Going for a walk, somewhere new...

A friend is putting together a collection of posts on the theme of "Going for a walk, somewhere new", which seems particularly appropriate to our circumstances. Since we've just moved to an area of Seoul where I've never had cause to go before, pretty much everywhere we go is somewhere new. Anyhow, we decided to take a walk this weekend to see what is in our neighbourhood.

I've posted photos before showing the view of Seoul Tower when you look to the right out of our front door. Well if you look to the left there is a small mountain (a hill in English terms). Well mountains are there to be climbed, so that's what we set out to do.
On the way to the mountain, I noticed that one of our neighbours seems to have very green fingers and is cultivating grapes. Woe betide if you try to take any though, the sign says "I have used pesticides, do not eat or pick!" We walked around the corner of the apartment block you can see in the first photo and got quite a surprise. From our apartment, we can see a car park that is empty during the week and quite full at weekends and I'd assumed it was for people planning to hike up the hill. When I actually came to it however, it turned out to be the car park for this huge church. That makes three churches within spitting distance of our flat.
Now we were ready to start our assault on the summit. Now, you may be worried because we're not equipped with the crampons, pitons and ice axes that the majority of Korean hikers carry, but it's ok, i've never seen anyone have cause to use that kind of equipment and I was fairly sure this hill would be the same. (Unless those equipments are useful to ward of the millions of mosquitoes that were flying around, in which case I take it all back). Actually the mosquitoes devoured Sunme but left the rest of us alone. Do you think this marks her out as a witch or something? Now when I first started learning Korean there was a chapter about Korean hobbies which stated that Koreans love hiking in the mountains and that when they get to the top they love to shout "Yahoo!" as a form of stress-relief. Well I sure hope they've updated that chapter because when we got to the top the first thing we saw was this sign: For those of you who don't read Korean it says: "Let's use mountains quietly. Shouting "Yahoo!" from the top of mountains can disturb wild animals and local residents" That didn't stop one guy from screaming his lungs out, although by the time we reached the top there was no sign of the person responsible for the bloodcurdling screams so maybe he was screaming because he was being mauled by Manchurian tigers and black bears that are no longer scared away be people shouting "Yahoo!" Anyway I digress.

You may remember that I posted the other week about climbing a hill and coming across Daeseong temple. Well there were no cultural surprises waiting for us at the top this week, just a clock. Don't ask me why. The view from the top wasn't particularly special either; it had an odd aspect and didn't really look out over anything. I think it's Sadang and on towards Kwacheon behind those hills. We headed down the hill, aiming for the football pitch you can see on the left of the view from the top. We had heard that there is a Hong Myung-Bo football academy (홍명보 축구 교실) in our area and we wanted to observe a class so that we could decide whether to sign Alex up for it or not. We got there and observed a class of 4-5 year olds learning various skills from a teacher. It all looked very professional until the minute they started a five-a-side practice game at which point it descended into a swarm of children chasing after the ball. Still the teacher seemed to know what she(!) was doing so I guess we'll sign him up.
It was getting towards dinner time and time to head home so we set off. The only thing of interest to note on the way back was the HQ of a taxi firm. This had a multi-story car park filled with taxis but we resisted temptation and 20 minutes later we were back in familiar territory and ready for dinner.