moving to Gangnam

This is my first official post from our new three-bedroom apartment in Gangnam!

Okay, I'm sorry. I had to. 

Anyway, it was a heck of a move—much more difficult than last time. The mover was a great guy named Jho whom I found on Craigslist and he showed up on time and was very chatty and told me what the name Jamsil means (magnanery) and discussed his favorite dish daegutang (codfish stew) and was just generally helpful. 

No, the complications arose when we arrived at our new high-rise apartment complex in Gaepo-dong, Gangnam-gu. The building security officer came out of his little cave-like office and promptly informed Jho and me that I'd have to stump up ₩50,000 if I wanted to use the elevator to take the thirty-odd boxes up to the 13th floor. Jeez. Apartment complex policy or something like that. So I paid the man and Joseph (the friend from Sejong that I brew with) helped me move everything off the truck. I tipped Jho ₩20,000 on top of his ₩100,000 fee and he left, all smiles. Then Joseph and I began the backbreaking hour-long process of moving everything Miss H and I own in the world from the sidewalk to the elevator and from the elevator to our apartment. 

Whoof. 

Anyway, the work was soon finished, and Joseph departed. I now owe him the biggest dang samgyeopsal dinner ever. 

Then I went back to the Gwangnaru apartment to clean it, and discovered that there was a whole freaking pile of stuff under the bed that I'd forgotten. Miss H was done with her new job training by now, and joined me in Gwangnaru for a moment of panic. The poor woman who was set to take over our apartment was currently sitting in the other new girl's apartment one floor above, waiting to take possession. In a frenzied flurry, Miss H and I cleaned, called two taxicabs, loaded our remaining truck into the trunks and backseats, and then hared off for Gangnam after handing over the keys. We traveled through the gathering dusk and the rush-hour traffic, the whole city cloaked in a broiling fume of Chinese yellow dust, gagging and coughing and cursing the day we were born, and moved the final two loads up the slow-ass elevator and into our new home. 

Move accomplished. 

This apartment is five rooms: three bedrooms, a bathroom and a dining room/kitchen. Two single guys had been sharing it before we arrived. The place was an absolute wreck: stinking of unwashed bedding and dirty dishes, grime covering every surface, the bathroom clotted with mold, dust bunnies and grit and loose change littering the floor. We called up our old friend Miss J from Bucheon, and the three of us spent all Sunday cleaning. We bought her Papa John's pizza as compensation (thank goodness we live within range of their delivery service; that was the first thing we ascertained). 

The apartment has slowly become livable over the past four days. Every night Miss H and I clean and unpack some more, and by this weekend we have high hopes that it'll be fit for company. It'll be bare and spartan and rather sparse, but we plan on a few runs to Homeplus for area rugs and perhaps to Insadong for Korean-themed decorations. With any luck, the apartment will have become a home before another week is out. 

...which is good, 'cause my lady and I need a clean, comfy place to crash after work. I love my new schedule, but dang, my Tuesdays and Thursdays are intense: composition classes all day, and a 90-minute listening class at 9:00 in the morning. Yikes. Miss H's kids already have her on the hop, too. Both of us are looking forward to the first weekend when we can relax in Daejin Park or go for a craft beer at Hopscotch or the first preseason baseball game at Jamsil Stadium on March 22. 

Pictures will come as soon as we finish cleaning. Postie out. 

blurbs

I went to see The Dark Knight Rises this evening, and was only mildly annoyed with it. That must be some kind of record.

Corn actually tastes pretty good on pizza.

My novel manuscript is 411 pages (double-spaced) and clocks in at 81,476 words.

I went to the bank in my pajamas two days ago.

Somehow I'm in the middle of reading three books: The Chase by Clive Cussler, The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, and Cross the Stars by David Drake.

If I take a walk in the afternoons or make a run to Costco in the mornings, I sweat so much that I leave salt deposits on my T-shirts. It's that hot and muggy out there. This is worse than Tennessee.

Terra Nova (a sci-fi TV show, formerly on Fox) has been canceled. It'll be put out on DVD soon and will henceforth be presented as a "motion comic." I suppose I should know what that is, me being an aspiring comic book writer. But I don't.

The weirdest Google search I've ever done was for "alien draft animals"...three days ago.

Intensive courses begin at work on Tuesday. I'll be working from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., or something. For the next month. Goodbye, sleep schedule.

Sometimes I get the idea that the Koreans' cultural respect of the greater good and their belief in the insignificance of the individual are all a sham. They're all rugged individualists once they climb behind the wheel of a car. Or maybe cars are just Asian Kryptonite.

Listening to Winston Churchill speeches on YouTube gives me goosebumps.

Until tonight I had no idea what the phrase "to wit" meant.

I put one of my felt hats in the laundry last week (it got completely soaked with sweat on my last outing). It came out all limp and misshapen. I still love it.

Getting into the habit of watering houseplants every day has been tricky, but well worth it. We have little red flowers blooming constantly on the plant by the window.

They're not "pushpins," people. They're "thumbtacks." I dare you to tell me there's a difference.

These are just a few of the things occupying my mind at the moment.

up Calton Hill

I'd love to be able to take credit for this image, but it's Wikimedia Commons to the rescue yet again!

EDINBURGH, DAY TWO

Dammit, I am going to finish this story if it kills me.

I went to England for two weeks in June of last year. Yeah. And it's taken me this long to tell you about it.

Believe it or not, I'm almost done. Another three or four posts should cover it. Hang in there.

And so I left the company of my vampiric Romanian roommate and sauntered off into the sunny streets of Edinburgh, along with my irrepressible Canadian travel buddy, Jeff.

Well, not really. First I grabbed my computer out of my roofless hostel room and went down to Beanscene, a charming little coffeehouse just up the block. It boasted free wi-fi; free, that was, if you bought something. I got the cheapest and most innocuous mocha on the menu and sipped it while I got some business concluded. I penned an article covering the last two days' events and packed it off to my editor; THEN I went back to the Belford Hostel, rousted out Jeff, and sauntered off.

Now, one might very well marvel at our singularity of purpose. Rather than moon about the streets of the Scottish capital, gawping at everything in sight, making trite and unimaginative remarks upon this attraction or that, and vaguely postulating on whether it would be feasible to tour it in the 72 hours we had available, this day we had our act together. We zeroed in on our objective like a punctilious Patriot missile. We pointed our noses in the direction of Calton Hill and made a beeline for it down Princes Street.

Now, let me explain something. Edinburgh was once known as the "Athens of the North" for its cultural, philosophical and artistic achievements. The place was a regular brain trust. The perception of the Scotsman as a kilt-wearing, whisky-soaked, belligerent hayseed is a monstrous injustice. In truth, the average Scotsman (at least in the 18th and 19th centuries) was a kilt-wearing, whisky-soaked, belligerent philosopher, artist, and writer.

