Rockclimbing @ Maisan

I've just joined a web group called Korea on the Rocks (KOTR). It's a site for rock climbing around South Korea, and last weekend there was this post:

"Quite possibly Korea's best kept secret, Maisan has incredible climbing at two stunning crags! With climbs rated from "5.fun" to 5.13, Maisan has something for everyone. It's a great place to practice leading, pump out your arms, or impress your friends on the tricky overhanging crux moves. If you haven't seen Maisan's unique conglomerate formations yet, you don't want to miss out!! And if you have been to Maisan, I know you're just sitting in breathless anticipation, counting down the hours until the weekend... "

How could we possibly ignore a sales pitch like that? So a few of us packed up Betty and headed for the next provence north of us, Jeollabukdo. We finally found the mountain, and began our day of fun climbs.

Everyone was amazed that we could still be doing climbs outdoors in December... and if you consider the fact that it was sub-zero temperatures and at times we literally couldn't feel our hands, others may think we were crazy! It is a very strange feeling being able to see your hand gripping a rock, but not actually be able to feel it. But despite this, and the rain on the second day, we had a great time.


Corey climbing in sub-zero temps in the rain = hardcore!



Dave on his way to the sky


The girl who put out the invitation, Lindsey, is a really cool chick who has only been climbing for about a year. She was going hard core on the first day and did 8 lead climbs without falling once!



Lindsey on her 6th(?) lead climb of the day.



Lindsey finishes another one!


Nicola, Jess and myself are all fairly new to the sport, but we were also giving the lead climbing a go.



Nicola & Jess... racing?



Nicola lead climbs her way up.


Sad to say, I didn't quite finish my lead climb, which made for an interesting climb for Terri later when, half way up, she realised she was not top rope-ing from the anchor after all. Instead of doing the easy thing, and coming back down to fix things, her husband decided to do some "engineering". They make a funny climbing team.


Brandon & Terri: Typical husband and wife day out?


Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of myself climbing, unless you count a shot of my leg. But I was able to complete a few climbs over the weekend. Strangely enough, I actually felt better on the second day, when it was raining and I couldn't feel my fingers or hands at all by the end of the climb!


Yes, that is my leg! The only pic of me over the weekend.


The rain started as mist on the second day and we were still able to get a climb or two in before it started becoming too uncomfortable. Instead of being upset by the weather, we took the opportunity to introduce one of our group to the wonderful Korean tradition of going to the Jinjilban (hot sauna).

The climbing group.
Back row L to R: Corey, Sonia, James, Jessica, Brandon, Terri, Dave.
Middle row L to R: Lindsey, Maggie, Nicola
Front: Me

It was a very fun weekend, with a great group of people! I hope to make it back here again... hopefully after the winter chill!

BBQ Anyone?


Hey everybody, it's the first sub 0 degree day of the year... I have a great idea! Lets have a BBQ.

But wait... even better, lets make it outside. Oh oh oh... even better... lets wait till the sun has gone down, and put it out on the oval where the wind can really make us feel alive!

Ooooooh and maybe we can play tennis as well. Oh, only 4 people can play tennis? Well that's ok, the others can watch while we play!

YEAH GREAT IDEA!!!!!!

And so the logic goes at my school.

Oh Korea, how I love thee.... but you still bemuse me.
:s

Autumn Roadtrip

I went on another roadtrip.

(Warning... a long blog followed by many purdy pics :)

This time we had 15 people come along, which meant having to hire two vans. The logistics of this one were much more difficult than the last trip. Originally I wanted to hire one mini-bus... the kind you see everywhere in Korea. All the schools use them to take the kids too and fro, so I thought it wouldn't be a problem finding one for hire. How wrong I was.

Every company that had one of these buses for hire, wanted me to hire the driver along with them. This is for a small bus. No more than 20 seats. An eighteen seater would have been perfect! I could have even scraped by with a 15 seater... but NO! If I want a bus, I have to hire the driver as well. This would mean also having to pay the driver, pay for his food and accommodation, struggle with the language barrier and also try to convince him that "Yes, I really do want to take this small back road with all the pretty trees and mountain scenery and not the super highway!".

In the end I found out my license wouldn't have covered anything over a 12 seater anyway. So this left me with the option of getting two smaller vans. Of course that means needing two drivers with appropriate licenses. As far as I knew, I was the only one in the group legally allowed to drive.

Thankfully a legendary guy by the name of Ian was able to organize a day off work to race over to Naju to get his Korean license. Great, so now we have two drivers... time to find a couple of mini-vans.

And once again the run around begins...

It seems this particular weekend is the one that the whole of Korea decided to hire vans to go see the Autumn Colours. (Did you know Korea has 4 seasons? You would think no other place in the world has by the way they proudly tell you... but I digress) Eventually my wonderful co-teacher found a company that had two mini-vans left and I organized for Ian and myself to pick them up from Gwangju the day before our departure.

So on Friday, I leave early from school and head over to Gwangju. Unfortunatelly I don't know exactly where this car hire place is. After quite a bit of messing around, we finally find it and get the two cars. Then we decided that since we were already in Gwangju, we should go have some dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. Then we had to drop my car off at Andrea's for the weekend. After visiting Andrea, we jumped in the cars and drove back down to Mokpo, where Ian then had to take his dog over to a friends place to look after for the weekend. He wasn't sure how to get there, so I came with him....

Finally I get into bed at about 1am the day before the trip.

Up again at 6am and I'm getting ready to meet everyone. Things actually went much more smoothly than I expected, with everyone arriving on time. We packed the cars and were away by a bit before 8am! Good going guys.

