We're Always Working for the Weekend

We've had a relaxing weekend, filled with hiking and baking and lots of xbox playing. Happy Easter to everyone in the states. Korea doesn't celebrate, at least that we know of. We saw some women dressed up outside of a church this morning, but they might always be that dressed up for church.

Saturday we went for a hike on Anma-san. It's a little mountain about 1/2 mile from our apartment. We don't know how far we got but I think we only made it part-way. It was a nice day for hiking. The weather was chilly, about 45 degrees, but the trees kept the wind out. There was a wide variety of people out. Men in suits were jogging back and forth and older women decked out in full gear complete with hiking sticks. We were noted for our token foreign looks. One man forced his toddler to walk up to us and say hi. The little boy was so shy, he hid behind his dad's legs. We smiled and waved at the boy, but he refused to say hi to us.

As we were walking back down, a girl around 10 ran up to us and said in perfect English, "Excuse me, where are you from?" I told her, "I'm from America!" She smiled and ran back to her family. Parents think it's cute to make their children practice their English on us. We're thinking about handing out business cards to attract these children to our school.

Hiking was pretty fun. We're out of shape, so it was also difficult. I was struggling going up one of the stretches and paused to catch my breath. A man walked up to me and smiled and made motions as he spoke what I assume was, "Come on! Keep Going!" He laughed and kept running up the steep stairs.

In most parks and on most trails in Korea, there is gym equipment free for use. There are these twisty contraptions that I only see 40+ women use and the rest of the equipment doesn't seem to be popular. I've heard that Koreans don't like muscle mass and consider muscular people to be a bit fat, so I guess I can understand why these "gyms" aren't used.

Now that winter is slowly, slowly coming to an end, we are looking forward to doing some outdoor activities and getting back into shape. We plan on going hiking at that same spot again and we will try to find some other trails as well (I know of at least two others, although I don't know how to get to them). We also have badminton rackets and balls, but I'm not sure how often those will get used.

I took quite a few pictures so I will have to post a photobook, here:

Anma-san