There's a monument up at the top of Calton Hill (a large rise in the center of the city, just east of New Town) that you ought to hear about, in light of this fact.

Calton Hill is central to the Scottish nation as well as its psyche. The headquarters of the Scottish government, St. Andrew's House, is on its southern slope; Scottish Parliament and Holyrood Palace lie at its foot; the New Parliament House, the Political Martyrs' Monument and the National Observatory are scattered across its surface. It's an important hill, the kind the Russians would've aimed the nukes at.

But this one particular monument at the summit of Calton Hill is the one I want to talk to you about. It's known as the Scottish National Monument, and it was officially built to commemorate the Scottish lives lost in the Napoleonic Wars. Seeing as how Edinburgh was "the Athens of the North," however, designer Charles Robert Cockerell decided to model the monument after the Parthenon, in Greece. Construction started in 1826...

...and ended in 1829, when the money ran out.

So now, basically, what you've got standing on top of Calton Hill for all the wondering world to see is, well...half a Parthenon.

The monument is now popularly known as "Scotland's Shame."

Compared to what the Dubliners call the Spire (the "stiffie by the Liffey"), that ain't so bad.

Jeff and I made a quick stop at the Old Calton Cemetery before heading up the hill proper. Some rather famous people are buried there, like philosopher David Hume. This is his tomb.

Nearby is a monument to all the Scottish soldiers who fought in the American Civil War. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw a statue of Abraham Lincoln in a Scottish cemetery. This is, apparently, the only Civil War monument outside of the U.S., and (erected in 1893) the first statue of an American president in any foreign country. The six Scots honored (and interred either under the monument or nearby in the cemetery) are Sergeant Major John McEwan, Lieutenant Colonel William Duff, and Privates Robert Steedman, James Wilkie, Robert Ferguson, and Alexander Smith.

The cemetery is on the haunted tour of Edinburgh, which, as I mentioned earlier, Jeff had taken (while I lay sick in my bunk back at the hostel). Apparently there's a face on the back of one of the gravestones. I had to squint at it, but it was discernible. Whose face it is, I can' t be sure. If it's the person who's actually buried under the gravestone, that would be something. If it isn't, then somebody's looking over that dead guy's shoulder.

Photo credit: Jeff took this picture, not me.

Having assured ourselves that, yes, David Hume is actually buried in Calton Cemetery, we swung back out onto the road and climbed the rest of Calton Hill. I could tell you what we did and saw up there, but I think pictures will better suffice:

 

Those two likely-looking ladies were doing the same thing we were: looking around and climbing on the monuments. We gallantly offered to give them a hand (or a leg) up, but they declined for some reason. Jeff and I must look shiftier than we think.

There was some kind of marathon going on in Edinburgh that day. "The Seven Hills," they called it. Up and down, up and down these runners ran, through the seven largest hills in Edinburgh, finishing with Calton. The finish line was just behind us. We passed several very winded-looking people on our way back down.

And what did we do after we got down, you ask?

Well, I'll tell you. The incident's as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

...

Let me just reach over here to my side-table and consult my little red travel notebook—

Ah-ha!

We strolled across North Bridge (connecting New Town and Old Town by linking up Princes Street and High Street directly). And so we found ourselves back in Old Town, where we'd been wandering around yesterday, thinking we'd suddenly been transported back to medieval times.

 

Again, our singularity of purpose would've gobsmacked the most fundamental hermit. We were in search of one thing, and one thing only. This time, however, we penetrated Old Town not in search of historical artifacts, or medieval fortresses, or half-built monuments, but something completely different:

To hasten our demise with artery-clogging comestibles.

No shit. Seriously. We had food on our mind. Food, junk food, and plenty of it.

First on the list: pizza.

Now, Edinburgh being the cultural and artistic hub it is, a crossroads of international taste and intellect, there was a surprisingly large amount of artisanal pizza joints around town.

We found one just across North Bridge, a little place called Pizza Express. Highbrow sort of joint. You can enjoy a glass of wine with your Veneziana, Sloppy Giuseppe or Il Padrino. I had the latter: chicken, pepper, zucchini, and mushroom with mozzarella in pesto sauce. Dynamite. I had no clue that pizza was a gourmet food. I forgot I was in Europe. Anything can be gourmet in Europe, as long as you use expensive ingredients with long names and tack on a glass of vino.

Our worldly appetite slaked, we adjourned to the National Museum of Scotland, there to satisfy our intellectual and artistic one.

But that's another story.

Stick around and I'll tell you about the Declaration of Arbroath; the Monarch of the Glen; James Watt and his affinity for boiling water; the befuddling layout of the National Museum; and of course, more booze.

TO BE CONTINUED...

