A Morsel of Marie's Musings...: Chuseok- Jirisan

Chuseok- a time to spend with your family. Since none of us have family in Korea, we spent it with our new family! I feel quite blessed that I have found some new friends that can be my makeshift family over the next year!
Since this was our first major holiday in Korea, none of us even knew if we would have our ARC cards in time to leave the country, so we decided to check out something in Korea. We decided on Jirisan National Park.
Jirisan was the first national park established in Korea in 1967. It is the largest mountainous national park in Korea as well.
At the base of the mountain, we went to Hwaeomsa Temple. It was constructed under the Silla dynasty in 544, burned down during the Seven Year War in 1590 and rebuilt thereafter.I thought that it had some of the best temple buildings that I have seen in Korea thus far. They were painted differently than the others I have seen.
Oh, I forgot to mention our visors...PROTECTION FIRST! This was a purchase at the bus station. I believe Darren and Chris (the Brits) were the first to keep the sun off of their faces and the rest of us followed! Those Brits aren't used to the sun, and it was quite sunny... I'm sure we got even more looks than normal, but it was really fun and now I have an awesome ajumma visor for when I am over 60 years old! Love it!

Emily (New Zealand), Erin (Canada), Darren (England)

Sian (South Africa) and Matt (England)

So we went on a hike... Emily picked out a hike that was one of the easier ones. That being said, it was the hardest hike I have ever been on. ahah! After the first hour, I was wanting to die. It was a 7 kilometer hike straight up- all stairs. Well not all stairs...the first kilometer was different stones you walk on. (Like pictured above) The next 3 kilometers was intermediate stairs, with no level parts, always going straight up. My legs were gone after the this, and we had looked at the map, so we knew that the next 3 kilometers were the advanced stairs! Advanced stairs means we walk up the drainage rocks where the trees don't grow... It was pure madness. When we reached the ridge and finally go above the tree line, it was a great view. When I hike I like to see something, and since I spent the entire time looking down to watch my step, we couldn't really look around. I was dizzy at times! ahah

AND, the whole time I knew that the way down was going to be even worse. Not of my lungs, but on my surgical knee. There aren't too many things that I find much of a problem with my knee now except snow skiing and walking down steep slopes or lots of stairs. 3 kilometers down, I couldn't bend my knee right and took all the large steps with only one knee. No fun!

After we finally made it down we jumped in the creek. I'm pretty sure that the Koreans thought that we were completely mad because it was FREEZING! I actually thought I was mad. I think it was the coldest water I have ever been in. Sian, who is from SOUTH AFRICA, was the one who was pushing to go in. I find that interesting...