The Hike of Shame: Mt. Shinbulsan

It's scientifically proven that beginning one's day with rigorous physical activity will lessen even the worst post-merrymaking ailments. My comrades and I decided to test this theory last Sunday. "Late to bed, early to rise" was our motto, as we clocked in around four and met at ten for a hike up Mt. Shinbulsan, Ulsan's second highest peak. Trip advisor Dez knew the trek to the mountain was going to be just as scrupulous as the actual hike, so we gave ourselves plenty of daylight to work with. Why would it be difficult to get to the base of a mountain? Well, we can't just jump into my Barbie car and cruise our way to Shinbulsan, located about 24km away in Eonyeong, so instead we took a bus to the end of the earth and caught a taxi the rest of the way. Or that was our plan, at least.

In the name of science I, of course, had to find a willing participant to truly test said theory. After consuming about six Long Islands, my new friend Nick was, at the time, an extremely willing (and dare I say excited!) participant to hike hungover on Ulsan's second highest peak. Nick's thoughts seemed to change throughout the night, though, and the thrill in his eyes diminished when we met at ten. I have to say, I'm proud of each of us for simply getting dressed that morning, and I am especially happy I packed a pathetic "hike bag" with a few things to sustain us over the afternoon. Now, I'm no hiker and had no idea what to expect, but Dez said this particular hike would take roughly four hours to complete  and that did not include travel time, so snacks were a must.

Okay, transit number one. Nick, Dez, Tim and I boarded what was possibly the hottest bus in all of Korea. We took a spot in the back and tried to get comfortable, but there's only so many layers you can shed. After half an hour of Korean countryside and a series of sickening speed bumps, it was clear that Nick's stomach contents would remain contained no longer! A very panicked, ghost-faced Nick glided gracefully down the aisle, and the distinctly potent smell of sick followed soon after. Yep, off the bus at the next stop, please.

Maybe this was a bus stop? Maybe this was simply where the driver wished us ado. 

Either way, there was a hose. 
I-SPY Bonus: Find Nick!

We were all relieved to be off that bus, but a new challenge had arisen. Where were we? Not even Dez knew for sure, so we began walking towards the mountain with hopes of seeing a stray taxi. Four caucasians on the side of a two lane road draws a lot of attention and snickers from Korean passerbys, but we managed to hold our heads high and trek on. As usual, my obnoxious optimism kept spirits up (ha, that's what I like to think) and as it turned out, we were only a ten minute walk from the original destination. Claps for Nick! Good timing on that puke. From the bus stop/market we had to call a taxi to drive us to the base of Shinbulsan. We considered walking, but it's a damn good thing we didn't. Freshly purged tummies or not, we definitely wouldn't have gotten very far, so a kind store owner called a cab for the group. It's amazing how something so simple, such as calling a taxi, is so difficult when you don't speak the language!

Taxi time. Dez is ready.

Seizing the moment to do some warm-up lunges before the hike. 

Notice the official hiking gear: Mom's spandex pants from the early 90s, rain jacket, and Reeboks. I mean hiking Reeboks.

Transit number two. Now, taxis in Korea are generally inexpensive, but apparently the base of Mt. Shinbulsan wasn't on the driver's regular route (whaaaa?!) so we had to pay a higher fee than normal. Split four ways, no big deal! We were ready to hike. First up on the list was the waterfall, about a mile walk from the entrance to the park. On the way, Dez shared some Korean superstition about Shinbulsan and the waterfall. It is said that no swimming is allowed around Shinbulson because the waterfall is so powerful that below it's surface there is an inescapable aquatic vortex created from its hydraulic fury. (I'll let you be the judge of that one.) Grant it, Korea is much warmer in January than the midwest, but I was content to remain above water on this particular hike. I thought the waterfall would be more fun in the summertime, but I was completely wrong! When we found the fall it had formed a frozen shell and looked quite similar to a cave formation, which I obviously geeked out over. OMG, so cool. 

We began near the red cluster to the right. The majority of our hike was up, and up, and up to the green point (essentially in the clouds) on the right.

All of the Koreans walked onto the ice in their super-secure hiking boots. 

Oh yeah, Reeboks. Doin' me proud.

The next K-Pop stars, I think.

