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Published: July 28th 2006
Will the rain stop? I guess since we've arrived near the end of the rainy season, that it's unlikely that the rain will go away for more than a few hours.... We woke up to rain, hiked in the rain, and luckily missed a big storm as we walked back to the campus.
What a day! We were told last night that we could partake in a city tour today that left at 10:30am. After breakfast, as we were trying to get ourselves organized to get down to Daejon Station on time, one of the Korean counselors caught us as we were getting ready to leave and told us she had called the tour company, and since we hadn't called a day or two ahead of time, the tour was full, sorry. We made our way down to the station anyway, to check for ourselves and to find the tourist information booth. Yes, the tour was full, but here is a map of the city!
6 of the 9 of us decided to go to Bomun-san Park where there was a cable car, a lookout point, several Buddist temples, etc. Sounded good! Well, we finally found the bus after about 6 attempts at finding the bus stop, got on and rode for what seemed a short distance before the bus driver ordered us off. Apparently, we were there. Sadly, this was not obvious nor did we know what direction to go in! We found a few signs and made our way along. We discovered a few small temples on the road leading up but quickly discovered that our map of the park lacked detail. After trying to communicate with the two guys at the traffic check-point, we realized we had no idea where we were going, except to follow the road up, up, up. And then further up! We never made it to the fortress wall, nor to outdoor concert hall or lookout point, although we did see some strange and interesting sights. Workout equipment was located many places as we climbed the steep path. Why you would want to do chin-ups or situps as you climbed a 60 degree angled slope is beyond me! Oh, and the cable car seemed to have lost its cable up the hill..... What a strange park!
After several hours of sweating, getting rained on, climbing up and down the steep slopes, and running out of water to drink, we decided to head back into the downtown area and look for some Western food. I think we'd all discovered that rice and fish are not that tasty, meal after meal.... We discovered in the outdoor market area a restaurant called Mr. Pizza. We were given an English menu (one for the six of us) and our server spoke a little English but also remembered our entire order, which was not easy given that we had ordered 3 different types of pizzas and 3 different types of drinks. Great pizza too! We topped off the meal with a short jaunt down to Baskin Robbins for some ice cream. My kind of meal!
The most difficult part of the day was trying to communicate with Korean people, since we know so very little Korean, and they know so very little English. We've used our Korean phrasebooks, shown them places on a map, used sign language and pictures, pointing, facial expressions and body language, and have had some success with communicating. Some people have been quite kind and shown us the way to places, others have drawn us maps, and some have shouted at us in Korean, I'm sure in frustration. I think I have an interesting month ahead of me!
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Amy
non-member comment
Sounds like fun though!!
Pizza and ice cream?! How far away are you? Glad to hear you are having a good time exploring...good prep for the CN Tower stairclimb!!!