Chuseok: Soaked in Sokcho

Chuseok is essentially Korean Thanksgiving. Everyone has a long weekend (Monday and Tuesday off), and heads home to their oldest living relative to spend time with the family. Due to the fact that so many people have to travel across the country, it is a relatively long holiday. For new comers to the country its difficult to head home to see family, and hard to come up with a plan for a long weekend two weeks in. I ended up heading to Sokcho, a city (but compared to Seoul.. it is more of a town), with three lovely ladies two of which are also teachers with the CBE and one who is a childhood friend of one of the ladies I went with.

Although I know you know Korea like the back of your hand and I don't need to explain where I went... I took a 4 hour bus ride East to the mountains and beach. We got off the bus, didn't have a place to stay and we didn't have much of a plan (which for all of you that know me, this is a rare occurrence to not have things planned).  We found a Hotel called Good Morning which was right beside the bus station and a 4 minute walk to the beach. On Saturday we chilled, played in the beach in the "typhoon" (just a lot of rain), and chilled in a cafe to warm up, dry off and plan the weekend!  Sunday came around and we chose to go hiking. As we were about to take the bus to the nearby national park Seoraksan we met another North American solo traveler who joined our group for the rest of the weekend. Together we hiked up to see a 10 tone boulder, what we called the "Superman" rock, then hiked further to the summit. Although not all of us made it (including myself... silly knee injury), it was a SOAKING wet hike. We were all soaked despite wearing rain jackets and having umbrellas... yes you read that correctly in Korea nearly everyone hikes with an umbrella. Also nearly every "hike" has stairs built into it! No lie... so for all those people who have bad knees.. be warned. :) Also if you travel.. I highly suggest a waterproof camera! Although the lens got wet and really we had nothing dry to clear it off with... it was so nice to still take photos in the poring rain!

Thankfully by the time Monday hit, the rain started to clear and we could hike in relatively dry conditions. Tuesday was much the same except I managed some beach time in the sun after the hike I chose to do. Call us Canadian's crazy but the water was warm and the idea of being on a beach (even when it is cloudy) was wonderful!  On Wednesday we headed back to Seoul and reality hit again that we had to go back to work (even though it is a two day work week).