Soul Seeking: lunar new year

hooray for long weekends! yeehaw. i had no yoga on sunday. it was the lunar new year & st. valentine's day (hey, it involves chocolate & love, so i'm not knockin' it) in one fantastic weekend.

one of my favorite gals, trisha, and i took this oppor-tunity to bust outta the city and venture somewhere / anywhere new. we scoped some couchsurfing profiles in search of the quirky /cool/fun ones on the peninsula. sent out a few requests, got a few responses & went w/ a fella named will, from montana, who now lives near the coast way down south.

we arrived via bus, well prepared for a good time(instruments in tow) & bearing gifts: valentine chocolates (re-gifts from our students), a handcrafted card, oatmeal raisin cookies (which turned out to be the best cookies i've ever made), spicy veggie chili (a la trisha), 5 bottles of wine, some soju, two tubs of homemade hummus and some sugar & cinnamon for morning french toast.

saturday morning, will & his friend, wes, led us on a hike in jirisan national park.

trisha & i had both hiked jirisan before, but not this part, and not in the dead of winter. we couldn't have asked for a better day. the sun was oh so kind, and the whole landscape was covered in the most perfect layer of sparkly snow.

the forest was quiet, aside from the faint crunching underfoot & the tinkle of crystalline leaves as we brushed by.
we pushed our way through snowy bamboo thickets, making the first tracks in the glittering crust of snow.

crispy, red leaves cradled snowflakes in their curls and every brittle twig was dipped in pure, yet tasteless, rock sugar.

a waterfall was still gushing with life while all else was frozen.

and the view of the snowy ridges from our peak was pretty darn amazing.

after slipping and sliding in our cold feet part of the way down, trisha and i couldn't resist the urge to become mountain cats (she was an ocelot...i, a lynx) and we bounded down through the fresh powder in no time, leaving our hosts a ways behind. near the bottom, we came upon some manicured and seemingly sacred grounds dotted w/ primitive cave-like dwellings ...

like the shire in hobbiton, or something. i suppose the place is usually alive w/ cultural ceremonies and what not for tourists on any other weekend, but this was a special holiday. the lunar new year. everyone was keeping warm indoors, somewhere, celebrating in tradition with their families.

so the guys caught up w/ us as the sun was starting to set. it was growing colder and we needed to find a place to sleep for the night. but everything appeared to be closed. we finally came to a small, traditional-style home w/ a light on so we knocked on the door.

a small woman slid the door open and then a baby (with the most brilliant and genuine smile in the world) appeared in the door frame. we communicated in our minimal korean that we were looking for a place to stay and the woman briefly consulted a sweet-looking elderly lady before inviting us inside. they asked if we were hungry, which we were indeed, and they made us a big meal, which was served w/ pride by the grandma herself. the family was all together and it was obvious that we were imposing a bit on their holiday, but they were so gracious and friendly. we passed some time with the family, exchanging many smiles and head-bows, before we retired to the room that they had arranged for us.

that night felt like a high-school sleepover. the room was freezing and we had only few blankets, so we huddled together on the floor, sipping wine and eating cookies as we giggled over hours of silly stories before finally falling to sleep.

in the morning, after being served a complete breakfast including kimchi AND dongdongju (milky rice wine), we hitched our way to the bus stop back to will's place. we were all dirty & exhausted so, after showering, we decided to watch goodwill hunting while eating chili and hummus..oh, and lots of wine. later, we migrated to a neighborhood friend's place where we continued to drink and watch 80s music videos.