not so far out

I woke up this morning and it was pouring rain. This did not bode well for the potential outing we had planned for the mountains, but things cleared up around noon and we got the heck out of the city. No matter which direction you look in Taegu, you can always see high rise buildings and you can always see mountains. The city pic above is from my hotel room. It's easy to forget with so much concrete around, that if you can see the mountains, you can probably get into them fairly easily. ha.

First you sit in traffic with the rest of the Koreans who are also trying like heck to get out of the city. Then you become nostalgic for the slow move of traffic when you get into the country and the roads are about the size of sidewalks and feel as if they were laid out by a drunk with vertigo. Oh, but it was so worth it. Once you leave the traffic behind, it's immediately rural, and you feel like the city must be ages away, but really it's not so far out. Twenty minutes got us out of the city and forty-five got us into the middle of nowhere.















The mountains here are gorgeous as you can see in the pics I included. The roads are lined with crepe myrtles, climbing roses, and lots of beautiful little wild flowers. And many of the valley areas have water that was dammed above them, so you can go up on the berm and see out over the whole valley in one direction, and you have a beautiful little lake behind you. It is also a bit of a status symbol to go and dine in the restaurants that are out in the mountains, so there are tons of cute, interesting, and even strange places to eat lunch. This mushroom looking place is a restaurant! We had a wonderful time.

I went with Julie, the special ed teacher here and her chihuahua Roc-kay. I have met so many fun people at my school. And I even met a DOD guy today who wrote a nonfiction book about Haiti! Korea is full of interesting english speakers. I can only imagine how much broader my world will be when I defeat my illiteracy and mutism. I'm really having a hard time with not being able to communicate. Me being me, I just want to talk to everybody. So far I've only added thank you and excuse me to my one word repertoire of hello. My next acquisitions will definitely be good-bye and I'm sorry.