disappointment

Amazingly, I didn't realize that I was being a bad host until after I rousted Allison out of bed at 7:00 a.m. We were to head for Los Angeles that morning, December 15. I can tell I'm going to have a hard time writing this. Already my mind is wandering. The Gods Themselves is gleaming at me from my nightstand (curse you, Isaac Asimov), my flashcards from bartender's school are tantalizing me from one corner of the bedspread, and the wind is howling outside my window. Plus there's something embarrassing that happens in this story that I have to tell you about, and I don't wanna. But here goes anyway: Yes, I'm a bad host. The one thing I hadn't counted on when planning Alli's visit was how early we'd have to get up every morning to actually make it to the marvelous places we intended to see. Why'd we have to get up so early? I'm glad you asked. It gives me a chance to complain. I live only 60 miles or so from Los Angeles. That's it. That's maybe an hour's drive. Less, seeing as the speed limit's 70 miles per hour on the freeways. There's just one little thing that prevents me (and everybody else) from reaching Los Angeles in an hour. It begins with a "T." Traffic. That's it. Traffic is the thing. There are about 90,000 people living in the Apple Valley, Victorville and Hesperia areas alone. Odds are, any given day, that some of them are going to want to go "down the hill" (south on Interstate 15 through the Cajon Pass). And of course, once you get down the hill, you are in the L.A. Basin, which, as of last year, has nearly twenty million people in it. More than half of them are in Los Angeles alone. And all of them want to go somewhere. Usually right when I want to go somewhere. Dammit. So, in order to get anywhere in Los Angeles on time, you must tack an extra half-hour to an hour (or more) onto your travel time. We had no set time for our arrival at Universal Studios (thank God) but we hit the road about 8:00 nonetheless. Things weren't quite as bad as I'd feared, but still pretty clogged. It was the middle of the week after all. There were only 700,000 people on the roads instead of the usual 20 million. Long story short, we made it. Alli was a champ yet again. I had appointed her my navigator, and she never missed a turn. She also kept me abreast of the route at least two turns in advance, which I appreciated immensely. We pulled up to Universal Studios, parked (our lot was adorned with many blown-up images of Woody Woodpecker), and walked into the outdoor shopping center. Unsurprisingly, there weren't too many people about at 10:00 in the morning. The Hard Rock Café was the quietest I've ever seen it, even with the blaring guitar music. None of the shops caught our eye, festooned as they were with amazing paint jobs, life-size cutouts of King Kong, neon lights, and other assorted foofaraw. So (after a brief stop back at Roger for my camera), we adjourned to the park proper. Down the sidewalk, turn right at the big spinning steel globe and the mist machines, stand in line for 30 minutes while the Eastern European tourists try to haggle about ticket prices, and then go in through the blue gates. (That's how you get into Universal Studios.) The first thing that confronted us as we entered was a large bronze statue of a director, a script girl, and a cameraman, who were busy filming everybody who came in. The director was crouched down in a most ridiculous position, his index fingers making twin L's as he framed the shot. We started meandering through the ever-thickening crowd. If we'd thought that the shopping center outside had been glitzy, we got a real wake-up call inside. The place was off the hook. The most astounding collection of shops, boutiques and souvenir stores lined the crooked alleyways, leaning this way and that, and covered in the most outrageous assortment of protrusions and add-ons. The effect was intensified by the Christmas decorations which had been laid over the structures. Various movie cars were parked here and there, including the Bluesmobile from The Blues Brothers. You know I couldn't have resisted getting a picture in front of that. After satisfying our curiosity on the streets, we headed for the rides. The first one we took was, logically, the grand Universal Studios tour. That was a piece of wonderfulness. We drove through movie set after movie set, past movie car after movie car, through sensation after cinema-caliber sensation. I won't spoil it, of course, but I will say that we had a close encounter with Norman Bates, from Psycho; rode out a massive earthquake in a subway station; barely dodged a flash flood and some vicious dinosaurs; and even sneaked along Wisteria Lane while they were filming Desperate Housewives (quiet, please!). There weren't too many shows we were interested in. I did notice, however, that they were going to have a 30-minute "stunt show" at the Waterworld stage. I'll be the first to admit that Waterworld (that apocalyptic Kevin Costner movie) is a piece of crap. But it's a fun piece of crap, sort of. So we said, "What the hey!" We didn't regret it, either. There were explosions, and people falling dozens of feet into water, and fireballs, and shootouts, and hand-to-hand, and some of the most judicious use of zip-lines that I've ever seen. Those explosions and fireballs were the real kicker: loud, flashy, and so big that you could feel the wave of heat 50 feet away in the stands. There was even one point where they hurled a complete replica of a seaplane over the wall and into the water, where it skidded across the arena, in flames, and fetched up against the fence, practically in the faces of the people in the front row. That was...neat. The stuntmen (and stuntwomen) were really well-trained. Nobody missed a fall or failed to take a punch realistically enough. Jet-skis figured highly in this show, and some of the stuff they did with them was absolutely incredible. It was hard to believe they were doing it all live, right in front of you. I'm talking jumps, and dives underneath the water, and dodging explosions, and all that cool stuff. It was a good show. Better than the movie, I'll warrant. Better stunts packed into less time. Plus the leading lady was cuter. Eventually, we satisfied our curiosity with the upper lot, and descended to the lower lot via the Starway. This was an extremely long escalator, covered by a glass tile awning. The lower lot is where all the rides are. Including Jurassic Park. Oh heck yeah. We went straight for the dinosaurs. I was giddy with glee. Of all the theme rides in the park, including The Mummy, I was the most anxious to ride this one. I mean, come on! Dinosaurs, for Pete's sake! Dinosaurs! It was everything I'd hoped it'd be. I got into the car, and we started off down the jungle river. It was hard to believe I wasn't in the movie (or rather, the book...the literary version of Jurassic Park, which is a million times better than the movie, actually has a river segment that presages the Universal Studios version). The sun was shining through the trees and ferns and fronds overhead, forming golden beams that fell onto the swiftly flowing water below...the effect was cinematic as well as beautiful. I