Muju's very pretty. Given that I hate snow and all its slippery iciness, I didn't particularly care about missing the skiing by coming here off-season. Also, there was a lot of good hiking to be done, and the most memorable part of the trip was going hiking with my host grandpa (my host mom's dad).
By memorable I of course mean painful. Friday evening, host gramps - let's call him Haraboji, the Korean word for grandfather (할아버지) - announced that he was going to take a little walk early Saturday morning. My host mom, knowing that I enjoy hiking, told him to take me along. Being naive, I thought - yeah, this could be fun, plus I'd get to bond with my Korean host grandpa. And this guy's in his seventies, there's no way it'll be anywhere near rigorous.
Well, that was FALSE, because Korean grandparents are a different species of human altogether. I'll get to his crazy fitness level in a bit. I asked what time I should wake up the next morning and my host mom said around 7am or so. So I set my alarm for 6:45, thinking I'd be ahead of the game and show gramps that I'm not a lazy ass foreigner. That didn't matter, as Haraboji kicked my door open at 6:30am. Even grandma was still asleep at that point, but by the time I lugged my ass out of bed and crawled into the bathroom, I saw that he'd nudged poor old grandma awake, too. She didn't look too happy either. I tried to ask them if they'd slept well, but given that it was freaking 6:30am, there was no chance of me remembering any of the honorific expressions that Koreans use to address their elders, so I just grunted stupidly and pointed at their feet, for some reason. It was 6:30 in the morning, okay?
We walked out of the condo and Haraboji pointed at the peak that we were going to ascend, and said that it would take around two hours round trip. Didn't look too steep a hike, so no problem at all, it seemed. The minute he started walking up the hill, I realised that I had a mountain goat for a companion. Gramps walked fast - really, really fast. At this point I figured that Korean grandparents must have a built-in walking speed of 70 kilometers per hour. Anyway, not only did he walk fast, but at one point he made me walk uphill backwards. Being one hell of a clumsy motherfucker, I was not happy about this, but I gave it a try anyway. At least it gave me an excuse for why I was walking at the rate of a snail on crutches. No tripping occurred, but I decided I would be firm and say no if he suggested I do the same going downhill - which he did, of course. I ended up walking backwards downhill, too. I have a problem when it comes to refusing when I'm in Korea, which may or may not have resulted in a disastrous date with a sleazy Korean dude a month or two ago. The things I do for the sake of hilarity.
Anyway, we encountered a couple of Ajummas on the walk up the mountain, for which I was initially grateful as I thought that chatting with them would slow gramps down. Wishful thinking. But anyway, I could tell they were Ajummas rather than Halmonis as they said that they graduated from Ewha Womans University (where I'm currently studying Korean) back in 1978. This was one of the few things I understood in the rapid-fire exchange between these three elderly Koreans. Oh, I also happened to pick out the one sentence where one of the Ajummas gestured towards me and asked Haraboji, "where is she from? India?" Oh yes. I'll never escape being mistaken for Indian, even when I'm traipsing through the Korean mountains with Ajummas.
So in retrospect, the hike was not particularly difficult - just a little too fast for my liking - and my sneakers, as they decided to give up on me and fall apart when we got back to the bottom... thanks for that, gramps.
We could have taken the gondola... oh wait, it was 7am. Tour operators weren't awake yet! grumble...
yeah okay, it was a pretty walk.
Haraboji!
He started flapping his arms like a bird at one point... I swear this is all true.
My Ajumma companions
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