The Goatess is Back

I have been so busy with my Korean class, I haven't had time to organize my photos and my diary from Nepal. I'll do a whole big beautiful entry on my trip there when I come back from my trip in Thailan at the end of February. For now, I just want to give you a peek into my life after coming back.
I started my course on Jan. 5th, and I have been renting a room here. I've been so busy and I have had a toothache, no time to hike BUT, last Saturday....


Finally a Saturday without an appointment with the dentist so I could hike, 'challenge the winter mountain, as Chang-dae, would so poetically say. And a challenge it was. We hiked on Chugumsan close to Pochon. Although CD graded it as an easy hike, - and it should have been, climbing up to 813 m to the highest peak, and coming donw - the trail was quite steep and frozen, the ice hiding under layers of snow and rotten leaves. We never knew if we were safe or not. The new hiker Alex didn't have crampons, and Jee-hye had them on one foot only. We were slipping and sliding, holding on to trees, rock, roots, anything that would prevent us from falling and hurting ourselves. What joy it was to finally reach the Bears Town, a ski resort. After some odaeng, we hopped on the bus that took us to the city. We dined in a fine Korean establishment called "Madang" (yard) close to Konkuk University. The dinner being so late (8:00 pm) we were very hungry and we ended up ordering two huge bowls of kimchi-chiggae (kimchi soup), an order of each tubu kimchi (tofu and kimchi), kimchi jon (kimchi pancake), haemul pajong (seafood pancake) and two huge bowls of dong-dong ju. We ate and ate ate and we finished all of the food. There were some masks on the wall; they provided us a lot of fun. We put them on our faces and took pictures. Georges has posted them on the hiking web and they are hillarious!