A cold winters day hiking
12:39 Mon 23rd Jan 2006 (GMT +9 Seoul)
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I've just come back from a days hiking. Jack, one of our adult students at Kangs invited me to come to his companies first hike of the year.
The day started bright and early being picked up just after 7am. After a short bus ride Jack, his wife, son Tony and I started a chilly hike up the hill with around 70-100 of his colleagues. Now when I say chilly I mean that the temperature today was around -10 degrees Celsius. Throw in a strong wind and Im sure it was below -20. But that didn't stop anyone completing the short 2 hour hike the close to the city Paju, which is near the DMZ. After completing the hike we all sat down to a traditional Korean lunch.
Now because this was the first hike of the year there was a special ceremony to ask the god of the mountains to watch over the hiking club throughout 2006. The festivities kicked off with some awards being handed out to members for their effort in the club. Just as this was finishing they decided that it would be a good idea to embarrass the waegook (foreigner) and had me come up and accept a gift for coming along.
This was then followed by taking turns to bow to the god of the mountain and putting money in a pigs head (See the picture). Once the ceremonies were complete it was lottery time where they again had me up making a fool of myself by reading numbers out loud in Korean. I was actually quite honored to be treated with such importance.
So all in all its been a pretty interesting day. Jack and I are just about to go around to Sarah's where there is a roast dinner waiting for us. Mmmmm roast, I haven't had one of those in so long.
To view more photos from the trip checkout out my hiking album in the Korea 2006 photo folder.
