Our First Hike -- Janaury 21st 2008

We are now starting to form a daily and weekly routine that involves working five days a week at the same time everyday, grocery shopping, eating out, performing household tasks and now we have now added an outdoor activity, hiking. On Sunday, we decided that we would go for a hike up into the hills that are only about a ten minute walk from our house. We packed a backpack full of water bottles, some fruit and a couple of extra layers of clothing. As we walked up the hill there were paths to follow but the hill was fairly steep. In the most steep of these areas there was even a rope that acted as a banister to hold onto while you climbed your way up.
Along the way up there were a few things that we did not really expect to see. The first was a little creepy but interesting none the less. Since Koreans do not really have the tradition of burying the deceased in cemetaries, they seem to make use of some of the mountainous areas in our city. This is the reason that we saw grave stones of all shapes and sizes. The interesting thing to note about the burial process is that they do not seem to plant the dead bodies six feet under like the North American tradition because there are big humps right beside the grave stones. We are not even really sure that they technically bury them underground at all. It very well could be that they leave them at ground level and just pile dirt on top them and allow grass to grow on top of the hump.
Along with the burial places we also noticed that there must be many different hiking groups that have formed. They seem to advertise by posting flyers on random trees to let people know where they will be meeting, as well as what times and days they will be hiking as a group. They actually were hiking the same day as we were but unfortunately they were about six hours ahead of us and therefore we did not get the chance to meet the group. Maybe next Saturday night we can stay up late enough that we can actually just head to the hill to meet the hiking group before calling it a night.
The third and most interesting thing that we found on our hike was the outdoor gym equipment that we found along the paths. The first equipment that we came across was pretty basic, simply consisting of a rope tied to a tree, a couple of giant hoola hoops and a few clocks (some of which did not work). However the equipment defintely got more impressive. The second area intended for working out consisted of ab machines, a number of bench presses, some inverted benches for doing sit ups, hoola hoops, as well as free weights that could accomadate at least ten or twelve people at a time. The third area that we came across was not as big as the second but at least half the size and therefore very impressive.
We have come to the conclusion that Koreans are very much interested in physical fitness judging by the number of people that we saw hiking the same paths as us and the large number of people using the gym equipment. This is especially impressive considering the fact that it snowed for the first time since we have been here yesterday and up in the hills it actually accumulated on the ground!