In Which I Move To Korea And Become A Middle Aged Man

Today I realized that if I were a Korean I would most likely be an 아저씨 (ajeoshi / middle aged man). The bulk of the Koreans that I hang out with in my free time are middle aged men and women. My passtimes are the same as a man 2 or 3 times my age (calligraphy, climbing mountains, drinking, spitting, and playing 화투). Anyhow, today I went on a mountain climbing expediation with the owner of Beer Campus. For those of you unaware of the awesomeness that is Beer Campus, let me tell you about it. Beer Campus is a bar near my homestead, that I frequent with U-rim quite...uh frequently. It's like our own personal Cheers, since the owner knows our name...though no one else there really does. Anyhow, awhile back, the owner invited me to go scale a mountain with him. Since I'm always up for a random mountain climbing adventure, I agreed, and today was the day. I met up with Mr. Beer Campus and his family, which was made up of his wife and his son (a high school senior). We took a bus out to good old 북한산 (北漢山 / Bukhan Mountain).
The bus ride itself (on a normal day) would have warrented it's own story, but today was just over the top. Anyhow on the bus, some little boy (I later learned he was 4) spotted me. He motioned to his mother (as is usually the case) and instead of the normal "엄마, 외국사람..." (Mom, a foreigner!), I was hit with a "엄마...스파이더맨이야!" (Mom, it's Spiderman!) So apparently U-rim's attempts over the summer to turn me into Spiderman/Peter Parker/Tobey McGuire turned out well. After being Spiderman for 20 minutes or so, we arrived at 북한산 and began our ascent...after a cup of coffee.
From a purely education stand point, today was great. No one in my posse (aside from the highschool student) could speak English well, so I got to speak Korean like a madman.
After some time we came to the first attraction, which was some kind of castle gate to a long gone castle. Long ago it was apparently used for evacuation purposes (and least that's what I understood using my shabby Korean skills). When there were wars, people would retreat up to that castle in the mountains and hide out until things were good to go again. Anyhow here are a couple pictures.


中城門 (Jung Seong Moon)


On top of the gate with Son of Mr. Beer Campus. (I forgot his son's name...Lee something or other...)

After a brief stop off at this gate, we pressed on, resting only briefly for a lunch. Lunch consisted of some kimbab, ramen, and kimchi, and all in all was not to shabby. Following lunch we continued on towards, 대남문 (大南門 / Great South Gate). We stopped once to drink some spring water. The sign and my posse both proclaimed it was safe to drink, so I figure "when in Rome..." and downed some spring water. From the spring, it was only 400 meters to the gate we were going to see. Let me tell you, 400 meters can be a long distance if you are walking up the side of a mountain (especially if you've been walking up the side of a mountain for several kilometers). We got to the gate without any incident, snapped a couple photos and carried on.


Here I am on the side of a mountain. 대남문 is in the background.

From the gate, the next stop on our tour was a Buddhist temple. This was my first experience doing actual temple stuff. I've been to temples before, and the closest I came to actual Buddhist practices was in Japan where I threw some coins in Buddhist wishing wells, and wrote some kind of wish on a plaque...but those things may have been Shinto anyhow (since most of the temples I went to in Japan also had Shinto shires on the site). Anyhow so we go to this Buddhist temple. Mr. Beer Campus and his family are Buddhists, so they have to go some Buddhist stuff. I assumed I would not be allowed to participate (ala getting communion in church) since I wasn't a member, but that was not the case. As a religion I really like Buddhism now. I mean I had studied it while in college, but had never actally done Buddhist stuff before. It was great, especially when compared to a Christian / Catholic church service. Here's a run down of how it went. First off Mrs. Beer Campus gave me two sticks of incense to light (one for me and one for U-rim). This was the longest and most difficult step simply because the lighter was almost empty. After that I had to take off my shoes. We then went into the temple and got some mats, we had to bow three times. It was the kind of bow where your forehead touches the floor (the kind of bow most commonly known in the west as a kowtow). After that Mrs. Beer Campus put a cheese cake on some silver tray and put it in front of a statue of Buddha and dropped some money in a collection box. After that it was over. In all, the whole thing probably took no more than 10 minutes. I'm sure there are more elaborate (and time consuming practices), but the fact that this ten minute thing was good enough. Compare this to the 90 minute plus average church service (with the extremely uncomfortable pews) and Buddhism wins hands down (especially since I have no particular attachment to Jesus or God for that matter). After they prayed (and I followed along) we were given some coffee by the caretaker of the temple (I don't think she was a monk since she had hair), and I got my picture taken by a lion statue.


At a Buddhist temple.

After getting our Buddhism on, we began our descent down the mountain. As we climbed down the mountain, I was presented with a set of Buddhist prayer beads, with which I am now able to get my future Buddhism on. We stopped for some clementines and kept going down the mountain. I got to practice my Korean quite a bit. I got to discuss my family, computer games, Korean monsters, alcohol, and other rocking topics. At the bottom of the mountain I finally took some pictures of nature. Enjoy my artsy nature shot, this I command!


A pine tree and a waterfall.

Oh and it wouldn't be an adventure in Korea without some sketchy English. Check it out if you will!


No dump garbage. Take back please.

From there we went to a tent bar and got some 막걸리 (makkoli / rice wine) and some side dishes. We drank and chatted, and I ended up giving the best English lesson I've every presented...since it was all about profanity, and the fact that "crazy" in English is not necessarily a bad word (as opposed to the Korean equivelant 미치다 [mi-chi-da] which only has a negative connotation). After some drinking and food stuffs it was off to noreabang, but apparently we had not eaten enough yet, so we stopped off at resturaunt, where some sort of spicy octopus and vegetable thing was ordered. This food stuff, showed me that I have clearly been in Korea way too long. I actually consumed some of it, and most likely would have consumed more if I wasn't already bloated from 막걸리 and Korean pancakes.
After the resturaunt, we headed off to the noreabang and we all sang our asses off! I rocked out on some Korean tunes and some English language tunes as well, and my posse told me that I did well (I'm assuming that were just being kind). After noreabang I was but in a cab and shipped home. I then came home and wrote this thing and listened to some Mars Volta...anyhow that wraps it up from here. I have to go spit and play some cards since I'm an middle aged Korean man...