작은 여행들 | Small Trips

This weekend, I was given the opportunity to go on a couple of day trips. It is an especially nice time for these now, because Spring has come here and the flowers are blooming. It has also been a nice break from the work that I am doing on my projects from school.

The first of these trips was on Friday. Mrs. Kim, our Rotary Officer, had organized a short trip to a town near Jirisan, a mountain in the southern part of Korea, because the cherry blossom flowers were blooming there. When we got there, we drove along a slow moving road with a light pink canopy of flowers above to a hill nearby the mountain. Here, we had lunch, then went for a short walk to see the flowers by walking along the road. We stopped at a greenhouse and had some tea before getting back in the car.

The Covered Road

From here, we went to another small village to see a type of yellow flower, forsythias (개나리), that had also come out. Unfortunately, it had started raining. We pulled out umbrellas and walked around for a short while, but we were back in the car to head home rather quickly. Still, I enjoyed the trip, even though it was a little short, because I got to see some interesting things. The flowers were not the same ones as there are in the US and Jirisan is the largest mountain that I have seen yet, but my favorite part was getting to converse with Mrs. Kim and the exchange students on the way.

The Yellow Flowers

The next day, I went on another short trip with my host father. Although I live just a short distance from the West Sea (Yellow Sea), I haven’t ever been to the beach. When my host family found out, they wanted to make sure that I would be able to get there. So, I went with my host father by car out to Seomyeon, a nearby town where there are a couple of beaches. The tide was out when we went, so the first beach that we went to had a few people there scraping the ground searching for clams. At this beach, I was able to see some fish and small crabs that lived under the rocks.

At the first beach

Next, we went to a place where I was able to see another of the spring flowers, a large red one, and after this, we went to a popular swimming beach in my area. Since it hasn’t warmed up yet, the beach did not have many people at all and because it was one of our first warmer days, there was a thick fog coming off of the water. It was and interesting experience to walk out to the water here.  Since the tide was out, we had to cover some distance to get to the actual water line. The interesting part was when the fog blocked our view of the normal beach, so it appeared as if the muddy sand stretched on forever. It was a very surreal experience. Although it would have been far too cold to go swimming, it was nice to see the water and I will be sure to go back when the weather gets warmer.

At the Foggy Beach, getting my shoes out of the mud.