Teacher trip

One morning at school I was told that the teachers were going on a hiking trip together and I still don't actually know where we went.

We left at 7 in the morning and packed 15 or so people into a tour bus that looked to hold around 40 or 50. After riding for a half an hour or so I was told that tour buses are not tour buses in Korea unless they have a no-rai bong (노래방) machine (Korea's version of karoake) and that the government had made laws against dancing in the aisles of moving buses. Soon after the explanation the no-rai bang machine was turned on and the lunch ladies at school began dancing in the aisles of the bus and pulling me and other teachers into the aisles to dance with them.

The mountain we planned to hike was a four-hour ride away from hongseong (the town i'm living in) and we ate twice on the way there, with a little to drink at the second meal. When we got to the mountain I was in disbelief that we were eating again, this time at a restaurant that served mountain mushroom soup and other mountain-specific herbs with alot of macheolli (rice wine). We hiked for about 30 minutes and when I say hike I mean that we walked along a flat path through some historical gates and past some old historical buildings. Even though I still don't know the name of the place we visited, it was a famous path during the joseon dynasty, a mountain pass that students on their way to the national examinations in Seoul had to pass through as they made their way from the southern provinces. The area was beautiful and had high rocky peaks that I was eager to climb, but when we stopped to eat and drink more after only 30 minutes I realized that we probably wouldn't be hiking to the top. The pattern continued and we stopped again another half an hour later to drink some more. The hike ended up being 2-3 hours after a four hour ride each way, and I couldn't stop laughing since I had no idea where we were going the entire time or what we were doing.

On the way home we stopped to eat and drink again and that would be the last of our many stops. I ate a type of miso soup and everyone else ate some kind of meat soup. The next day at school I was asked over and over if I was sore from all the hiking we had done.