Picture post and Hwe-shik Story

Picture update of my usual run in the morning + new find:

Just outside of the city.  Maybe two minutes into my run.

Further down the road you see....

My running path.

Here it is.  The Batman symbol and the cake building.

That sure looks like a cake to me.

I was correct the bat symbolizes bats in the caves.

I walked by the hospital down the street and found this path.

The path lead to this beautiful scene.

A little pagoda sits on top of the mountain path.

A world sits next to the cake building.

The trail leads to the hospital?

Back to the city.

The main artery of Samchok.

Not so busy side street of Samchok.

Common to see 4-5 stories full of shops everywhere in Samchok's downtown.

Literally 50 paces from my apartment is a park and a beautiful building on the hill.

After I went on this walk I went home to rest until my school's hweshik at 6:30pm.  What I didn't expect was the bus driver to knock on my door 20 minutes after I got back home.  He said let's go ride bike.  I said ok.?!?!?!?  I threw on my shoes and headed out the door to a car full of some teachers.  They said ride bike in English and Korean but I was really unaware of what was to happen.  They kept driving south for at least 20 minutes.  I keep thinking to myself "Are we riding bikes all the way back?"  I knew enough Korean to ask them but I thought "what the hay, it's more of an adventure if I don't know what is happening."  We finally ended up in a town next to the ocean.  We got out and the guys kept saying ride bike.  We finally ended up here.

I didn't expect these bikes.

From the rail bike.

We stopped half way through the ride (maybe 30 minutes) and the other teachers pulled out water bottles and snacks.  Low and behold the water bottles were full of Soju and they started pouring for me and the others.  Come on it's 4pm.  Again when in Rome.

We hopped back on the bikes and the three other teachers in my "bike rail car" asked me to sing.  I started to sing New York New York.  They really enjoyed it.  The only thing was it got really hot once we made our way into the olympic gold medalist cave.  One of the marathon runners in Korea won the 1992 olympics and we passed through his home town on the bikes.  It was a big deal but the cave prior to his home town was EXTREMELY hot.

The olympic marathon gold medalist's home town.

We finished and went to hweshik.  Too bad my camera's battery died, but I was able to get a few photos on my phone.  There will be more hweshiks to come.

Anyway the hweshik consisted of the teachers giving toasts about something I didn't understand...then I gave a toast which consisted of Thank you in Korean and please enjoy the meal in the most formal language possible in Korean.  The teacher's really enjoyed it.  Otherwise, the food was fantabulous (pig skin and pig stomach with lots and lots of vegetables).  I spent a lot of the time pouring soju to my seniors and drinking but I stopped way before my limit and had them serve me "cider" or what we would call Sprite and Pepsi.  It was really fun to bond with my co-teacher and the other teachers in a very relaxed atmosphere and get to practice my Korean.

The bus driver and his chums are the heavy drinkers of our school and really like me so they wanted to go out to the 2nd round and drink more.  I kindly tried to decline but one said it was Korean etitiquitte in English so I had to give him credit for the correct sentence.  It again was real fun because these guys have .000000005% English and they only speak Korean.  A lot of chances to practice.  They were keen on telling me that they like me and that I have to go out with them again and do billiards, bowling and more drinking.

What an experience.