We had to wake up pretty early on Saturday to head down there. In fact, the bus left the station at around 8AM. The bus ride was about 5.5 hours down. Quite long. We also almost got off at the wrong station, luggage and all. We had to scamper back onto the bus very quickly when we realized our er. One we arrived at the bus terminal, we actually needed to be at, we explained we wanted to go to the plantation. We got pushed onto another bus, hereafter to be referred to as, "the celebrity express". At first, the bus ride seemed like it would be uneventful, however, at the first stop we made, about 15-20 high-school boys piled in. These boys proceeded to come to the back of the bus where Amanda, Tasha, and I were. They started asking questions while looking vocabulary up frantically in their cell phones.
excerpt from our interaction:
Boy 1: Ah...um, where is your destination.
Us: The green tea plantation.
Boy 2: Oh, very nice.
Us: Where is your destination?
Boy 2: We go home.
Us: Oh, you live close to here?
Boy 1 (I suspect just realizing what our first response meant): no, no! not green tea! you come to my house!
Boy 3: Ahh, he's kidding. joke, joke.
Us: Are you having a party at your house?
Boy 1: Ah...um, where is your destination.
Us: The green tea plantation.
Boy 2: Oh, very nice.
Us: Where is your destination?
Boy 2: We go home.
Us: Oh, you live close to here?
Boy 1 (I suspect just realizing what our first response meant): no, no! not green tea! you come to my house!
Boy 3: Ahh, he's kidding. joke, joke.
Us: Are you having a party at your house?
They also told us that Jameson looked like Keanu Reeves from the Matrix, asked numerous crazy questions, told us that they were each others grandmothers, and they helped us know when we needed to get off the bus. They also requested to get their picture taken with us.
Once we disembarked off the celebrity express, we went toward the plantation. We still had all our bags because the people at the bus terminal left no time for discussion about finding a motel.
Once we disembarked off the celebrity express, we went toward the plantation. We still had all our bags because the people at the bus terminal left no time for discussion about finding a motel.
We all had quite a bit with us, that we did not want to lug around the plantation, but we really didn't know what to do with it. We asked this lady that had a store/hut if we could leave it there. Very kindly she let us store all of our stuff behind her shed, and we all headed off to the fields.
As soon as we got into the tea establishment we took a nice long path up a bunch of stairs that we assumed was the path to the green tea fields. HOWEVER, after climbing the massive staircase we realized that, in fact, it was just a trail that took us back to the entrance. The good thing that did come out of it was we got to see a vast bamboo garden (Mom, you would have loved it). 
After we took that little fake excursion we decided to take a break and buy some green tea icecream. I got a green tea smoothie, and it was delicious!!
Everywhere we went we heard the Korean word for foreigner (way-gook), and go numerous points and stares. My friend, Mark, who has dreadlocks was inspected by 3 older ladies (referred to as ahjummas).
Anyone who is anyone climbs this hill. However, the younger generation likes to take it to a different level. It's something the young ladies like to do, and I like to call it "extreme hiking". It is something so dangerous that I'm not even sure if I can put it into words. Therefore, I will let this picture first illustrate the activity:
Do you see the issue. If you didn't, let me point out that this young lady is climbing a mountain in 4 inch heels. Now, let me tell you, those are not the highest heels we encountered, nor is this the worst terrain we had to journey upon. She is having such difficulty navigating on her in own, that she has to use her boyfriend as a crutch. Those ladies that do decide it is a sage idea to wear heels to these kinds of destinations, must have the most crucial fashion accessory. That is, their boyfriend (sporting his own couple t-shirt). We city kids were not tooo surprised by the actions of these young ladies, however, in Seoul the girls live in heels (I suspect sleep in them as well) so we're acclimated to this type of ludicrous behavior.
Moving on, after we traveled all the way to the top of this huge hill that was a green tea farm we snapped some photos and began our pilgrimage back down. I believe this is the mountain we were atop.
On our way down we encountered another group of ahjummas. This time it was myself, not Mark, that was their pray. The one woman came running up to me. Grabbed my hands and gave me the biggest bear hug I have received since arriving in Korea. She then said (sarang-ee-eh-oh) which basically means, she loves me. I told her I loved her too. It was pretty hilarious.
As we continued our venture back down we stumbled upon a small ancient house - type - thing on stilts. Sooo, what is the most obvious thing to do. Try to get inside, of course! haha Unfortunately, it was locked. We took pictures though.