The rest of the trip went fairly well, except for the fact that my timing was badly off. I wanted to see sunset from a specific temple... but arrived there about a half an hour after the sun went down. Then the next day we arrived just in time to see the steam train I wanted to catch, pull out of the station. Appart from these minor things, we were able to see some beautiful scenery and it was nice just to be cruising around this lovely provence. Sometimes I forget just how beautiful Korea is, and it's on trips like this that I'm given a wonderful reminder.

Half way through the trip, we got a call to say Ian's dog had run away. Sadly his meant his wife, Amanda, had to do a quick trip back to Mokpo and missed the rest of the roadtrip. Thankfully she allowed Ian to continue on as second driver... and what a great job he did. There were times when I would think I had somehow lost him behind a slow car or at a traffic light, when he would suddenly come zooming up behind me again. I don't think I ever fully lost site of him in my rear vision mirror on the whole trip!

All in all, it was a great time that I hope to get to do again.

Here's some photos:



We would stop every few kilometers and everyone would pile out to take photos along the road. Safety second! Hahaha Lotsa fun.



We stopped at Daewonsa temple. It has a tibetan museum with these prayer drums outside.



One of the gates at Daewonsa



These giant beads were hung up in one of the Korean Maple trees. It must be about 20 meters long!



Some Buddhas lined up in the Autumn leaves.



Autumn leaves in a pond.



This super cute puppy lives at Daewonsa temple.



The leaves from a Ginko Tree.



A path at Daewonsa Temple.



Pedal power! A family having fun at the train museum.



This thing was weird. You hop in these little cages, and pedal to make it raise up using air-hydrolic pressure. Stop pedaling, and you go down. More fun than you'd imagine.



What's the best way of getting over the disapointment of missing the Steam train? Kiddie Dodgems!



This old fella (who was actually quite friendly, even though it doesn't look it in the photo) works at the historic village / film set weaving straw.



Weaving straw.


The end.

Rock-Climbing in the ROK

So Korea has rock-climbing... who knew?

I've only been a couple of times now (using ropes that is...), but I've decided I really want to get into this sport. It's a lot of fun and a great way to keep fit. And Ohhhhhhhhhhhh how unfit I am!

I know once upon a time I was able to do a one-armed chin-up with a full backpack on my back and another one in my other hand. I know I could do this, because I had to do it half way up a cliff without any ropes! Now I find I can't even lift my own body weight... using both hands!!!

It's time to start working on that.

So I've actually put some money towards it in the form of my own rock-climbing harness and boots and last weekend I went out and used them. I went to a beautiful waterfall with some friends.



One of the guys, Brandon, is quite good and he was able to set up the ropes and give us tips as we climbed. I was very happy with my first two climbs, not dropping off at all. My third climb wasn't so good.

It started with an under-hang, something I still haven't worked out how to do yet. It was very difficult and although I almost had it at one stage, I'd just run out of strength in my arms to pull me up. Then I kicked the rockwall and my toe went crack! That was it for the rest of the day... I'd stuffed my toe again!. I'm gonna have to strap it in the future.

Yesterday I found the Yeongam indoor rock-climbing center, but of course, I was there on the only day of the week that it's closed. I'm gonna have to go there more often. It looks great! I can't wait!

Here's some pics from the weekend...



The Cliffs




The Crew




Getting ready




Looking for holds




"Which way do I go? Oh yeah... UP!"




Almost there.




Changing Feet




All good. On the way back down.

All Hallow's Eve, Hallow E'en, Samhain, Halloween.


What ever you call it, it's today.

We had a party. Lots could be said, but I'm not gonna on the grounds that it might be incriminating... so here' the pics instead:


































These photos seem a lot darker than what I originally uploaded... but you get the idea. It was fun.

:)

Featuring the all new Nikon D40

So I've had my Canon for a while now and with the new zoom lens, it has been taking some amazingly good close-ups and some very nice pictures... but I've been struggling to get the pictures I want.

You see, with my old film Minolta, I rarely had to think about what settings I needed to get the photo I wanted. And the colours usually came out the way I expected them. Using it seemed intuitive. Maybe it was because this is the first SLR camera I learn't how to use properly.

Somehow, with my Canon Kiss digital camera, it's been more difficult. It does take some beautiful pictures, but I really have to think about the settings and often have to play with different values to get close to what I'm after. Rarely does it have the colours I want.

Each type of camera will cast a different hue on it's photos (much like switching between Fuji and Kodak film changes the photo). It's not that the colours are in-correct, it's just a different colour value. The Canon has a more blueish hue to it's photos. To me this makes it look slightly cold and sometimes washed out. My old Minolta had much warmer colours.

The other down side to my Canon is that it is a very heavy camera to take hiking and places where I'd probaby get great photos.

So last weekend, I had a photography weekend (see previous post) and struggled most of the day getting the photos I wanted. The next day I went to the mega-electronics-store, Kumho World and bought myself a brand new Nikon D40 digital SLR.




This camera actually has less Megapixles that my old Canon, but really, unless I'm blowing things up to poster size, the difference is unnoticable. By the time I'd taken the first 5 photos, I was already feeling much more in control of the camera. The metering and colouring of the photos were perfect!

I've now taken approximately 200 photos with it (in 2 days) and every time the pictures have turned out as good as I expected. Sometimes even better! And this camera is so light! The first few times I picked it up without looking, I thought the battery had fallen out or the lens had fallen off. There's just nothing to it.

That, together with the fact that it cost less than half my Canon, and I think I'm in love!

So here's some photos to show what this little baby has done for me so far...


























These photos are all sunset shots, because I haven't had the chance to take it for a test run during the day... but I can't wait!

So... anyone wanna buy a cheap Canon Kiss Digital SLR?