After the waterfall everyone was feeling pretty great. Morale was high, the mountain air was doing wonders for aching heads and livers, and we had absolutely no idea what kind of hike we were getting ourselves into. I mean, the "hike" to the waterfall was no hike at all compared to the ascent up Shinbulsan. Shit was about to get real. We first encountered some switchbacks, nothing I hadn't seen on a trail run or hiking in brown county, but as soon as the pavement disappeared from view it seemed we were climbing straight up. Laughter turned silent, silence turned to panting, panting turned to my complaining about boob sweat, and it was essentially all down hill/up hill from there. Alright, I'm being a little dramatic, but it became clear to me that I've never actually hiked a real hike before. It was really enjoyable because I was with great people and we were able to talk for a solid two hours while we walked up the mountain, but I'd probably hate to hike with someone I don't like. Like Justin Bieber. I'd hate to go on a hike with Justin Bieber. Mostly it was just us and the great outdoors, but we'd sometimes pass a group of Koreans hiking down with their walking sticks, playing Korean music from their phone. They just smiled and waved and probably thought "Oh, silly foreigners in their non-traditional hiking attire." Psh.

Tim and Nick are such good troopers.

This was about the point when I asked Dez how much longer we had and he informed me we were only half way. Normally Dez is joking, but this is no joke face.

The second half of the hike up was tiring, I'll be honest. Thankfully I ate breakfast before we got on the bus, but Tim and Nick hadn't eaten anything all morning. Between the four of us we had maybe three bottles of water, two apples, a small bag of almonds, two granola bars, and a bag of delicious grape candies Nick bought at the market. Not exactly enough to sustain a group of hungover waygooks as they ascend 4,000 feet up a mountain, but you live and learn. And I will say that every piece of food and every drop of water was consumed throughout the remainder of the hike. And we learned, and thank god we all lived, and Dez dropped his phone in some snow, and we climbed five million stairs, and the Rocky theme song played in my head on repeat. And we made it. It was glorious to see blue skies.

I climbed 1,158m and put my hand on a phallic monument. 

SUCCESS.

I'm not exactly sure what this was, but I took a picture of literally everything knowing I would never ever be up there again. YOLO.

Dez was so tired he tried to build a stone hut for himself. 

Just kidding.

Making it to the top of Shinbulsan was a pretty powerful, emotional experience. We spent all day to get to this very point and I was so happy to know the ascent was over, but from there it's pretty anti-climactic. Dez claimed there was a convenience store at the top, and I really, really, really wanted that to be true (in my heart I knew it wasn't true...), so once I discovered that myth was false there was nothing left to do but shrug and hike back down the mountain. With just enough sunlight to guide us off the trail and back to the park we had another cab called and were forced to wait about thirty minutes until he arrived. Hungry, tired, and cold, no amount of optimism could perk us up. But there was something else to do the job...

Hiking down, ducks in a row style. 

Probably talking about beer and food. 

Killing our calves and quads.

Back on solid ground! Thumbs up!

SURPRISE! ICE CREAMS AND A CAT!

Then the taxi came and we all went home and slept forever. What could have been an unproductive day of hangin' and bellyachin' became one of my fondest memories in Korea. There are many more hikes, hangovers, and memories to come I'm sure.

"Christmas" and the Sunrise Festival

Christmas has always been an interesting holiday in my family but always one of my favorite holidays, because as long as I can remember, Christmas has involved the aunts, uncles, and cousins mixed with lots of yelling, hard liquor, and finger food. Nothing says Seasons Greetings like a gin bucket and cocktail weenies on toothpicks. I mean, c'mon! But in Korea, the closest I came to feeling the Christmas spirit was hearing Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" approximately five times a day in just about every public place imaginable. There was no snow aside from a 15 minute flurry, there was no hard liquor aside from some all-you-can-drink sangria at a local ex-pat bar, and there were no cocktail weenies on toothpicks! As a vegetarian, I didn't really miss the weenies, (and yes, I am still 90% vegetarian here!) but I did miss my loud, inappropriate family gathered around an array of crockpots, drinking mysterious concoctions out of red solo cups, and the hum of indistinguishable but happy conversation.

Typical Christmas Eve scene. Note the solo cups.

Typical Christmas Day scene. Wine before noon. And more solo cups.

Christmas Eve came and went, and my academy still had class, and Christmas Day came and went, and my academy still had class, so I defrosted some cream cheese left in the freezer from the previous tenant, mixed it with honey and cinnamon, called it "dip," and headed to a pitch-in where my other foreigner friends played a three hour game of risk as The Departed aired on a projector in the background. Not the most exciting holiday, but without snow or The Christmas Story or inappropriate family, Christmas was just another day in Korea. The cherry on top, however, was asking students what they received as Christmas presents, and the saddest/greatest answer I got was "cups."

This sums it up quite well.

