Wednesday, December 23, 2009

You know you want it...

Pictures! Salsa Boy came and visited me last week and like a good little film obsessed person, he took lots of pictures. Obviously, all pictures should be credited to him.
My street runs into that road you can see down below. That road runs up against the base of the mountains (Ohsan...literally, 5 mountains). We decided to walk along until we hit a trail head, and sure enough we found one.I believe this tradition has Buddhist origins though I'm not positive. Basically, you make a wish by building a small stone pile or adding a stone to an existing pile. These piles were the largest I'd ever seen. I added my own little wish. I'm not Buddhist but on the off chance that I ever get a wish granted it seemed worthwhile. Also, they are just beautiful. It's hard to not want to contribute to the elegance of ever growing piles of wishes.You have to realize how very strange my hiking attire is to a Korean. You will never see a Korean hiker in anything less than head to toe outdoor adventure gear. They look like professional mountaineers rather than people enjoying a casual afternoon hike. I've said this many times before but it bares saying again: everything in Korea has a uniform. My ripped jeans and sweatshirt are acceptable to get a cup of coffee in...maybe.Maybe a quarter of the way up we ran into this graveyard. Very different from graveyards in the states and yet perhaps not as different as I expected. It had the same air of solemn quietness that seems to pervade burial places everywhere.The sun is setting over the mountains. It's hard to believe that I live somewhere so beautiful. It seems luxurious, like royalty, to have something so lovely to look at everyday.Afterward, we were craving Japanese food. I found a Japanese place in Yangsan but it wasn't a choose your own roll sort of place. There were 3 set options which came with a ridiculous amount of fish. We had no idea what pretty much anything was. The dish I'm trying to pick up above was some sort of weird sea slug which by the way, tastes as disgusting as you might imagine. At least it wasn't still moving. Observe my face upon being forced to taste them:Most of the other courses were quite tasty. Look at this one, completely normal!I thought there would be lots of pictures from this week since I'm with Salsa Boy in Anyang. He always has his face glued to his camera so I didn't even bother bringing mine. However, yesterday he had his wallet, phone and camera stolen. So much for pictures!

6 comments:

Nancy K said...

He had his wallet and camera stolen in Korea? You are always saying how safe it is.
That's a beautiful hiking place.
When you say your apartment is off that road, do you mean the upper one we can see clearly? I bet those woods are even nicer come spring.

Alex said...

Well to be fair, it was completely his fault. He put it down on the ground or a bench or something and sort of forgot about it for 5 minutes and then it was gone. I mean, that's just asking for it. Korea is safe but there is tempting and then there is Tempting.

That upper road you can see clearly is the one my road runs into. You are correct!

Rachel S said...

It is really beautiful. Thanks for the pictures.

Alex said...

Glad you liked the photos!

kanishk said...

That's a beautiful hiking place.

Work from home India

Alex said...

I know, I love it!