won't spoil the ride, but man, is it ever a gut-wrencher. Allison and I clambered out of the car thrilled, our shoulders soaking wet, our hearts thudding, unable to keep the grins from our faces. We had survived. We had to take pictures to commemorate the event. That was about it. Neither of us were much interested in the other rides, and we'd seen the rest of the park. So we wandered lazily out (stopping for a few minutes to get surveyed), and got back on the highway for the Walk of Fame. We had a nice stroll down Hollywood Boulevard together, even despite the grunge, and the whiskery black blues musician singing at us, and the kinky lingerie shops every hundred yards. We ate lunch at Combo's New York Pizzeria, where the slices were about this size... ...then got back into the car and began heading in the direction of the La Brea Tar Pits. Or, we attempted to. We soon discovered that I was going the wrong way. We need to pull a U-turn, head back down Hollywood to Vine Street, and hang a louie. But where to pull a U-turn? Hollywood Boulevard doesn't generally allow U-turns in turn lanes, and there aren't too many streets leading off, just narrow alleys. Unwisely, I picked one of these alleys to turn around in. This one had a couple of decently tall buildings on either side, one of which was a youth rehabilitation center with several cars parked outside. The other looked like some official building of some sort, with a few men dressed in business casual on the stoop. I pulled into some van parking, began to reverse, and— BAM. The Jeep jerked. There was a sickening sound, a sound I knew all too well: blunt metal meeting blunt metal, hard. I'd backed into somebody. I lost my head. I twisted around in a desultory attempt to see if I'd caused any damage to the other car, and, seeing none, pulled forward and out. As I was driving past the other building, one of the semi-formally-dressed men raised a hand and yelled "HEY! You hit that woman!" My head was still in the clouds. I was scarcely aware of what I was doing. "Bad?" was the only thing that came out of my mouth. "You'd better see," the man said, not aggressively, but not passively either. He pointed back at the other car. My head began to clear. It began to feel like the inside of a dry, dusty Egyptian tomb, in fact. So did my gut. I reversed, made sure I was as out of the way as possible, got out, and took a look at the other car (coincidentally, another white Jeep Cherokee). What I saw made my stomach plummet through the asphalt. There was a misshapen dent the size of a ham in the other Jeep, right where the driver's side door met the front panel. My mortification compounded a hundredfold. It was bad enough that I'd backed into somebody. It was worse that Allison had witnessed it (let alone been in the car when it happened). Worst of all, however, was the fact that I'd almost run for it. The self-recrimination began immediately. I was a cheating, sneaking coward. And now Allison knew it. I wished that all of hell's fire and heaven's fury would come whirling out of the ether and smite me dead. Outwardly, I remained calm. Not even I know how. I waited while the neatly-dressed man sent one of his friends inside the rehabilitation center to fetch the owner of the other Jeep. (He knew her personally, and knew this was her car.) While we waited, the man told me, "I'm just trying to help you, man. We've got cameras all around here." He made a circular motion with his index finger. I looked up. There were indeed traffic cameras pocking the alleyway. It was a fortunate thing the man had stopped me, I realized later. If he hadn't, and I'd driven away, I would've been a whole heap of trouble. Presently, the woman came outside. She was short, middle-aged and blond. She was not angry, but she did express regret that I'd punched in her new panel. (She said that she'd just gotten it redone.) I did not admit fault, as I'd been instructed to avoid doing, but instead made my apologies and willingly supplied the woman with insurance information. I dutifully copied hers down also. Her insurance card was expired, and she got a bit miffed when I asked for further proof of financial responsibility ("You hit me"). But in the end, we completed the transaction. She went back inside, and I folded up my insurance cards and got back into my own (completely undamaged) car. I pulled back onto Hollywood Boulevard wanting nothing more than to melt permanently away into sludge. I couldn't even bear to look at Allison. Throughout the whole thing, she'd sat calmly in the passenger seat of my Jeep, passing me paper and pens like a helpful angel, even cracking a few jokes about the whole thing. She was marvelous. But I still felt awful. I felt bad that I'd subjected her to being involved in such a hassle, and worse that she'd witnessed my attempted escape. And then, as I was thinking these things, Allison placed a hand on my shoulder and said, bracingly, "How ya doin'?" I told you she was wonderful, didn't I? The accident had taken up some of our time, enough that the La Brea Tar Pits were too close to closing to visit. More's the pity. We went to LACMA instead. You know, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After a few missed approaches and go-arounds, we made inside the parking lot, and took the elevator up to street level. The ticket seller told us that, if we waited 15 more minutes (until 5:00) we could "pay whatever we wanted" for admission—that is, make a donation. To kill the time, we toured the museum's current outdoor exhibit, "Urban Light": It's just what it looks like: a bunch of iron streetlamps stuck close together and set alight. Doesn't seem to qualify as "art" to me, but it was beautiful, and I guess that's enough. The ironic thing is that Allison and I had had a rather spirited debate on what should and should not qualify as "art" that morning as we ate breakfast at IHOP. As soon as we came in sight of this particular exhibit, Allison turned to me and said "There, does that qualify as art?" And I said, "Maybe if they turned 'em on." And then, mere seconds after turning away from the ticket booth, the lights came on. I turned to Allison and said, "That's better." There remains little to tell. We toured the museum, discovering some of Picasso's little-known sculpture, and admiring Luis Meléndez's vivid and massive collection of still-life paintings. Finally, we piled back into the car, fought our way out of Los Angeles on I-5, drove to San Diego, spent a few fruitless minutes searching for our hotel (which didn't seem to exist anymore), gave up, found a Howard Johnson, got a couple of rooms, and went to sleep. I lay on my bed in my pajamas, watching Robin Williams opine profanely about politicians, mulling over the disappointments of the day. Both Allison and I were disappointed that there had been so little to do at Universal Studios. I was disappointed that we hadn't seen the La Brea Tar Pits. As for my disappointment in myself for what I'd done that day...well, that was nowhere near subsiding. Allison, too, was likely disappointed in my driving skills...to say nothing of my irresponsible cowardice. I could only hope to to give her less cause the next day.

