Viking

Saturday - June 6
I had my first outdoorsy adventure. One great way for people to meet other people with similar interests that is really great here is on meetup.com

On Saturday I went to a meetup for vegetarian hikers (shortened to vikers). I am now pretty confident on the subway after having to find my way to Migeum where we were meeting up which was about an hour and a half and 4 line changes away.

We hiked up two mountains and went through a lovely little park. I think the area was called Bulgok and the mountains we hiked were Youngjang and Yuldong. Yuldong was after lunch and I think Yuldong was also the name of the park.

It was really beautiful and probably the most striking thing was how naturey it was in the middle of the Seoul metropolis. It was incredible to be hiking through the mountain trails and all the sudden catch a glimpse of the intense urban sprawl through the trees. Something that I've noticed about Korea so far is that there does seem to be an extreme juxtaposition of urban and rural. It makes me wonder if suburbs exist here. That transitional section doesn't really seem to be necessary here, which was something I also noticed during my plane trip.

There were lots of ducks. I thought this one was really pretty. There was also the largest goose I have ever seen and some monstrous koi.

Not to mention the absolutely killer playground. I mean look at it. It's hard to make a playground with more innate coolness.