Gwanaksan

Overlooking my campus is a mountain called Gwanaksan, which cradles the whole campus in really interesting way. After a month of just watching the green wall around my university, I finally hiked up one of the peaks, which I found out is actually a huge hobby for older people here. A map of the mountains, the buildings in the center are my university, I climbed the peak on the right.

Older Korean people never seem to stay inside and watch TV or retire in the American sense of the word. All throughout the day, convoys of older women and men, outfitted in violent shades of pink and blue, hike up the mountains around the city or bike for the whole day. Once the sun goes down, the men fill up barbecue restaurants all around the city and drink soju over chunks of spiced thickly-sliced bacon.

Hiking is weird fun here, maybe it's the fact that they leave trails full of rocks to be leaped over or that everyone drinks rice wine and passes out once they reach the summit, but its a hobby worth looking into.
Along the path, you can see small piles of pebbles that are stacked loosely. I think the practice has to do with Buddhism, but I don't know for sure.


The view from the top is pretty amazing, every so often, you hear someone shout "Yahuuuu!" from the top. Kind of like a glorious yodel of victory, but it confused the heck out of me the first time I heard it.

Autumn is starting in Korea, a little bit later than in America. It's supposed to be the most beautiful season, with none of the oppressive heat of summer or the bitter, dry cold of winter. There are enough mountains rising around Seoul so that you can see the foliage changing from almost anywhere in the city.

The tradition for hikers who have come down from a hard trek is to drink makkeoli, a milky rice wine that is really popular in rural areas. Supposedly, the liquor restores the energy you lost hiking, there are a lot of similar folk medicine/food remedies for problems in daily life here.

I found out that Koreans with a stomach ache will try to squeeze all the blood in their arm to the point of one finger, then prick that finger with a needle to release the black blood inside, (just a drop or two). I have never seen the black blood, but I have heard people swear it comes out and that it helps.