"Camping" and by "Camping" I mean "Retreat"

So this weekend, I went "camping" with the gym. Camping was a lot of fun! We didn't really camp though. Hahaha. We stayed in a large cabin that had a few different apartments. They call them pensions. We stayed in one of the pensions. The last of the rain from the typhoon made it a bit rainy and muddy but that kind of made it better. I think it might have been too hot if it wasn't rainy. We also had fun playing around in the mud. The pension came to the gym to pick us up in a van. There were 15 of us and we all had to cram in this van. It was so funny.

When we got there, it was really cool because the guys did all of the work. They said that in Korea, a woman never does the work when they are on vacation. One of the guys, Tae Su, was the "head chef" and the meals were better than any of the restaurants we have eaten at here in Korea! All of the younger boys had to help him in the kitchen. I told him that he was going to make his future wife very happy. The food was amazing! We had samgipsal and bulgogi.

We got to the pension early. Check in wasn't until 2pm and we arrived at about 11ish. It was up in the mountains with several waterfalls. It was beautiful! We did some hiking. Although no one told us that we could leave our bags in the van so we hiked up this mountain with our bags. They got kind of heavy. It wasn't really too bad. I wasn't miserable, and I was still able to enjoy the hike and take pictures. Although, every time I stopped to take pictures Tae Su kept telling me to hurry up in Korean. I got so mad at him. I made San Ha translate to Kwangjungnim why I was so angry. I told her that they have lived their entire lives here in Korea, and they can see this anytime. I just got here and I don't know how long I'm going to stay or if I will be able to come back to this place. I want to see and experience everything. I think Kwangjungnim talked to him about it.

It was funny because Tae Su is younger than me but the entire trip he kept telling me he was just worried about me. Everything I did he would tell me to stop because its too dangerous. Hahaha. I was just climbing a tree and he started freaking out! I am such a kid because I still love to climb trees and this tree was the perfect climbing tree. I wanted to climb over the fence to go down to the river, and he made me crawl under because going over is too dangerous. I was teasing him that he didn't really speak Korean because he only said two words in Korean "Palli wa" (hurry up), and the only English word he knew was "dangerous".

Anyways, the trail we went up had these cool stairs its called the 300 stairs or something but there's 300 stairs to lead the last bit of the way to the top of the mountain. Some of them were really steep and it was a really good workout. Once again, Tae Su was right behind me telling me to "Palli wa". My calves are seriously sore today from the palli wa up the stairs.

There was a really cool bridge up there too leading to another mountain, I wanted to walk across it but guess what? Tae Su said it was too dangerous and to palli wa. Grrrr. So I took a picture in front of it instead. Hahaha.

After our hike, we had a few minutes before check in so we just sat around for a bit. After we checked in, Tae Su and the guys started lunch. While the guys were cooking lunch the girls took showers! Hahaha. At lunch, we sat outside under a shelter at some picnic tables. They cooked the samgipsal on a grill in front of us. It was so good because it had the charcoal flavor to it.

After lunch, we cleaned up and changed clothes to go swimming in the river. They told us that we weren't going swimming on this trip so Douchi and I didn't bring our swimsuits. I went in with just a tshirt and shorts. Mell brought her suit, and Douchi didn't go in. She took pictures. They were good pictures too! We had so much fun swimming in the river! We brought a soccer ball. While Tae Su was figuring out where would be "safe enough" for us to swim, some of us started kicking the ball around. I kicked the ball too hard and it bounced off one of the guy's legs and landed in the middle of a rice field! Hahaha. It was so funny! Have you ever seen a rice field before? It has tall grass in a flooded field. So it was very muddy and we couldn't see the ball. One of the guys went in and almost lost his flip flops so he had to go barefoot through the mud to find it. Another guy was sitting on Tae Su's shoulders to see if he could see the ball. It was so funny! He finally found the ball, and we walked down to the river. It was so much fun! The water was super cold but we splashed and dunked each other. We also played volleyball with the soccer ball. It was so much fun! We were trying to play water polo but Tae Su decided it was too dangerous with the rocks. Hahaha. So we decided to head back to the pension where we took our second shower of the day. Hahaha.

Then, we decided to play basketball on a "dirt court" which was more of a weed and mud court instead. We played with a volleyball (go figure, volleyball with a soccerball and then basketball with the volleyball). Nothing makes sense. We slipped and slid all over the court and we couldn't bounce the ball because of the weeds. It was hilarious! We were all covered in mud. So we all took our third shower of the day. We hung our clothes up on the balcony to dry so we wouldn't track the mud into the pension, but the wind started blowing later during the night and the clothes ended up everywhere! This morning, I found my shorts and tshirt along with two guys boxer shorts in a tree under the balcony. It was so funny because I grabbed them and brought them up. One of the guys was like hey that's my underwear and grabbed them from me. It was hilarious. He kept thanking me for finding them for him.

But after basketball, we took showers and Tae Su and the boys started on dinner. After dinner, we played games, talked, listened to music, and danced. It was a lot of fun. We stayed up all night. Well, I tried to anyways, but apparently I was sleeping in my chair and Tae Su made me go to bed. Hahaha. Poor Tae Su, I gave him a hard time all weekend!

This afternoon, the pension drove us back to the gym. Once again we crammed in the van. But, one of the guys got a little car sick and started vomiting in the back seat. The back seat was the most crowded because there were six guys in a four person seat. All of the other guys were really sweet about it and held a plastic bag while he was vomiting. They were tapping his back and everything. No one made him feel bad about it either. They had to have been miserable but they were trying to be light about it. Luckily, we were only ten minutes from the gym, but the back smelled like ramen from the bag of vomit. I had a window seat and Mell and I stuck our heads right by the window. Her and I were both about to vomit too from the smell. I don't know how the guys in the back did it. Those guys are quite possibly the nicest people I have ever met in my entire life.

It was an amazing weekend! I cannot wait for the next trip!