Happy Chuseok!

Chuseok is Korea's Thanksgiving Holiday, where they honour their ancestors by visiting and maintaining grave sites and eating delicious, squishy rice cakes with their families. Most travel to their hometowns, so the highways and public transportation get really busy. Justin and I avoided the business by staying in Guri for the weekend (which, by the way, included Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday!). On the weekend, we just mostly stuck around at home. I worked on lesson plans at the PC Bang a bit, and we watched some Battlestar Galactica and went for a walk. We went to a pretty little park down the road, which we'd walked past, but never visited. Public parks here are funny, because they have outdoor exercise equipment for people to use. It's a nice idea, but if the weather is good enough to exercise outside, why not go for a walk? Also, there was a crazy bright pink heart structure that I couldn't fully appreciate in the middle of such pretty landscape. I guess I haven't been in Korea long enough...







On Wednesday, we went hiking in the mountains in Guri. There were so many people there, because the mountain is full of graves (which people were visiting for Chuseok). We had to hike fairly hard to get to (what we think was) the top, and when we got up there, we discovered a road that circles the whole mountain all the way up. So as we were hiking, we went from very populated trails, to trails that not everyone has the determination to climb, to a road with mini vans full of nicely dressed picnic-ers out visiting their ancestors. And we looked just terrible - two chubby Westerners, covered in sweat. Ah well. At least we were hard core.
We brought a picnic of delicious cucumber sandwhiches (we found cream cheese!!!!) and water (from a mountain spring).








There are a lot of old people in Korea who climb mountains every week. Small Korean dogs too, have a pretty high endurance for climbing. Actually, they're very nice, because most of them are so obedient that they just follow their masters without a leash, all through the city and up mountains.
We were expecting to be very sore on Thursday, but we were both fine (yay).
Anyways, it's 6 pm on Friday, and I still have to finish my lesson plan for the next two weeks(Canadian Thanksgiving) before I go home, because we're hoping to go travelling this weekend!
Cheers!
Kris