Hiking stories

With spring here, hiking has resumed. I've been able to get out the last three weekend and two of those were spent at a nearby mountain named Yongbongsan. Its not a famous mountain, but popular throughout the region because its short (only about a 2 hour hike on the main path) and it climbs very quickly to jagged granite peaks. It attracts hiking groups who want a beautiful climb that won't take up an entire day and that is short enough that copious amounts of food can be lugged up top to eat at the peak. This gets to insane proportions: 2 weeks ago a group had a 10-pound rice cake, dozens of jugs of rice wine, and a pigs head on a spit that they were handing food from to everyone that passed. What I thought was a weird, one-time occurrence was there again this past weekend when I hiked the same trail -- a big group with a huge pigs head that they were offering to people that passed. Another interesting part of the trip was riding with a well-dressed Korean man who told me that he lived in Washington DC for two years, despite knowing very little English. He kept pointing at his tooth and I thought he was trying to tell me that he had gone to Washington DC to get his tooth replaced and wondered what kind of great dentist America has in Washington DC to attract international customers like this man. As he tried to talk to me about the election and I mentioned that I liked Obama I was able to make out that he saying an African American man who had walked across the street in Washington DC, punched this man in the face, and so he had to get his tooth replaced in Washington DC. This, he told me, was why I should like Hillary and not Obama.

This isn't the first conversation that I've had with someone who had this kind of sentiment and it gets into a whole other issue about how race is perceived here that I'll write about -- or point to someone else who has written about it here -- some other time.