Monday, June 21, 2010

Monday, June 21st

After getting up and ready, Kelly and I headed to Mountain Cheongyang following the route we had traveled the day before with Aaron. We managed to find one trail that began our hiking journey that we will never forget!! The trail consisted of steps, steps, and more steps.. many Koreans traveled this trail and even exercised on various pieces of exercise equipment along the way! We visited with some friendly Koreans (Kelly always has his phrase book ready to go!) We made it to the top of one of the ridges and a very friendly couple took our picture there. (They were Korean Mormons who attended College in Utah!) They encouraged us to hike to another peak which they said 10 minutes away by pointing... hummm... maybe 20 for us.. with a lot of rock climbing involved in between!.. but we did reach the top and sat to cool off in the pavillion provided.

Now it was time to climb down.. but the many trails were confusing and we ended up at the bottom of the hill in a far far far away place from where we entered.. we in our broken Korean asked in a real estate office where the BYC was located and she replied that it was "far away"! She told us the bus number to take, but we decided it would be safer to hail a taxi.

So we stopped a (twenties-something) Korean man who with Aaron's Korean directions/address, was able to walk us to a location about a block away, hail a cab, and explain in Korean to the driver where we wanted to go! So thank you Aaron for your Korean address, "The BYC" that everyone knows about... and he drove us right there!! So we were quite quite a distance away.. and the 3.5000 won was well worth the price!!

After a much needed lunch at McD. we rested at the apartment, then "walked" to Aaron's school!

We met Jeong Mi and her father, who graciously offered to drive us to The Yellow Sea, explore The Boardwalk, take a 1.5 hour cruise on a ship, walk and eat in Chinatown, and experience Jayu (Freedom) Park, where General Douglas MacArthur's monument was erected to commemorate the September 15th, 1950 landing, which turned the "course of the war to the triumph of freedom and the salvation of this republic". What a wonderful monument... and to think that Kelly and I were there in Korea with Aaron... and with Aaron's girlfriend, Jeong Mi and her father...

It was an afternoon and evening we will never forget.. Check out our pics of the day:



3 comments:

  1. What a wonderful adventure. I can totally relate to your whole day. We have had very similar experiences. Aren't you glad you did all that walking around Franklin in preparation? Give Aaron a hug for me.
    Kathy

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  2. First off, the video of Aunt Edie hula-hooping needs to go viral. Just because.

    Second, very curious to know about the video game Uncle Kelly is playing in the arcade.

    I looks like you guys are having a great time. The mountain hike is impressive, and the pictures from the top just beautiful, especially the pagoda.

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  3. Why dont you take a different path
    rather than the horizontal ..??
    God bless your indelible soul.

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