Seorak San Weekend with Michael Jeter

Last Friday I went to Seoul to see Mike Jeter, who is now a hagwon English teacher in South Korea. A hagwon is an extra academy that students can go to after regular school. So Mike has to teach until 9 on Friday nights, which makes my schedule seem pretty good. I took the high speed KTX train to Seoul for the first time, and it is fast. Also a little expensive. We met in a subway station near his apartment. Luckily it wasn't too hard for us to spot each other.

Saturday morning we went to Seorak san(mountain), a very popular mountain in Korea. We arrived in the afternoon and found a cheap motel. We were looking on some side streets for a motel, and found several abandoned places. We were walking by one with lots of overgrown grass on its front walkway, when a Korean guy with work gloves asked us how much we would pay. We said $30 and he then took us to a motel on the main street, but there was no one there. So he hopped behind the counter, got a key, and showed us a room. We weren't sure if he really worked there, but we decided to take the room anyway.

The closer we got to Seoraksan the more we noticed the leaves hadn't actually changed. Seeing mostly green was a little disappointing, but saturday and sunday were both beautiful weather-wise so it was okay. Sat afternoon we did some exploring of the rock basin at the bottom of Seoraksan and then had a nice little Korean dinner. There were other ETAs in Seoraksan but they didn't want to meet up with us. Pretty lame. Maybe they were afraid of two WM kids together.

On sunday we hiked part of the mountain and it was beautiful. After a post mountain meal of Chinese food (koreanized though, like Chinese food in America is amercanized) we said our goodbyes and each headed to our buses home. The weekend with Mike was a lot of fun. We of course reminisced about WM, but it was fun to experience Korea with someone else from back home. I'm sure it was the first of many weekends together.

The traffic was bad on the way back. I didn't get into Daejon until 10:30pm, so I just missed the last bus back to Gyeryong. I had to take a taxi. My host family called while I was waiting, and I told them. And they weren't worried! Sweet. I think my host family actually thinks of me as an adult.

Check out some pictures of Seoraksan: