Wandering Browns

This week seems like it will be our last here in Korea, we're still not sure, but will hopefully know tomorrow. This post is dedicated to all those little memories and things that I found entertaining about this great country. 1. Lots of people smoke here. The good thing is that if they are Korean cigarettes, they don't smell terrible. Chinese cigarettes smell terrible. One day, Landon and I were out on the Hangang park river trail with lots of cyclists. I noticed quite a few stopping at benches along the way for a smoke break. That seemed weird to me, but at least they were participating in part of a healthy lifestyle. I wish I had caught video footage of this one guy, though. He finished his smoke break, stomped out his cigarette and immediately put his face mask on- I'm assuming to protect his lungs from the pollution of Seoul. Buddy, I think the pollution will not kill you as fast as inhaling burning chemicals and tar into your lungs! 2. Koreans get really into w...

This is my favorite tree. Mostly because of these cute leaves.  The morning after the typhoon, it was a little damp but not too bad. We went to McDonald's for breakfast and had pancakes for the first time in months, which was awesome! Landon ate 2 whole pancakes himself. Then we headed over to the Mt. Hallasan Eorimok trail for some hiking. Mt. Hallasan is the volcano from which the island of Jeju came to be. It is smack dab in the middle of the island and it is several km to the summit. We started out on the trail just kind of waiting to see how long we could go with Landon. We don't have a hiking backpack and don't want to cart one around everywhere- especially since he is so heavy that I wouldn't want to ever wear the backpack. So we have to play it by ear every time. This pretty bush was on the side of a run-off stream As we neared the parking lot area, it got really foggy. It was not foggy in Jeju but I guess all the moisture made it incredibly foggy o...

Every day this week, I intended our outings to be half-day outings, with plenty of time to come home and have Landon take a good nap. Our hike day was pretty much the only day this happened. Landon was content to wander away without us into the woods while we figured out where to go Landon woke up pretty early and so we headed out early for the national park. We wanted to do some hiking! I did not realize this before, but Koreans are really into hiking. They all have the hiking sticks and special hiking clothes and shoes and hats and other face coverings to keep the sun off their faces. They take backpacks and are probably prepared for anything at any moment. We just had on athletic clothes and running shoes. Because the hikers all look like hikers, it was pretty easy to figure out where to go. We took a few trains, then a bus to the entrance of the park. We had to hike up the road quite a ways, but it was interesting as we passed virtually every outdoorsy type store you co...