the last weekend in Korea

So, I got back from my long gallop around K-Land, which I've explained elsewhere in this blog. I arrived at Adam and Elaine's apartment at noon on Thursday, after an uneventful and not entirely unpleasant two-and-a-half hour bus ride from Gwangju. The weather was hot, cloudy and muggy (same all over Korea) but at least it wasn't as bad as Jeollanam or Jeju, not by a long shot. At 1:30, we all walked down to Reading Town together. I got to say hi (and bye) to some of the kids again; I also wanted to speak with Jacob about a few pertinent matters. First, I got a definite "yes" concerning his giving me a ride to Gimhae Airport come Monday. (Splendid, that'll make things a lot easier.) We also made an appointment for going to get my police background check (Friday, 11:00) and that was basically it. I hung around the hagwon for a little while longer (long enough to see a few more of my former students), and then I headed down to Homeplus. I was on the hunt for burger ingredients. The one and only condition to my bumming a couple nights' sleep at A&E's was that I make hamburgers for them one more time. So I dutifully went down to Homeplus and scored four packs of ground beef, some ketchup, some fries, and some buns. They weren't burger buns (the Gohyeon Homeplus recently renovated their bakery and it looks like genuine burger buns got phased out), but they passed. I went back home, and when everybody got off work, Kevin and Jeff came over and we whipped up some burgers. Jeff wasn't feeling too well, poor chap. His coworkers Caitlin and Arie went home to New Zealand, and until their replacements clear immigration (there's been some reworked requirements that are slowing them down), Jeff has to do the work of three at UniWorld. It's a frickin' crock. I didn't think the burgers were my best work, but everybody seemed to like them regardless. It was eminently satisfying to sink one's teeth into a big hunk of meat in a country devoid of such. We watched a bit of Deadliest Catch, and then I spent my first of several comfortable nights on A&E's couch. Friday dawned. I was up at eight or so. I took the time to go down to Top Mart and replace some of the water, food and trash bags I'd used. I returned just as Adam was waking up (Elaine had awoken shortly after I'd left). We chilled in the apartment for a bit, until Jacob faithfully came to pick me up. First we headed to Okpo, a twenty-minute drive east across the rice paddies and through the hills and mountains, to the central police station on Geoje. It was a piece of cake. I handed my Alien Immigration Card and my passport over to the lean, lithe, deep-voiced police chief (but for the fact that he was Korean and lacked a cowboy hat, he could've passed for any sheriff or police chief in Texas). He checked them both; Jacob filled in a few forms; then I received the official document. It was all in Korean, of course; but I could at least read the part that said NO CRIMES (with Jacob's help. I only hope the language barrier won't be a problem should I ever need to present this document to a prospective employer. Following that Jacob offered to take me out to lunch. We tried a few restaurants in Okpo, but they were surprisingly closed, even at noon. I guess they wait until all the foreigners get off work or something, or maybe on Fridays they just can't be bothered. We returned to Gohyeon, stopped at the post office so I could mail all the marvelous (and bulky) gifts and my remaining miscellany back home, and then went straight to the restaurant I thought I'd never get to try but now got a second chance to! Charles had recommended it to me: Miru Jajangmyeon (or something), a noodle place specializing in jajangmyeon. This is simply a big bowl of thick noodles, based on the Chinese dish zhajiang mian (or something). This particular restaurant specialized in hand-pulling the noodle dough, instead of using machines like your modern-day noodle places. We didn't have their signature dish, however. We got bokkeumbap, a splendid mix of fried rice, fried egg and dark savory sauce. There was also tangsuyuk (I've mentioned that elsewhere; it's the Korean take on Chinese sweet-and-sour chicken), and a delicious spicy seafood soup. I was ever so thankful to Jacob for taking me out to eat again, even after that marvelous restaurant with the ocean view he'd taken us to (with the great makgeolli). I guess the guy's really going to miss me (as we drove to the restaurant, Jacob looked at me and said slowly, "I will always treasure your memory," which touched me quite deeply). We returned to Jacob's apartment to pick up Lily and Albert. Lily fixed me a cold glass of mango juice while I looked around the smallish but stylishly appointed domicile. Albert had two rooms: a study room filled with books and a computer, and his bedroom. That's Korea for you. After dispensing all the housing-related compliments I knew, I returned with the family to Reading Town in Jacob's car. The rest of the day was a mix of impatience, excitement, lethargy, and emotion. I was impatient to close my bank account, withdraw my money and exchange it for dollars. I did this during the first class period, going down to the Nong Hyup main branch office and waiting around during the busy midafternoon rush. I finally secured a seat at the foreign exchange desk and after some confusing half-Korean, half-English palaver, managed to communicate my desire to the teller. My money was exchanged and $3,147 were counted out to me. Tragically, the wait was so long that I missed saying goodbye to the first-period kids; they boarded the bus without me as I hurried up the street a few blocks down. Oh well, at least I saw them before class... I was excited to be holding three grand in my hand (I've never even held so much as a hundred-dollar bill before). I was also excited to be leaving. With the conversion of my money, every single pre-departure errand had been completed. My race was run; the preparations were done; there remained only to throw my packed bags into Jacob's car on Monday and depart. I was a free agent, with no more worries. There remained only to say goodbye. I spent the rest of the day hanging around Reading Town, sitting in the lobby waiting for kids to get out of class, then frantically waving and shouting farewells and well-wishes to hordes of retreating grade-schoolers when the bell rang. The long, slow waits during class time were the most difficult; the next class period's kids would come in, and sit with me on the couch in the Reading Town lobby, holding my hands, pinching my cheeks, or playing rock-paper-scissors with me. Emily, one of the Flukes, came and sat next to me, smiling, her feet not touching the ground, her little hands in her lap. Eileen and Amy, in AS2, ran up to me and echoed their last week's chorus of "Teacher! Gaji maseyo!" ("You can't go!") Eventually, the long day of farewells, cries, entreaties and promises came to an end. I said my goodbyes to the Reading Town staff (Rachel, Erica, Kelly, Swani, and Julia; Charles and Jacob I'd be seeing later) and departed with Adam and Elaine. ...and immediately caught a cab down to the bars with them. We went first to WaBar, and had a brew (the godawful WaBar house brew, which is the worst beer I've ever tasted, hands down). Then we went to Geogi, a marvelous little fourth-floor soju-and-hof place. There were lots of us: Adam, Elaine, Jeff, Jay the South African Scuba Diver, Andrea Suzanna Katz, Charles, Anne, and myself. Later Tonya (the New South African) and a some Scottish fellow whom I could barely understand showed up. It was a good time, lots of beers and lots of snacks (and even shots of soju with slices of watermelon in them, yuck). We yarned a bit at Geogi, then caught a cab to Jangpyeong (Andrea's neck of the words, a suburb of Gohyeon on the northwest side of town by the shipyards) to one of Tonya's preferred haunts, Crazy Bar. It was a nice place, with tasteful, dark, moody, blue lighting. The beers were good, and so was the rock candy. They let us choose our own tunes on YouTube, what's more. Adam went straight for Oasis and Kanye. We chatted a bit more, and then I walked a slightly worse-for-wear Andrea back home. By the time I got back to the bar (Andrea's house was a couple miles away, and Crazy Bar wasn't that easy to find), Adam and Elaine had departed. Charles and Anne left soon after, as well as the Scottish fellow. Jay hadn't accompanied us from Geogi, so that left Tonya, Jeff, and myself to make a night of it. That we did. We took turns as DJ, and danced and drank until 6:00 a.m., when the two barmaids' patience finally deserted them and they politely kicked us out. I staggered back to A&E's, managed somehow to be stealthy enough to get to their couch without waking them up, and slept until noon. So, the rest of that day (heh heh) was good. After an absolutely dynamite breakfast cooked up by Adam (buttered toast and fried eggs covered in baked beans, with a dollop of ketchup), I thought I'd take a stroll over to Jeff's and