Camping in Korea

For the Cheusok holiday we decided to go camping and headed out to Gayasan National Park, about 2.5 hours away. Korean National Parks are really cool because they tend to pair up beautiful natural places with World Heritage sites so you get some cool history hand in hand with natural beauty. We got to the campsite Friday evening and on Saturday headed out for a hike to the top of Gayasan Mountain.

First we hit this amazing temple complex. We had no idea what to expect so we just went exploring

Went up a long path and through some gateways and went into this beautiful temple/monastary complex. This temple is 600 years old, but still actively in use! There were monks everywhere and some sort of ceremony going on in the main temple complex.

As always the beautiful, vibrant colors on the undersides of the eaves are amazing!

The kids were pretty fascinated and we peeked into the main building to see what all the chanting was about. This place also has an important historical significance as it is the hub of Korean printing. There are 1,000's of wooden tablets or "tripitaka" that were used to print and stuff. Check out the Wiki HERE.

We headed out some smaller gates that were still amazingly cool with all their colors.

Then down a beautiful tree-lined road back down to the main gate of the temple. One thing we still can't get over is how you just stumble across these amazing places in Korea. Here was a temple/monastery more beautiful than anything we saw in Japan, and it was totally uncrowded and totally FREE!! We were welcome to explore and look around and we didn't even have to pay to walk in a shoulder to shoulder zombie-like shuffle. Soooo cool.

Next we headed up the 4 km path (8 km round trip!) to the top of Mt. Gayasan. This was an extremely steep and challenging trail and the kids made it all the way to the top!

We climbed for a long time before we hit a neat rock with a great view and stopped for lunch. The temperature was perfect!

We finally got to the point just below the peak. We saw many hikers and hiking clubs but NO children. The Koreans couldn't get over Sasha and Teddy and how they were hiking on such a long and challenging trail. They made a huge fuss over them and many people gave them little candies and treats for being so strong and burly. One dude right before I took this pic gave Teddy an entire Kit-Kat bar which he is proudly showing off! Jeffs Fav! We were stoked.....

Went a little higher and got some great pics of these awesome rock outcrops.

And another view over one of the lesser peaks:

Us very close to the top: From here you can go back down the same trail back to Haeinsa or back down another way to a different spot in the park. We had to go back down the same trail to our car and our camp.

My proud little Teddy:

Back down the hill we went across a neat little bridge that the kids spotted and found some more traditional buildings and gardens. I snapped this shot where you can see Gayasan Mt. over the tops of the buildings.

A tomb complex that we thought was neat-o:

We went back to our camp and cooked dinner and then piled into the Team Stolasz tent. We actually slept very cozy and well both nights. The kids looove tenting out. The next day was Sunday and we broke camp and started heading slowly out of the park but had time to stop and see anything we thought looked cool. Of course we had to stop and see what this was:

It seemed to be some kind of shrine with lots of candles and statues. They were HUGE!! And this whole thing was carved out of solid Granite! To the left of the shrine area was a weird long staircase carved into the side of the mountain and we spotted some buildings up there so we had to go check it out.

Climbed WAAAAAY up and there were more temple buildings and this Amazing gong/chime/bell (take your pick) that I did not ring but wanted to sooooo bad!

I mean that sucker's just asking to be rung right? But it probably has some sort of special religious significance and I don't want to be imprisoned in a foreign country so I am getting really good about self-restraint.

Went around a building and Teddy found this little shrine so we climbed even higher!

What a cool find Ted! It was painted beautifully and this entire area up the mountain seemed to be functioning as another monastery location. There were monks all around going about their business.

Beautiful colors:

Kids laughing down at Dad:

When we headed back around the first temple building a monk had opened up the front of it and we got to peek inside. He started some chanting 5 minutes later but didn't ring the cool gong. Bummer.

Next we headed down the road again and hit this beautiful bridge and waterfall. Take a close look and you'll see some characters carved into the rock just above the water. We had to hike up to the bridge and cross of course.

