:

And we kept on touring, and we kept on taking pictures:





Things kept on getting more interesting, specially when we hit the little Buddhist store where Dane got a statue of a mini Buddha on a cow, and I got a painting of ten horses running wild! We also got to try those funny looking hats:

But what was best, was that we got to interact with the natives; I don't know if it was because we were foreign, or because we were with WIN, a twenty-five year old Korean that could easily pass as an elementary, Asian school kid, but a bunch of natives, around the ages of ten (and female) wanted to take pictures with us, and so we did:


After our photo session with the kids, we headed to a second Buddhist temple; I can't recall it's name but it was on top of this peaceful mountain from where the ocean can be seen, or at least that's what they told me, because that day was foggy and I really couldn't see anything but fog far into the horizon:


We waited until six (the ending time of the symposium) to head back to the convention center in order to get the keys to our hotel and rest for a while. The interesting thing is that, about half the rooms in the hotel that we were staying in, didn't have any beds! They just use mattresses and pillows; however, we were lucky enough to have one with a comfortable resting place.


We rested for a brief moment and then we headed off to the hotel's lobby where there was a shuttle waiting to take us (and the rest of the delegation) to a sea food place.

We ate, we drank, and went wild!


Koreans love to eat well and to drown themselves in alcohol, more so (I think) than Latins: this is what the table looked like once we were done:

This is the best bootie I've seen in Korea since we arrived:

And this is the first gay Korean that I've met in my life.

And this is what drunk graduate students and PhD professors do once their research presentations are done.