see if he was up and willing to come to Homeplus. We were all going to go later on that night, but I thought the two of us could do a preliminary scouting trip anyhow. As of the previous day, I was in the market for a new CD player...my previous one had unexpectedly petered out after sitting in my carry-on bag for ten days. Jeff wasn't up to it, though. Turns out I'd woken him up, the poor chap, him feeling stressed and tired and hung over and all. So I let him be and went on my way alone. Whilst I was walking merrily down the street, whom should show up but Charles and Anne in their little green Matiz! Turns out they were on their way to Adam and Elaine's to look for me: Charles and I had an appointment with some dwaejigukbap. (It's a kind of soup, filled with green onions and delicious pork belly shavings, served with a side of rice. I'd never tried it and Charles had been promising to take me out for some.) Without further ado I hopped into their car and we went to Homeplus (Charles and Anne needed some coat hangers). I managed to locate the CD players in the Homeplus electronics sector. Unsurprisingly, they only had one model, and that was just for listening to English language CDs. I dithered for a bit, but decided to make up my mind later that night. (For nearly ₩60,000 I reckoned I could forgo listening to CDs on the eleven-hour flight home just so I could have a little more choice at Best Buy back Stateside.) Then we went for soup. Charles knew this wonderful little one-room establishment not far from his apartment, so we parked and walked there. It was truly delicious, spicy and satisfying. As grateful as I was to get it (Charles was treating) and ashamed as I am to admit it, I didn't finish. Adam's hunger-defying breakfast was still rolling around in my stomach, and this particular establishment served great heaping bowls of dwaejigukbap. I was forced to leave a little, and the thought still haunts me. Following this we adjourned back to Charles's apartment. He was originally going to show me how to play janggi, a kind of Asian chess game, but I'd already sent my board and pieces (presented as a gift from Jacob) home in a package. So instead, Charles got me a pack of Go-Stop cards at Family Mart and we played that instead. Go-Stop is a game played with Japanese cards (with elaborate paintings on them instead of numbers or faces), and resembles rummy in that you draw a card, try to pair it with what's already on the table, and keep the pairs (or triples, or quadruples). The amount of similar cards you acquire translates to point values; however, the game is not so simple as that. You can also "steal" cards from other people, win the game quickly by acquiring certain specially marked cards, and so forth. (If you win quickly by that method, you can choose to keep the game going and acquire more points for yourself, or quit while you're ahead..."go" or "stop.") You need exactly three points to win: not seven, not two, not three. Three shall be the number thou shalt score, and the number of the scoring shall be three. Four shalt thou not score, neither score thou two, unless thou shalt then proceed to three. Five is right out. Anyway, it was a blast. It's great to be in a foreign country (on the other side of the world, no less, in the Orient) and learning a game that is in no way similar to any other card game I've played, ever. I think that's what attracted me to learning Korean, too. I got the rules down pretty quickly after we started playing, though Charles had to help me the first couple of rounds. I didn't win (by myself), but I minimized my losses neatly. This game is extremely popular in Korea, played by families at holidays and friends the whole year 'round (usually for money). Then Charles turned on GomTV (a free online TV network) and we watched Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon. Man, it was a good film, but it was kind of a mood-killer, especially compounded with the cloudy weather outside. It's the most depressing, downcast and violent film I've seen in a while, but I enjoyed it (and Charles and Anne's company) nonetheless. I knew this was our swan song, at least as far as this particular Korean sojourn was concerned. After the movie finished, sure enough, Charles and Anne gave me a lift back to Adam and Elaine's (some four hours or so after I'd left...I told 'em I was going for a walk), we shook hands, exchanged manly hugs, and said goodbye. Then Charles and Anne drove away, and I shall not see them again for years. But I shall see them again. Not five minutes after I let myself into A&E's (they'd given me the key), A, E and J came back from Homeplus. They'd stepped out while I was gone (I found a manila folder with a note scribbled on it on the ottoman). We unloaded the groceries, then set out our next plan of action: movies. We'd plotted to catch Public Enemies, the new Johnny Depp movie about John Dillinger, for some time now. Accordingly we caught a cab down to the Homeplus cinema a little bit after dark. I was pumped, as I'd never been to this theater before. Unfortunately, all I saw of it was the lobby: Public Enemies wasn't playing there. Figuring that since it was a smaller cinema that perhaps it didn't have room, we moved over to Lotte Cinema, but they didn't have it either. It premiered in South Korea on July 9; this was July 11. It should've been there by now. Oh well. We fell back on our Plan C (though we had a Plan D in mind if necessary, which I won't divulge): screen golf. We caught a cab back to the public library, near Jeff's apartment. There's a lovely little screen-golf place there with about seven rooms that we've frequented in the past. Things didn't go quite as planned, but they were interesting nonetheless. We walked in and found there were no rooms available until about ten, in an hour's time or so. We figured we'd head to Family Mart (a block or so down the street), grab some beer and munchies and wait it out. Easier said than done. It was pouring rain. It was only sprinkling while we were transitioning from theater to theater, but now the cloudburst began in earnest. By the time we reached Family Mart, we were pretty wet. We dried off a little during the hour we spent under the awning out in front. I was eating triangle gimbap, still trying to make myself sick of it; Jeff and Elaine were sitting down, Elaine smoking and eating candy, both animatedly talking; Adam bought some beer and then had to run back to his apartment for a bathroom break. He returned with his pea coat and an umbrella (and toweled hair) for our trip back to the golf place. While we were all standing outside and talking, a little man with a swollen chest and back (some form of Dowager's hump, it appeared, though he was of no great age) walked up. He talked animatedly and amiably to us, gesturing to the beer bottles, and shaking our hands and touching our shoulders, but we couldn't understand a single word out of his mouth, not even me with my few months' Korean practice. For the next few minutes he wandered in and out of the store, alternately trying to talk to us and engaging the two bemused teenage clerks. Soon he caught a cab and wandered off, without ever having made it clear what he wanted. Such things happen in foreign countries. We returned to the screen golf place in due time, in due wetness. There was only a coat and an umbrella between us. Adam and Elaine took the umbrella, and I let Jeff have the coat; I volunteered to run. My hair was already wet through anyway. So I sprinted the quarter mile or so to the golf place in the downpour, managing to get there fairly dry (no matter what Mythbusters says). After a bit the others caught up. Then followed the embarrassing bit: they had us wait in the lobby to dry off a little while they covered the couch in our room with garbage bags so we wouldn't wet it. Hmph. That was the end of our indignation, however. For the rest of the evening the staff was polite and indulgent, even letting us stay until one in the morning until we somehow managed to finish nine holes, all of us about 31 over par. Adam and I got within putting distance a couple of times, but each time the hole eluded us by a hair (much to our comic frustration). It was a grand night: we chatted, drank soju, ate the complimentary hard-boiled eggs and crackers, and basically sucked at golf. Awesome. Jeff split, A&E and I went back to their place and drank a little more, then hit the sack at four. Elaine stayed up until dawn watching Dirty Sexy Money. Sunday was, as always, the day of rest. We woke up about one o'clock in the afternoon and lazed about a bit until Jeff arrived at a quarter of four (a few hours after our appointed meeting time of one, but Jeff works on his own schedule, bless his nonconformist heart). For breakfast, I'd gone down to Top Mart and procured some doughnuts and sausages, which satiated us pretty well. While I was in Top Mart, Brian came up to me. I'd almost forgotten that he'd asked me to come by. He wanted to give me some gifts, he said. I made the