Turns out that the entire rock face was carved with writing! Click on these pics and take a closer look!

Some of it was being erased by the water, some was worn almost totally away, and some was very clear and looked almost recent. It must have taken so much work to carve all that. Maybe if you were a monk and you blew it like said "pass the salt" at breakfast when there was supposed to be silence then you had to go write something as punishment. Worse the offense the closer to the water you had to work. It's just one hypothesis....

There was an open air pavilion on the other side of the bridge as well that was also beautifully painted and very old. My two awesome travelers:

The country side is beautiful right now and they are all most ready to start the next rice harvest. Here you can see a ton of rice paddies that are all green and ready.

So that was our Korean camping experience. SOOOO much fun, we saw another beautiful part of the country and the entire weekend cost us about 4,000 won. ($3.65  We had to buy some more bottled water.) You can't beat that! There is a really short video that gives you a taste of the sights and sounds inside the temple complex HERE.

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1.03.01

The Rest of NC

So the highlight of the NC visit was of, course the 4 day long 4th of July celebration put on by my fabulous younger sib AKA "Uncle Timmy". To get a full appreciation of the event, check out the youtube vid posted HERE.
We had family members and friends in from all over the country, and of course fireworks prep was a big part of the whole thing.

Here's Tim  and Uncle Mark working on fuses.

As if this isn't enough, the dude has become a prodigy with the whisky still, churning out bottle after bottle of toe-curling while lightning. I think it's too strong to drink so Brea and I filled a few bottles with fruit and we just eat the fruit out of it. This kind of cuts the remaining liquor a bit but it is still amazingly strong. We call it "special fruit":

And of course, the pig was incredible and cooked to perfection. Here's Ana and Tim enjoying the fruits of everyone's labor:

Bree hooks the band up with some "special fruit". That'll keep 'em playing into the wee hours!

The place was beautifully decked out for the holiday. There is something about this property + Tim's party that makes 4th of July play out like a National Geographic Special on how 4th of July SHOULD be celebrated. It's magical.

Cousins! Teddy and Sasha had so much fun with their Ferris cousins that Ted cried for a day when they finally had to leave. For the rest of the summer each time he saw a plane he would yell "My Cousins!!"

Tim and Julie. Put these 2 together for any amount of time and great things happen.

Later in the week we picked the hottest day and rented a pontoon boat. We had an awesome time motoring all around lake James. Whenever we got too hot, we just stopped and jumped in! It was a perfect day.

Teddy loved driving the boat, being on the boat, and being in the presence of Brea, who always makes sure he looks super-cool.

We got to visit with Nana for a few days and took another opportunity to get in a "4 generations" picture.

And since we did such a good job cleaning out Tim's whisky stores during the party, we got busy starting a new mash a few days after everyone had gone home. It has to sit for several weeks before you can run it through the still.

Next Sasha and I were off to the Swannanoa Gathering. A short week of fiddling and fun up in Asheville. My new friend Jeremy and I were classmates in Martin Hayes Irish class.

So we had Martin as a teacher every afternoon for 3 hours. HEAVEN! He taught us some amazing tunes, but the best stuff Martin gives you is his outlook and the way he sees things. It was great.

Sasha had so much fun in the kids program and she also took a Cape Breton style class with me which was great. One afternoon we went down to the Swannanoa river to splash and swim.

Here's Sash having fun during a slow-jam.

I also met up with Manus McGuire, one of the teachers I met last year at the Texas fiddle retreat we went to. He's the one in the striped shirt smiling. He's super cool and really nice. It was great to see him again. You never know who you'll run into at fiddle camp.

On the last day of camp we cleared out of our dorm room, drove back to Golden Valley, got some quick lunch, did some quick laundry, and then said good-bye to Grammy, Poppy-Duck and Nana. We were headed to Virginia Beach!

