The Market

It's a lazy and rather warm Saturday afternoon here in Seosan. Lance and I have just arrived home from the market with a bushel full of veggies.  Our haul included some cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic and some tiny apples as well as some freebie onions an ajumma gave us for good luck. It was a fairly successful venture. We took some photos so you could see what a traditional market looks like in South Korea.

Lunch. Meals for both of us cost $9. This is a kimbap restaurant, which is the closets thing Korea has to diners. The food is cheap and delicious and they're usually open 24/7. 

My favorite subject to take pictures of are cute Korean children. 

At the market you'll find a lot of fish, some dried and some very very fresh. These guys were still alive when I took the picture. 

They also have a nice selection of butchers at the market, mostly to sell pork and a little bit of beef. 

Dried Sting Rays. Yum.

This is the fish lady's kitten. He just likes to hang out by the fish and get lots of petting. 

I don't know what these guys are, but they look like mini cthullu's to me. 

Ajumma and he grandson sharing something delicious.

These are succulents and they're surprisingly popular in our area.

We're on Tumblr Now!!!!

Hello readers!  We've started a Tumblr.  You can follow us on there for mostly just pictures.  We'll still post updates with pictures and our stories of adventure and climbing big ass mountains, but we'll be posting more frequently on Tumblr. You can find our Tumblr blog here.

We Climbed a Mountain (a Big Ass Mountain...not really. But big to us.)

So get ready for a lot of green. These pictures we collected from our hike last weekend aren't as interesting as some of the other pictures we've posted, but they were hard earned. I may not have mentioned it, but we have moved to mountain country. Which is pretty much all of Korea, but it's pretty majestic for us Florida folk. Since we're short on cash until we get paid on the 20th (Almost 2 months without a full paycheck, and three since our last paycheck from SDA will do that to you) we've been enjoying the freer attractions our area happens to have. So that means climbing mountains. It means almost dying while doing it and wanting to turn back half a million times, but dammit you've come this far and you're going to see the top! Each time we neared the top, each time we felt like we had made it, there was another flight of stairs lurching perilously to a bottomless drop off the mountain. So. Many. Stairs. Stairs so steep you thought you might as well crawl up them. To add insult to our altitude-sickness-induced injury, we kept being overtaken by old people. Hiking must be the national sport in Korea (it certainly makes up a lot of their everyday fashion choices) and I think it must be one of the only thing old people here enjoy.  Coming from Florida, I know a good bit about old people. When we get old in America we go fishing, play golf and tend to our perfectly-manicured-best-on-the-block lawns. Its what we do. Here, they climb mountains and make foreigners feel bad about themselves. We also visited a nearby beach and collected sea glass. A much favored activity to climbing big ass mountains. Though there are probably more big ass mountains in our imminent future.

This is the view from our apartment. We are surrounded by rice patties. 

Lance on Malipo beach

Malipo beach

Malipo

Malipo

Fishermen on Malipo

Cute Korean Baby in Rain Gear (Traditional Korean Beach Clothing)

Hottie

Me and Malipo

It came as a pretty big surprise to me that not all beaches are made up of soft white sand, but here we are. I'm pretty sure the people here a digging for shell fish.

Mountain meets Ocean

Me at the beginning of our hike. Notice how I don't look like I'm about to die. The peak behind me is where we hiked to. 

The gentle path is very deceptive. 

Majestic. Like a Unicorn.

tree

leaf

We're getting closer to the elusive summit. Just up this last flight of stairs...dammit.

These are burial mounds. People in Korea bury their dead on Mountains in semi private plots. We come across a lot of them as we go hiking.

Look how high up we are! The village below is where we started.

Just as small sample of the ajumma (middle aged) ladies who out hiked us. I don't think we're to fault though, they came prepared with sun visors and hiking sticks.

The gentle path is no longer gentle.

Stairs of doom

At the top. Almost dead.

Smiling when I realize that I survived climbing a big ass mountain.