usual polite attempt at passing it off (You know, "Oh, you didn't have to," or "That's so very kind of you"). He presented me with some curious and wonderful articles. They were two pairs of toe socks (which he'd heard didn't exist in the States; he wanted to give me something I couldn't get anywhere else), and a bamboo wife. A bamboo wife is a cylindrical framework, hollow, made of bamboo, and is am implement used to keep you cool while sleeping in hot countries. You embrace it as you would a sleeping companion (spoon with it, so to speak) and the breeze flows through the framework and keeps your body cool. Awesome, I'll be needing that in the desert. Though I never turn my nose up at gifts, I was less than thrilled with the toe socks. (You may be certain that I concealed this, however.) I've always considered them, well, a little goofy, and not my kind of goofy. But heck, the Buddhist monks here wear them, so you won't hear me turning my nose up at them. I accepted them with good grace. Brian gave me his e-mail address, wished me a warm farewell, and made me promise to keep in touch. Another farewell gone. I love that guy. We went at five to grab pizza. J's Pizza was a tiny one-room shop a few blocks down and one block over from A&Es. An extra-large pepperoni, combination, or Italian (cheese) pizza was only ten thousand won, a real steal. So we ordered four (three pepperoni, one Italian) and waited at the plastic dining table while the adorable middle-aged lady whipped it up for us. The room was...interesting. It was filled to the brim with pizza boxes, but crammed in there beside them were a cot, a desk, a computer, a TV, and a water cooler. We chatted a bit while the ceiling fan blew hot, humid, still air all over us (it was hot in that shop). We got our pizzas, went back, and ate them as we watched a few episodes of Deadliest Catch. Adam is a whiz with downloading stuff, ain't he? After catching the end of Total Recall on the TV (same channel we'd watched Speed on before we got the pizzas), Adam, Jeff and I briefly stepped out to a PC room. I'd promised myself I'd try one for real before I left Korea. Unfortunately, it was a bust. The first one we went to had an unhelpful clerk, who clicked around a little bit on our computers without telling us anything and then told us we were screwed (and then charging us 1300 apiece for maybe ten minutes of staring at his machines). The next one was friendlier, but no more able to give us a good time: turned out we needed to have a membership and a login to play online, even after getting on the computers. That we didn't have, so we had to abdicate. Bummer. Back at the apartment, we perused an interesting little documentary called Beer Wars, made by Anat Bacon, former president of Mike's Hard Lemonade. It was all about how the big, bad, evil triumvirate of watery, disgusting beers (Annheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors) are forcing this crap on us while squeezing smaller, more artistic and grassroots beer brewers out of the market. There was some truth in it, but it was quite clearly propaganda, and I viewed it with a grain of salt. It made me thirsty, too. Right when that little 90-minute show ended, the final act came on TV: Live Free or Die Hard, subtitled in Korean. I hadn't seen this fourth installment in the Die Hard series (I'd heard some bad things about it, and Die Hard was never that high on my list of favorite movies anyway, despite how good the franchise and the action is), but I loved it. The action was really ramped up for this fourth installment, and Willis was pretty good at portraying the older, sadder, wearier version of John McClane. The villains weren't quite as detestable but the daughter figure was smokin', so I wasn't complaining. As the film ended (with CCR playing "Fortunate Son"), we called it. I had to be up at 5:30 the next morning. Jeff left after a somewhat awkward goodbye. Neither of us are good at those at all, by our own admission. We passed it off with a laugh and parted. Umpteen down, three to go... After a surprisingly restful night's sleep, despite the brevity and the howling wind (the wind had been fierce all day), I woke up, zipped up my bags, and hauled them the stairwell with A&E's help. Then we sat and watched the thunderstorm. It was banging and thundering and pouring like mad, a real fierce summer T-storm. Figures. The very day I'm leaving it's assured that I'll (a) be soaked in loading my bags in the car, and (b) probably have my flight canceled. Neither distasteful contingency materialized. When Jacob rolled up, he and Adam and Elaine made a sort of umbrella relay between the door of the apartment building and the trunk of the car. I only got a few drops on my hat and shoulders. And then...suddenly it was time to say goodbye. Goodbye, to the friends who'd given me shelter for nearly a week in total, who'd invited me over for dinner countless times, friends I'd bummed around with for ten months, who'd sheltered me, helped me, lent me money, and given me some of the most helpful advice and the most heartfelt compliments of any friends I'd ever known (Jeff had done the same). The split was not messy, but it was not painless, either. We shook hands, exchanged hugs, promised to meet again before the wedding, and then just like that I was in the car and rolling down the street. But I will see them again, too. Darn it. After a rather sublime ride through the dawn and the storm (with a beautiful break in the clouds to the northeast letting in some refracted sunlight), we reached the ferry station at Guyeong, on the north of the island. Jacob was a bit worried: he feared the storm might bring about a ferry cancellation. Fortunately this was not true, either. (Hey, looks like my travel karma's getting its act together.) We boarded the 7:00 for Jinhae and had a relatively smooth and very scenic passage. Jacob didn't talk much, but he did point out several of the sights: the island in between Geoje and the mainland that was one of President I Myeong-Bak's official resorts, and the half-finished bridge between Geoje and Busan. It's actually a brunnel. The southern half is a standard bridge, massive, supported by concrete pylons; the northern half is a tunnel that goes under the water. Jacob explained to me the reasons for this. "There is a luff crunt," he said. I begged his pardon. "A luff crunt," he repeated. I realized this was just good ol' Jacob having trouble with some tricky English phrase, as he occasionally does. I didn't bother him any more and set my mind to the task of deciphering it. Fortunately it wasn't too hard. Luff crunt. Rough current. Jacob also explained that, since the northern regions of Geoje-do housed massive shipyards, whose fruits needed to pass out of the Geoje Straits and into the open Pacific Ocean, it would be impractical to dam their passage with a bridge. So the half-tunnel idea was hit upon and implemented. The bridge is slated for completion in 2010 or so, and it will probably destroy Geoje-do as I know it, with the amount of weekend tourists likely doubling, tripling or quadrupling. Saeongjima. We arrived at Jinhae, offloaded easy as pie, and drove to the airport. Jacob escorted me inside, showed me to the Japanese Airlines ticket counter (which really wasn't, as I'll explain, but I don't blame him for that), and then... ...well, dang it, it was time to say goodbye again. We shook hands. I promised to look him up again if ever I was in Korea, as he adamantly asked me to. He reiterated just how much he'd treasure my memory (gosh) and then with a wave, a smile, and a couple of looks over his shoulder, he left. And that does it for farewells. I haven't cracked up yet, and so far it looks like I'm not going to (I'm too excited to be off into the wild blue yonder again), but I won't forget these people. And neither will you, if I have anything to do with it. The JAL counter wasn't open for another half hour, so after I got some snacks at a small deli curiously named Sand & Food (which served expensive, soggy, only-slightly-less-than-godawful soggy sandwiches), I went back and discovered that no, it wasn't the JAL counter. The real counter, across the way, wasn't open until twelve. Great. I spent those three hours in the free Internet room (doing this) or reading The Three Musketeers. I imagine I'll finish it during the flight. Seeing as how I'm into the sixth chapter already, that could be saying something and then again it could not. When the time came, I got in line. I chatted a bit with a middle-aged American lady at the head of the line, suddenly remembered to get my bamboo wife wrapped, slid off, got it wrapped for ten grand, slid back in line, got my bags checked, had to go back over to the same counter I'd started at and pay 110,000 won for excess baggage (three pieces instead of two), passed security and immigration like a breeze, then went up to the other free Internet room in the terminal proper and finished writing this. (Whew!) Next entry coming to you from Apple Valley, California...