Our 2.5 weeks in NC were so packed with fun, friends and family that it seemed like we were there for at least a month. AND I left with only a few chigger bites and didn't even need to be sent to the doctor or anything so I'd call that a successful trip!

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1.03.01

Settling Back In

Our first few weeks back in Korea have passed in a blur. The kids went to their first day of school the Friday after we got back. Sasha had PE for her first day so she did not get to wear "something beautiful" but had to wear her PE uniform instead. I don't think she's over this yet and the fact that she had to pose for first day of school pics only added insult to injury.

 Teddy on the other hand was just thrilled to be going to all-day school and bringing his lunch AND riding a school bus from the main school to the EYC (early years center) where he goes.

Both of the kids love their teachers and have settled in so well. The cats are also thrilled to be adjusting to the return of their people. Max usually goes to bed with the kids. Of course a mere bed isn't enough for him so he usually picks a kid and then settles down on their pillow. That person is then kicked off their pillow for the duration but the kids don't seem to care.

When I check on them later all 3 of them are fast asleep, but Max usually looks up like I am totally disturbing him. Sorry Max...

Sasha lost her other top front tooth and now has the official 1st grade gap-toothed grin. She is of course thrilled and proud to be counted among the toothless:

She looks adorable except when she gets mad or upset and then she kind of looks like a mini-vampire which is pretty freaky. You can kind of see what I mean in this picture. A bit fang-like eh?

The school has been gearing up for Pirate's day (which warrants it's own post) and the kids at the EYC actually got to dress like Pirates for school a week after we got home. Teddy was stoked, and made an awesome Pirate. His "Yo-ho, yo-ho" is top notch, and we downloaded the track from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney so he's well on his way to belting that one out.

Jeff and Sasha love to get into things together. They are both sooo creative which is great, however I do have to remind them that if they are going to paint/make boxes/papermache/paper airplanes/plant things, ect. that there is also clean-up involved. Here they are doing "chop-stick lessons" one day when Teddy was sleeping.

And the day they decided to make a paper mache dinosaur. Teddy was done with THAT project in about 30 minutes and I wanted no part of it from the get-go but Sasha stuck with it for the whole 3 hours. Now I have a funky, paper mache Spinosaurus on my sun porch. Awesome. It'll stay there until I toss the thing in a few months and then they'll both freak out and go "we were gonna paint that!!" ect. And then they'll come up with some other messy random project. It's a repeating cycle...

Jeff brought the fondu pot to Korea and we've been having lots of fun with it. Teddy is the one who gets covered in chocolate and Sash stays relatively clean so that's a shocker.  Of course I am a natural when it comes to chocolate fondue. "You need what you say? A plate of random things that can be dipped in chocolate? This is a mission I have been waiting for all my life. You have come to the right person my friend..."

 

 The crazy people we live with continue to astound. Zoe and Julian had a B-Day BBQ for a friend in the compound. Now Zoe and Julian have recently moved into a new bungalow. The Korean tradition is to bring lots of toilet paper as a house warming present when someone moves into a new dwelling. You remember the stack we got? Yeah we've barely made a dent it in. Well some of the dads thought that TP'ing their house would be soooo much more fun than just giving them packages of TP. Then it turned into a TP'ing lesson for the kids, which of course was a HUUUGE hit. 

Here's the adults carrying on like nothing has happened. Yeah, just a bit of madness and now I'll have another drink thanks. Meanwhile the kids have taken the ball and run all the way down the field with it. So when you look at this picture imagine screaming and TP rolls flying in all directions as the adults are just hanging out and talking.

Sasha thought this was like the best BBQ EVER! My kids are going to have such a skewed perspective on "normal"! (like they wouldn't have already with me as their parent....)

All I was thinking was "who's going to clean all this up?" but the same Dads that started it ended up paying the kids 10,000 won to clean it up. Of course first they had to drape themselves with it and be mummies.

See why I'm always so tired? It's like "We're doing What? When? NOW?!? Aww man, OK, OK, I'm in...."