When Arkansans Meet Up in Gwangju, SK

"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful." -Joshua J. Marine

I tell you, it's extremely crazy how small this 🌏is.  Finding another Arkansas in the same country is not the crazy part, but in a sense, knowing you're "family through marriage."  Hey Brittany!!🙋

I've been looking for an opportunity to see something else in South Korea, and I got the chance to check out Gwangju.  It's a nice, decent size city.  I'm a "northerner" here in South Korea, so Brittany had to show me around this part of the south.  😅  For the short weekend adventures, I really enjoyed myself.  It's refreshing to catch up with someone from home.

I believe that I can conquer any part of Korean with Brittany.  With our reasonable amount of Korean and understanding, we're able to get around pretty well.  She had me experience my first public bus ride.  (I wasn't for buses at first, I always preferred the metro.)  Even though Brittany is very familiar with Gwangju, I had her reaching new levels with hiking and walking the absolute most🙃. It's amazing what other travelers can bring to your adventures.  When we first arrived, we went to a lovely Korean BBQ spot and grilled us some good meat.  The weather isn't to shiny in Korea, as it is the monsoon season, but we didn't let that stop up.  We did some sightseeing and then decided to hit the bowling lanes for a night of fun!  It was at that moment when I decided I needed to find the bowling alley in my city.🎳

05.18 Memorial Park

 

Asian Culture Complex Fountain

Conquering Mudeungsan 무등산

1100m Up- "Mama I made it!"

So, we started our morning off with breakfast at 0700, fueling ourselves for the hike. *SN: As you know, there seems to always be some type of bump in the road that tries to hold you back. I had an encounter at the convenient store where I learned the difference between five thousand and fifty thousand in Korean. 🤷 You learn something new everyday!* Let the adventures begin!

So we started our journey, not knowing exactly where we were hiking to, we were just walking for the views.  The further along we got, our goal started to develop. I think we surprised a lot of Koreans on our hike. They were so intrigued to see two black, foreign women hiking. The higher we got, the more conversations they wanted to have with us. We did have our two sets of couples that we kept track of. They were our guide to pace ourselves😎. Speaking of "the higher we got," the trails got steeper and steeper. Their definition of intermediate seemed to be advanced. But, we had to keep going cause we didn't want the older folks outdoing us. Every time we got close to reaching a stopping point, we'd convince ourselves to turn back around cause we did enough. Once we got to that reaching point, we'd change the decision and continued because we could do it. Still, the higher we got up, the more encounters we had with Koreans. A man tired to give Brittany a whole hiking lesson and more about why we need hiking shoes.🙄 Clearly we made it thus far, our Nike's did just fine. Mind you, we saw some Koreans with tennis shoes, slides, forces...... Anyways, with all the counter convincing, we finally made it to the top! 

 

 

 

It was definitely needed. We were able to talk about life, reflect on our experiences here as teachers, and our future plans and goals in life. We're just two Arkansans trying to see the world.

Until the next adventure,

“Everybody wants to reach the peak, but there is no growth on the top of a mountain. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life’s next peak.” -Andy Andrews