In the weeks following Christmas, life got pretty hectic at work. Students' finished their normal school terms and began winter break, a much deserved break knowing how hard they work. Yet to my surprise, the kids were a) not NEARLY as excited as students (and teachers) at home feel when there is an impending school closure, and the reason is b) THEY TAKE MORE CLASSES. Who teaches this daytime/break time class, you ask? The answer is me. In addition to my regular evening classes, I began teaching what is called a Winter Intensive class twice times a week for the next four weeks, just in time for my Korean students to shuffle back to their regular schools for spring term. Whenever I think I'm worn out or overworked, I just try and imagine my students' little brains processing a three-hour class...in a foreign language...two times a week...during Christmas break....Gah! Someone give these kids a Ring Pop! STAT!

Since education is serious stuff over here, it came to no surprise that all the teachers needed to be at school at 9am on New Year's Day. Our early morning definitely put a damper on the would-be ridiculousness of New Year's Eve, so a few co-worker friends and I decided to take the cultural route to 2014 rather than the "drunk and crying" route we're all so familiar with...no? Just me? Well, anyway, many people in Ulsan attend the Ganjeolgot Sunrise Festival which begins on the evening of December 31st and carries on until the first sunrise of the new year. Throughout the night, people celebrate by watching traditional Korean dance, music, and not-so-traditional fireworks, and by eating tteokguk (rice cake soup). We all figured this festival would be a great way to experience Korean culture and stay relatively sober for class, so we synchronized our watches and planned to meet up in the wee hours of the morning to catch a cab to Ganjeolgot. For the first time in probably fifteen years I slept through midnight on New Year's Eve.

4:30am (4.5 hours to school check-in)
I suited up in my work clothes, leggings, thermal shirt, hat, scarf, jacket, gloves, sneakers, and magkeolli (rice wine, to keep the blood warm. You know.) Tim, Dez, and Dan, our newest addition, met outside of the apartment and, after a coffee stop, we caught a cab to the coast. A half-hour cab ride cost about 24,000 won, so split amongst us it was no more than $6. Quite a bargain.

5:00am (4 hours to school check-in)
Our cab driver got as close to the festival as he could, but once he realized the road was blocked he motioned for us to hop out on the curb. It was about this time that I applied the first of what Dez calls the "waygook face" (waygook means "foreigner" in Korean). Why were we left on the sidewalk? Where were all the people? Why was I outside in the dark at 5am? So many unanswered questions. Nevertheless, our fearless leader Dez led us to a line of Koreans standing by a promising trashcan fire. They were bundled up like us, and they were warmer than us, so maybe we're all waiting for the same thing? Turns out we were right! The line grew longer and longer, and sure enough a parade of charter buses came rumblin' down the street to take us to the coast.

5:30am (3.5 hours to school check-in)

We finally made it to the Ganjeolgot coastline, although it was still very dark and hard to make out anything beyond a haze of lights in the distance. Hopes were high, spirits were good, so we ventured towards the light like moths to a flame. I remember comparing it to the scene in Finding Nemo where Dory and Nemo kept looking into that lightbulb string of the horrifying electric fish and saying "It's so beautiful...I feel so happy." Yeah, that's pretty much what it felt like. With absolutely no idea what we'd find other than loads of electricity I slapped on another waygook face and just kept walking.

6:00am (3 hours to school check-in)
Lights! People! Soju! Food! Drums! So much action, so many bundled babies! Hidden away among the rocks was a sprawling festival of people partying in the dark. But it all seemed so strange.

Spotlights shone on drummers and "dancers." 

(I put dancers in quotations, because they may have only been overly-confident drunk men.)

Dez, Dan, and I, happy to have made it beyond the trashcan fire.

As we walked I kept wondering if things were strange because I couldn't understand anything or anyone, or if it was all literally very strange for everyone involved, Korean or otherwise. I felt like I was missing the punchline to a joke that all the Koreans understood. Oh, well! When in Rome...

...eat food on a stick!

"Forward, ho!" our fearless leader yelled as we continued our disorienting journey through the night. The journey quickly came to a screeching halt when we turned a corner and became trapped in an extremely long line of people. Cue waygook face number three! Dez and Tim sort of shuffled around trying to figure out why people were in line (it must be something good, right?) while Dan and I tried to find a place to trash our sticks from the stick-food. Aside from the mystery line, the most puzzling thing about this entire scenario was the 100 ft. illumination of wild horses in the background, which cast an eerie glow on everything and everyone in its wake.

It's a bit difficult to see, but there are definitely white, wild stallions in that glow bulb, and all of those people are definitely standing in line for something not worth standing in line for.

With more oddities to discover and time to kill before sunrise, we plowed through the line and rounded another corner of coast where we were just in time to witness an actual traditional Korean dance performance. The girls were probably middle or early high school, and their performance took me back to my days in winter guard...Waking up early for competitions, doing hair and makeup, sucking it up and performing as a team even when it was frigidly cold outside.

Their dance included finger cymbals, too! 

(Shout out to my Bloomington bellydancing babes!)