Finally, we left the green tea fields. We collected our stuff behind the woman's shed, and headed to a beach town nearby, where we were planning on staying. We had decided before we left that we would stay at a Min-bak. A min-bak is, essentially, a home stay. Some are nicer than others, but either way you are usually staying at some one's house that has extra room. Well, there were a plethora to chose from. Somehow, though, we ended up in one owned by one crazy ahjumma. Don't ask how. It just happened. The min-baks are really cheap though. Only 30 per room (so, less than 10 each). She gave us 2 rooms and apparently we stayed in the Ahjumma's room. Because she slept on the kitchen floor. CRAZY! Either way the whole time she was running around behind us, yelling things in Korean that we could not understand. The running joke was that she was going to kill us in the middle of the night. Ultimately, we fell in love with her, though, and parting the next morning was sorrowful. 
We found some good eats in the small town and got a huge spread of Korean BBQ. Which, for those of you that are not familiar is the closest thing to heaven that I have ever tasted. Well, besides kimchi. Kimchi is a bite of heaven...once you have been eating it for a while you begin to get kimchi withdrawal. At dinner there was the cutest kid sitting at a table nearby. He kept staring and smiling at us. We all waved at him and said Hi. Then, Blake started playing rock, paper, scissors with him (guy-buy-bo). It was hilarious because the kid kept losing, but did not want to stop playing. Later that night, we went to the beach to drink some beers and just relax after a long day. A Korean man walks by and says hello to us. It was a great chance for Blake and myself to practice our Korean so we start talking to him. Blake knows a lot more Korean than I do though. Anyways, we get his name, which is Mr. Woo. I think he was already a bit intoxicated. His phone kept ringing too, which, at first, we thought was a defense mechanism to not speak English with us. We soon found out that we were very wrong, though, because he put us on the phone with his wife. His friend Mr. Kim came to retrieve him. A little while later though, Mr. Woo, Mr. Kim, and a few new additions returned. Gifting a bunch of beers in a plastic bag. We took a few pictures with them.
If it looks like our party has grown....it's because it has. We met 2 more random foreigners in the streets of this small town and invited them out on the town with us. Mr. Woo is the one in the blue hat. Mr. Kim is the one in the black hat, and the other guy...we never got his name.
After that we all went to noraebong (karaoke), set some fireworks off on the beach, and then went to bed.
This entry has been insanely long. I don't even know how long I have been typing this out. So, I'm going to sum the rest of this up without pictures.
After we woke up the next day, one of the girls and I went to go get us tickets at the bus terminal so we could all get home. We were just planning on buying the tickets at the place about 15 minutes away, and then coming back. When we got to the terminal though the lady told us, in Korean, that the bus back to Seoul "did not exist". Fantastic. She promptly had us buy tickets to some other town so we could get back. She just got them for the 2 of us though, and put us on the bus immediately. Leaving the rest of our friends in the beach town. We thought the bus ride would be maybe 20 minutes to another city nearby. After an hour and a half on the bus....we realized we were not going to be able to go back and retrieve them. We had to call them and have them meet us in another city named Gwangjo. Which, apparently, was the original capital of Korea. Finally, we got back to Seoul at 10pm that night. Overall, the trip was a booming success. We plan on doing one of these once a month from now on. It was so nice to get out of the city. Being here for 5 months, I didn't even realize how much I missed the quiet. You know, there is still so much stuff from the weekend that I left out, but if this gets any longer I am going to need to consider publishing it.
Over and out.
After we took that little fake excursion we decided to take a break and buy some green tea icecream. I got a green tea smoothie, and it was delicious!!
Everywhere we went we heard the Korean word for foreigner (way-gook), and go numerous points and stares. My friend, Mark, who has dreadlocks was inspected by 3 older ladies (referred to as ahjummas).
Anyone who is anyone climbs this hill. However, the younger generation likes to take it to a different level. It's something the young ladies like to do, and I like to call it "extreme hiking". It is something so dangerous that I'm not even sure if I can put it into words. Therefore, I will let this picture first illustrate the activity:
Do you see the issue. If you didn't, let me point out that this young lady is climbing a mountain in 4 inch heels. Now, let me tell you, those are not the highest heels we encountered, nor is this the worst terrain we had to journey upon. She is having such difficulty navigating on her in own, that she has to use her boyfriend as a crutch. Those ladies that do decide it is a sage idea to wear heels to these kinds of destinations, must have the most crucial fashion accessory. That is, their boyfriend (sporting his own couple t-shirt). We city kids were not tooo surprised by the actions of these young ladies, however, in Seoul the girls live in heels (I suspect sleep in them as well) so we're acclimated to this type of ludicrous behavior.Moving on, after we traveled all the way to the top of this huge hill that was a green tea farm we snapped some photos and began our pilgrimage back down. I believe this is the mountain we were atop.
