yesterday tricia and I went hiking in the mountains near our apartment ("near" in this case meaning about a 45 minute walk away). fucking amazing. I've seen mountains before, but never have I climbed around all up in them like this. there were trails, but they were not smoothly paved trails...there was much climbing carefully over big rocks, jagged but rubbed smooth by foot traffic...lots of places where the trails were very narrow, etc. it was a good full body workout, which was wonderful, but beyond that it was gloriously beautful. these mountains are covered by trees, so you're in the forest the whole time, and the scents were so familiar...real, honest to go natural dirt, pine needles, autumn leaves...of course I though about camp a lot. I do love cities, and consider myself a city girl in many ways, but there is a big part of me that just blooms into complete bliss when I'm in that kind of environment. climbing up was difficult (harder on the lungs than the muscles) and we were dripping with sweat by the time we got to the top, but the view of the city and the surrounding mountains made it more than worth it. I cannot wait until I'm able to get a digital camera. other points of interest on the hike included prayer caves, a temple, a creek, and the many public workout stations all along the trails. this is why koreans are in such good physical shape. it's not just their diet, it's their diet combined with the fact that exercise opportunities are abundantly available for free. elderly people climb the mountains, walk by the river and do free aerobics in the park! if the u.s. would only pick up on some of this, think of the drop in the obesity rate!
after climbing, we went to a swing dance lesson...we thought it was a beginner class, but it turned out to be advanced. tricia kept up with the advanced instruction failry well, having swing danced before. however, liz and john (american and canadian friends of tricia's) and I had no idea what we were doing. a couple of the intructors graciously gave us a remedial swing lesson on the side, which was a lot of fun...we got down the basic step and a couple of turns. I don't know if I'll go back, since the instruction is, for the most part, in korean, but it was definitely fun and I might try swing lessons back in the u.s. sometime.
this morning we had our first korean lesson in a coffee shop called seven monkeys! yeah monkeys. learned the alphabet and a few phrases. I'm excited about learning korean, and it seems that six months of lessons will give me at least a small grasp on it.