Welcome back, friends. I’m heading into another weekend here in Daejeon after my first full week of work. This week I assigned English names to students who didn’t already have them (to no one’s surprise, there is at least one Bart and at least one Homer in every class) and got into an argument with a robot I made on the internet. Don’t worry, that one was part of a lesson, too. Tomorrow is my very first Korean lesson at Talkholic, which makes me nervous only because I haven’t been studying my alphabet. Which I should probably be doing now rather than writing this blog. Shit.
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Okay, I’m back. Anyways, I’ve been kind of sick all week, which has hampered my ability to speak, think, breathe, and get up in the morning. And here I thought kimchi was supposed to be some kind of illness-preventing superfood. I was even a little sick when I set off with a group of EPIK-ers to scale the mild heights of Mt. Bomunsan in the southwestern part of the city. Now, I haven’t done much for exercise since I’ve gotten Korea. First of all, I haven’t had much time, but mostly it’s been too cold to run and my Korean is nowhere near the level it would likely require to sign up for a gym membership. So when we set off to climb Mt. Bomunsan, I was ready for a little challenge. I got one, plus a little more.
You see, in Korea, everyone is generally in a hurry. People here work very hard. I’m still trying to grasp exactly what the working culture is here, but I know that most of the other teachers here work harder than I have so far (and teach more classes, and more different lessons, which probably contributes to this fact. I’m not a slacker!). Anyways, maybe it’s this hurried culture that prevented them from forging the sort of zigzag paths up their mountains like the trails in America. No, here in Korea, if you want to climb a mountain, you have to take the most direct possible route to the top, which means you must be ready to climb stairs. And not just some stairs; all the stairs in the WORLD. And just when it looks like you’re reaching the top, like things are leveling out and you’ll get a beautiful view of Daejeon from high above, you round a corner and… you’re done! Just kidding, it’s actually more stairs.
People, by the time I reached the top of this mountain I felt like I’d spent a week on a Stairmaster. Most of the people in my group felt similar, it seemed, so at least I wasn’t only one huffing and puffing. But the hardest part of the hike wasn’t the climbing. It wasn’t the often slippery trail conditions. No, the hardest part was watching the smiling ajummas merrily and easily bounding past me up the endless stairs. But when we got to the top after one last round of brutal, thigh-and-calf-murdering steps, we were afforded a view that was completely worth all that dreaded exercise.
That, dear readers, is the view of Daejeon from the very tippy-top of Mt. Bomunson. In case you’re wondering, I live somewhere off to the left and far, far in the distance.
Hiking is a pretty big deal here in Daejeon. The whole town is sort of boxed in by mountains. It reminds me of an old N64 videogame, where if you keep running you’ll hit the edge of the world, usually represented by a big wall the color of the ground. Here if you keep going, you’ll eventually hit the edge of the city, and it’s usually represented by a mountain. I wondered about how Daejeon seemed to be built in one of the flattest areas I’d seen in Korea so far. As it turns out, the city’s name just means “big field”. So it’s a city built in a big field surrounded on all sides by mountains, and these mountains have ungodly amounts of stairs on them, and if you’re brave enough to challenge the superiority of said stairs to your level of physical fitness, you’ll be rewarded with temples, random exercise parks, and panoramic vistas. If you’re in Korea, or ever come to Korea, I’d highly recommend hiking up your nearest mountain. If not for the views, at the very least to marvel at the climbing ability of the ajummas.
Anyways, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have a creative nonfiction exercise to share with you today. I’ve been kind of a shut-in this week, aside from dinner with my fellow English teachers and a short excursion into the old downtown with a few EPIK-ers, so anything I could write would straddle a fine line between boring and bullshit. I also promised to tell you about English Drama Club this time, but so far we’ve only had “auditions” (this is in quotes because it was a formality; everybody got in because we didn’t have enough show up to fill our maximum club occupancy) and there isn’t a whole lot to report yet. But between Korean lessons tomorrow followed by a night out, the official start of English Drama Club this evening, and the start of an apparent second unpaid orientation next week, I should have plenty of adventures to share with you all next time, dear readers…
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