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Published: November 5th 2012
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River
One of our stops that overlooked the river So the weekend after Chuseok in Busan I ended up going to a semi-professional soccer game with 2 of my students close by to my apartment on Saturday whcih was really cool. They are part of the Incheon Fan Club so we sat right behind the goal and participated in all their chants and flag waving which was pretty cool. Overall a great game! After that I headed up to Bupyeong to meet some friends and took the train into Seoul where there was a fireworks festival to celebrate Fall. It was 2 hours long and I have never seen more people in my life at one gathering. It was just a pure wave of people walking. Apparently different countries buy fireworks and then they will set them off. So we had fireworks that came from Chine, Japan, the U.S., and South Korea. Overall it was a lot of fun and something different to do.
The weekend after that we decided to get out of town for a little bit. We found a new group that organizes trips that seem pretty cheap and legit so we decided to test it out. It was an apple festival with hiking and camping
at a pension a couple hours south of Seoul. We had to catch the bus at 7am in Seoul which means you have to wake up and be out of your place by like 5 in order to make it on time. One of our friends ended up oversleeping and missing the whole weekend. About halfway through the trip we stopped at a rest stop and made a small hike up a mountain to see the Danyang arch. One of the biggest arches in South Korea. Then we kept driving and stopped at a small town that had caving. The Kosu cave was pretty cool with narrow openings and towering caverns with a metal walkway that walked through the whole thing. It was really neat except for the fact that it was single file throughout the whole cave which made it exptremely slow to get through and there was no other way out. Once out of the cave we went to a hiking trail where there were 2 different mountains that we could hike. We ended up climbing Gudambong Peak and found a nice rock that we could climb up to overlook the valley and river down below. We chilled
Danyang arch
An arch that was formed when a cave collapsed there for a while laying on the rock and just watching the land below us. Just a little sidetrack here: Koreans LOVE to hike. Everytime we pass a group of Korean hikers they are completely decked out with all this camping gear. It's almost like they are paid professional hikers.
After the hike the bus dropped us off at the pension along the "river" that we were going to stay at. It wasn't really a river, it was more like a drainage for street water so that was kind of unfortunate but the pension location was great. It was in this valley with some mountain peaks around us with some nice cool mountain air. Our whole group-maybe like 11 or 12 of us packed in tight in this little pension. A pension is basically like a hotel room with a kitchen and a bathroom and no beds. So we all laid out our sleeping bags on the floor and broke open the Cass. Warren (the group leader) had bought a bunch of burgers and buns and we sat outside grilling up a storm and hanging out with everybody. It was such a great night and felt so good to
Kosu cave
Inside Kosu cave get to the mountains to do some exploring.
The next day we woke up and headed out to the apple festival which was a huge event. There was a ton of people in that small town offering apple macgeoli (it's like a rice wine), apple tastings, and some other apple related booths there. We walked along the river (and almost stepped on a snake) and saw the Mungyeongsaeje fortress which was really cool to see as the leaves were starting to change. After that we got back on the bus and were on our way to go pick apples in an apple orchard. We were told that the orchard we visited won second place in Korea for most delicious apples and learned how to break and apple in two pieces using your bare hands. Still can't do it but at least I know how!
Overall it was a great weekend and Warren was a great leader so I know we will be taking more trips with him in the future!
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