Namsan Tower

Chuseok is the Korean harvest holiday. It's like Thanksgiving in America. It means that I didn't have to teach on Friday. I had the day off and it was a beautiful, fall day. That meant a hike was in order. One of the veteran teachers took Blake and I to the area where Namsan Tower is located and we began the hike. Here is our destination from quite a ways away. This a meters away from the sub station that we arrived at, and we had a long ways to go.
After we made it to the trail head, we began the climb up the hill and through the forest. The trees had not started to change color yet, but you could hear the rustling of dry leaves. Soon, the leaves will be gold, orange, and brown, but for now it just sounded very nice. Also, there were a lot of pine trees and it reminded me of a forest in Northern Minnesota.
It looked like this was an area for runoff to go in order to prevent erosion. There were a few of them along the way. They had facts about the life cycle of frogs, which, I'm sure would have been interesting to any Korean reading child. I just looked at the pictures and learned...I think.Here are some mysterious creatures I saw in the woods. Oh...wait...those are English teachers. They are indigenous to this area.Along the way there were piles of rocks used as trail markers. I added a rock to a couple of them. They reminded me of when I climbed a mountain in Colorado and there was just NO way of knowing if you were on the trail or not. Thank goodness for previous hikers. The trail wasn't as hard to follow here because it was cut through the woods pretty darn well.Near the top of the hill there was a giant wall. At a time, long ago, this hilltop was used as a strategic outpost, so the evidence of some of these structures could be seen in a couple of places. The first picture is straight at the wall and the second is straight up the wall.We made it to the top! Here is the tower a bit closer. It is very big...and on the bottom of the tower is...These next few pictures are from the observation decks at the bottom of the tower. It cost money to get to the top, which would have been amazing, but I really didn't have the funds to do that. Maybe next time.There is a tradition for couples that go to Namsan Tower. They buy a lock together, write something on it, lock it on the fence at the top of the hill (base of the tower), and then, together, throw the key over the edge of the cliff. This means their bond will always be locked and they can't break it. Romantic, huh? There was a lot of locks up there and it was pretty neat to see.There were some great gardens...More shots from the observation areas at the base of Namsan Tower. Lot of great views, to say the least.Not sure what the story is with this fountain, but I saw it from kilometers away...yes...kilometers, not miles, away.Pictures of the Han river that runs right through the middle of Seoul...A pagoda and also, the signal fires to signal when armies where coming. One if by land, two if by sea...or something like that. I don't know...it was all in Korean.Hey! Look! It's me! And Seoul!More scenes from Seoul.We cheated and took the gondola down the mountain. I was in a hurry because at eight pm the first hockey game of the season was being shown at a great bar. I ate a cheeseburger and had a Coke and some garlic, cheesy bread. It was fantastic. Anyway, here are views from our ride down.Well, there you go. Happy Chuseok everyone. I am gonna enjoy some of my Chuseok gift from the school: three bottles of raspberry wine. Very good. Also, there is a plum wine in there that has flakes of gold. The director made sure we noticed that so we would think they spent a lot of money on us. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you all are enjoying the fall and the harvest. I certainly miss this time of year in the United States, so you should email me some pictures of the harvesting going on. Fall is my favorite time of year, so it will be interesting to be in a giant city where I will not see anything having to do with farming. Ok. Miss you all. Becky...if you are reading...I thought of you while I had my very own tea time today. It wasn't the same.

Later gators.