Sunday, May 20, 2012

Yesterday, We Climbed a Mountain.

Well... I didn't think I would be able to blog for a few days until I heard Eric explaining how the cables work. It only took me 30 seconds to get it running this morning after two hours of struggling last night.

While it feels like we didn't do very much yesterday... we're exhausted from the things that we DID do. For starters, we had a 4 hour bus ride to a mountain. While we were on the bus, Pastor Riemer did a mini church service for us on the bus. We stopped at a rest area for lunch where many of us were able to try some new Korean foods, snacks, and candies. After the remainder of the trip we ended at a National Park with several different options. First, we took a cable car to the top of a mountain where some of us continued to climb up a slippery slope to the very peak. One could purchase an engraved medal for getting to the highest point! The trip up to the top was exhilarating.. the trip back down was a little frightening. After successfully climbing down, riding the cable car back down, and appreciating being back where there's lots of Oxygen, we had the choice of hiking to a waterfall or taking a walk around some of the temples.

I heard that the temples were beautiful and a lot of fun; however I chose to take the 2 mile trail to the waterfalls. The scenery was absolutely breath taking, and the group making the trek really enjoyed spending time together. Some ran, some power walked, and some meandered through the woods until we had been going for about 45 minutes. We could have gone further to see some of the bigger falls... but if we did, we would have missed our dinner reservation. The smaller falls were nice, but some of the stone didn't seem natural. There is an old Korean folktale about the large pools at the bottom of these falls. They say that heavenly maidens used to come and take baths in the pools. Long story short - a nice, but very poor man, saved the life of a reindeer. The reindeer told him that if he took the winged costume from one of the maidens, she would be his wife, but on the condition that he could not show the costume to her until after they'd had four children. Well, she begged him to see it, and he showed it to her... but they only had THREE children, so she put it on, grabbed the children and flew back to heaven.  The reindeer came back and told the man that now they just drop a bucket down to get water to bathe in heaven. The man found the bucket, hopped in side and was brought up to heaven where he was reunited with his family!

After dinner, we drove another hour to the beach hotel where a few went out to the ocean, but many stayed inside and crashed after such a strenuous day. Many of us were hoping to spend this morning at the beach, but it's very chilly and overcast. Tonight, we are at our one home stay for the trip. It seems like many of us are a little apprehensive, but also excited.  Tomorrow we have to get up very early and will spend the day at the DMZ, and also have two performances. It's going to be a long day with minimal blog opportunities, but stay tuned!!!

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