On our way down we encountered another group of ahjummas. This time it was myself, not Mark, that was their pray. The one woman came running up to me. Grabbed my hands and gave me the biggest bear hug I have received since arriving in Korea. She then said (sarang-ee-eh-oh) which basically means, she loves me. I told her I loved her too. It was pretty hilarious.
As we continued our venture back down we stumbled upon a small ancient house - type - thing on stilts. Sooo, what is the most obvious thing to do. Try to get inside, of course! haha Unfortunately, it was locked. We took pictures though.
Finally, we left the green tea fields. We collected our stuff behind the woman's shed, and headed to a beach town nearby, where we were planning on staying. We had decided before we left that we would stay at a Min-bak. A min-bak is, essentially, a home stay. Some are nicer than others, but either way you are usually staying at some one's house that has extra room. Well, there were a plethora to chose from. Somehow, though, we ended up in one owned by one crazy ahjumma. Don't ask how. It just happened. The min-baks are really cheap though. Only 30 per room (so, less than 10 each). She gave us 2 rooms and apparently we stayed in the Ahjumma's room. Because she slept on the kitchen floor. CRAZY! Either way the whole time she was running around behind us, yelling things in Korean that we could not understand. The running joke was that she was going to kill us in the middle of the night. Ultimately, we fell in love with her, though, and parting the next morning was sorrowful. 
We found some good eats in the small town and got a huge spread of Korean BBQ. Which, for those of you that are not familiar is the closest thing to heaven that I have ever tasted. Well, besides kimchi. Kimchi is a bite of heaven...once you have been eating it for a while you begin to get kimchi withdrawal. At dinner there was the cutest kid sitting at a table nearby. He kept staring and smiling at us. We all waved at him and said Hi. Then, Blake started playing rock, paper, scissors with him (guy-buy-bo). It was hilarious because the kid kept losing, but did not want to stop playing. Later that night, we went to the beach to drink some beers and just relax after a long day. A Korean man walks by and says hello to us. It was a great chance for Blake and myself to practice our Korean so we start talking to him. Blake knows a lot more Korean than I do though. Anyways, we get his name, which is Mr. Woo. I think he was already a bit intoxicated. His phone kept ringing too, which, at first, we thought was a defense mechanism to not speak English with us. We soon found out that we were very wrong, though, because he put us on the phone with his wife. His friend Mr. Kim came to retrieve him. A little while later though, Mr. Woo, Mr. Kim, and a few new additions returned. Gifting a bunch of beers in a plastic bag. We took a few pictures with them.
If it looks like our party has grown....it's because it has. We met 2 more random foreigners in the streets of this small town and invited them out on the town with us. Mr. Woo is the one in the blue hat. Mr. Kim is the one in the black hat, and the other guy...we never got his name.After that we all went to noraebong (karaoke), set some fireworks off on the beach, and then went to bed.
This entry has been insanely long. I don't even know how long I have been typing this out. So, I'm going to sum the rest of this up without pictures.
After we woke up the next day, one of the girls and I went to go get us tickets at the bus terminal so we could all get home. We were just planning on buying the tickets at the place about 15 minutes away, and then coming back. When we got to the terminal though the lady told us, in Korean, that the bus back to Seoul "did not exist". Fantastic. She promptly had us buy tickets to some other town so we could get back. She just got them for the 2 of us though, and put us on the bus immediately. Leaving the rest of our friends in the beach town. We thought the bus ride would be maybe 20 minutes to another city nearby. After an hour and a half on the bus....we realized we were not going to be able to go back and retrieve them. We had to call them and have them meet us in another city named Gwangjo. Which, apparently, was the original capital of Korea. Finally, we got back to Seoul at 10pm that night. Overall, the trip was a booming success. We plan on doing one of these once a month from now on. It was so nice to get out of the city. Being here for 5 months, I didn't even realize how much I missed the quiet. You know, there is still so much stuff from the weekend that I left out, but if this gets any longer I am going to need to consider publishing it.
Over and out.