Day Six: Jeju

Trust Lonely Planet, not the blogsphere. That was the lesson I learned today (one of them, anyway).

According to the blog I read about Jirisan National Park in Gyeongsangnam-do, the trail Jeff and I would be hiking could be completed in six hours. Ha-ha. Yeah, maybe if you were Jesse Ventura and had quads the size of beer kegs. We didn't exactly dawdle and we still didn't make it up the mountain before sunset, even factoring in delays.

However, my hike on Hallasan today was everything the Jirisan hike should've been. Less, in fact. My Lonely Planet guide said that the trails I'd be hiking (Eorimok, 4.5 hours, and Yeongsil, 1.5 hours) would take no more than six hours, tops (as you no doubt deduced just now). I did it in four, and that's including all the breaks I took, and about ten minutes of backtracking when I tried to find an informational placard and get the name of an oreum off of it.

What's an oreum, you ask?

Well, that's the Korean word for "parasitic lava cone." Short and sweet, ain't it?

There are dozens of them scattered all over Jeju, bigger'n Dallas. They have the look of stumpy volcanoes: they're basically overgrown hills with craters. They were created in the fiery genesis of the island itself, when subterranean lava tubes burst their boundaries and thrust upward out of the newborn ground, warping it like it was butter, or something. I didn't have time to hike all the way up to the main crater of Hallasan Mountain (Baengnokdam, elevation 1950 meters, highest peak in South Korea). So instead, I opted to do the shorter, easier hike up to Witseoreum, an oreum not far from Baengnokdam.

It was easy as pie to get to the trailhead, albeit roundabout. I took a bus to Jeju (as of yesterday I'd learned not to muck about in Jungmun) for 3,000 won; then got the bus to Eorimok Trail for another three grand. After a brisk walk uphill from the bus stop...

...I was at the trailhead.


Without further ado I plunged into the verdant undergrowth.


The first stage of the hike was rough. Reminiscent of Jiri, it was all uphill...nothing but rocky stairs. I was going directly up the mountainside. I don't understand why Koreans have this masochistic compulsion about staircases in the woods. It's freakin' annoying. I came to hike, not to climb stairs. If I wanted to burst my heart and rubberize my legs I'd just run a marathon or something. That's not to mention the sweat. I've never been that soaked. It was another muggy summer's day in Jeju, and under the trees there wasn't a whiff of a breeze. I was literally sopping. Sweat started running off my forehead and dripping off the brim of my hat as I climbed the undoubtedly scenic but seemingly endless staircase through the quiet, leafy, green deciduous forest. I counted myself lucky that the bus had thankfully dumped me off at 1,000 meters above sea level and that I only had another 700 to go (Witseoreum sits at 1714 meters).

After about 400 vertical meters and two horizontal kilometers, things finally improved. I got to the top, or at least the ridgeline. My mood, which had been battered to almost Jirisan-esque depths by the staircase, skyrocketed suddenly. I found myself on an easily-negotiable wooden boardwalk, in a humpy field of shrubs and green azalea bushes and stumpy Korean firs, flicked at by wisps of passing cloud.


Yep, we were right at cloud level, and the whole field was shrouded in fog. It was ethereal. I could see the fibrous underbellies of the clouds passing between me and the shrubbery all around. The air was marvelously cool and moist. It was like emerging from a heated battle into heaven itself. I wandered about in awe.

Then I reached the first spring, and my mood improved further. Ice-cold mountain spring water, imbibed from a metal dipper (and poured liberally over my sweaty head and handkerchief), did wonders for my mood. Immensely refreshed, I set back out upon the trail with renewed vigor.


As I trekked further, the sun broke through the clouds, and my sense of being in a heavenly wonderland only increased. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I was walking, jumping from rock to rock, over rolling green pastures of plants and bushes and those small stumpy firs, hearing roe deer bark at each other in the distance, the towering white pillars of cumulus clouds looming overhead and reaching for the blue sky. It was worth the climb already.


The trail wound between peaks. As with all Korean trails I've been on, it wasn't so much a bare patch of ground as a more orderly tumble of rocks.


At times the fog lay thick everywhere; seconds later it would dissipate and reveal the meadow or valley I was climbing through; and then in an instant all would be misty again.


Eventually, I finished the ascent (little to my knowledge) and began working my way along the relatively level. The sun really began to shine and the scenery was...well, killer.


Several smaller volcanic formations dotted the landscape on the way. This was a long-extinct crater of some sort, I believe. I don't remember the name.


I never actually saw any roe deer, but I could hear them barking at each other, just out of sight along the moors and in gullies, and on faraway hillsides.

And gradually, the huge hump of Hallasan's summit came into view, so close and yet so far. My path would take me near it, but not up it. I would have to settle for a spectator's view. After wandering for a couple of kilometers through the Elysian paradise, I reached Witseoreum.



After taking a lunch break with some hot noodles and a chocolate pie (purchased from the shelter there), I headed out again...only this time down the shorter Yeongsil Trail, which led down the other side of the mountain. I paused for one final look back at the summit, then plunged down the trail. It was sublime.


Imagine wandering through a fir forest...


...or past sheer cliffs, over cloud-riddled ridges, hearing ethereal birdsong piping in the distance, and the wind creeping through the foliage all around.


It's impossible to describe.


You have to try it; you'll never go back to documentaries about the Scottish moors, that's for dang sure.

Lickety-split, it seemed, I was off the trail and in the Yeongsil parking lot. It was another 2.5 kilometers down to the bus stop, but what the hey; it was a nice day, so I walked it, humming and mentally composing this blog entry in my head.


I had to wait about half an hour for the bus (and wait among a whole crowd of noisy, smoking Korean university students)...and furthermore it was the bus to Jeju City. Ah. I didn't care. Another hour and a half on the bus gave me more time to unwind and reflect on the soul-airing experience I'd had. I got back to my room, took a nice bath, and got a pizza and some cheese sticks at I Want Pizza, a nice little pizza chain I've seen nowhere outside Jeju. I ate my dinner on the bank steps, had a beer at New York Bar (not much going on in there), then went back to my room and watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer with Korean subtitles. I don't care what anybody says, I think it was better than the original. You get to see the Four in action, and Doctor Doom, too.

Tomorrow's itinerary is simple: loaf around the whole day. I've earned it.