Dez has a perfect waygook face going in this photo. So unaware yet so ambivalent.

7:00am (2 hours to school check-in)

We had just over a half hour until the festival's big finale: the sunrise! Having explored most of what Ganjeolgot had to offer (I think) on a cold, January morning, the gang decided to search for the perfect sunrise spot. The people who weren't standing in a mystery line or asleep on coffee shop tables began to line up along the walkway to secure a good location for the sunrise. Our clock was ticking with only two hours until school's check-in, but there was no way we were leaving without witnessing the main event. Having existed under a pitch black sky for the previous two hours, the dawn was quite noticeable, and cell phone selfies seemed to be the true test of sunlight. 

Waygook family selfies!

 Korean family selfies!

The view from our spot. 

As it neared 7:31 I filled with excitement! Sunrise is sort of like sunset. It happens so quickly you don't really realize it. But here I was, focused and waiting to witness the glowing orb that would usher in the new year. Maybe it was silly of me, but I imagined some huge Lion King sunrise on the serengeti where a gigantic orange ball of gas would rise from the horizon line, captivating the attention of its overnight audience. Unfortunately I was wrong and it didn't really go down (or up) like that, but I wasn't disappointed. Although it was a bit cloudy and could not initially see the sun, a giant bell tolled at 7:31 and I witnessed one of the most beautiful sights. Above me floated a single paper lantern, then one white balloon, then hundreds of white balloons. The sky was filled with pink and blue and balloons.

One paper lantern.

The first white balloon. 

Hundreds of white balloons.

Turns out that ridiculously long line had been for wish balloons. Each balloon had a New Year's wish attached at the bottom, ready to catch the breeze and fly over the ocean towards the sunrise. So sweet, so beautiful, so environmentally unfriendly. I breathed in the fresh coastal air and briefly reminisced upon all the amazing experiences and growth I'd had over the past year. However, my thoughts were cut short as an excited Korean mother motioned for us to pose with her embarrassed teenage son in a photo. I can only imagine her saying, "Look, honey! Foreigners! Let me get your picture!" and the kid is all, "Mommmm, do we have to? Nooooo." For all our hard work posing in her picture she gave us this bag of dried seaweed.

 GOOD DEAL! Thanks, Korean Mom!

8:00am (1 hours to school check-in)

Sun or no sun, we had to catch a cab and quick. The masses were done balloon floating, and we knew the coach buses would fill up fast. It was tempting to stick around and eat some rice cake soup for good luck, but we'd need more than good luck if we showed up late to school. Thankfully Dez is amazing and managed to lead us back to a mysterious line which we all hoped would take us to a bus, to take us to the curb, to take us to a cab, to take us straight to school. As I was about to enter panic mode because time really wasn't on our side, I turned around and spotted this: 

The first sunrise of 2014 looked just as beautiful from over my hurried shoulder as it would have looked from any other place. Even without rice cake soup and luck we boarded an extremely slow moving bus towards the direction we had began four hours prior. Dez and I sat silently in the seats of the bus, awkwardly smiling and casting nervous glances at the time on our cell phones. We're going to be late. We're going to be late. Oh, shit, we're going to be so late. 

8:30am (0.5 hours to school check-in)

When we jumped off the bus I sighed with relief. One bus trip down, one taxi trip to go. Traffic was starting to pick up, and I immediately regretting my earlier decision to down a bottle of magkeolli. Although it did warm my bones, it also filled my bladder, and public restrooms are few and far between in Korea. But luck was still hanging around us and I spotted some outdoor urinals. NO, of course I didn't pee in an outdoor urinal. But I did pee over my first squat toilet in some shady little ramshackle bathroom next to a gas station, and I have to say, I doubt any pee of 2014 will even compare with the greatness that was the squat pee. Emptying my bladder enabled me to feel like a new woman, so I had the guys wait at the curb corner while I ran down the street to spot an empty taxi. Taxi finally spotted, we clown car-ed ourselves in and demanded the driver to put his pedal to the metal, we had children to teach! (Of course this message was neither delivered or received. Stupid, language barrier.) The pressure to arrive on time was now off my shoulders and in the lap of our driver, so I promptly fell asleep against the window with hopes we'd make it through the stop-and-go traffic along the coast.

9:05am (0 hours to school check-in)

I woke up to a cold rush of air along the right side of my body where Dez and Dan kept me warm in backseat incubation. Frantically, I grabbed my phone. 9:05! We made it! The four of us were bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and we practically collided with our drowsy head instructor as he met us at the crosswalk. Not only did we have an awesomely cultural New Year's Eve, but we made it to the school before our superiors arrived. Double New Year's bonus! Yep, 2014 is lookin' pretty awesome.