Yay the first field trip!! I remember waking up at 9am and rushing to J building to register for this trip OTL and space ran out really fast. We assembled in front of the admin building at 730am and got ready to set out! After abut 2 hours on the bus, we stopped at our first station of the day: Railbiking!! A lot of people asked me if this is the activity that Running Man did, i just said yes haha i haven’t seen that episode yet but i do hear a lot about it.
Rail biking!! 😀
w the korean-american homie <33333333 also my kind-of korean language practice partner lol she’s good at speaking local korean and im better at grammar and written korean so we help each other out~~
w the weird kid
and we’re off! We sat in the same cabin thingy with Sheryl and Jasmine!
it’s kinda hard to take photo of ourselves so well this is how it looks like. We basically just cycle, lol. the weather was a bit chilly (who am i kidding it was fucking cold) so i just kept bracing myself with my thick jacket and cap. Haha. The tunnels were really pretty, there were themes like one tunnel was a disco one so they were playing Psy’s songs complete with disco lights as we cycled through, there was also a romantic one with very pretty white lights at the tracks with nice soft music. I really loved that one but it’s hard to capture a picture, it turned out showin just the white lights LOL.
There was a rest stop where we ate some fish cakes with super nice soup (odeng) and after that went on a second time. Because jasmine was in the toilet we waited and went to the cabin right at the back (forgive me saying cabin because i’m out of vocab ideas rn) and at first that was abit sian because it’s too quiet. Only a group of ahjummas were behind us. But after that it turned out to be awesome because we realized we could do crazy photoshoots without holding anyone up, besdes the ahjummas who kindly told us it’s okay~ so therefore:
yep.
The bus was waiting for us at the end of the rail biking trail and i found out randomly that the office of international affairs organizer studied in Singapore for a few years, and she graduated from CJC before going back to Korea. Hahaha. Fellow alumni!! We dropped by a daggalbi restaurant to eat. Daggalbi is really popular in chuncheon like every other korean i’ve talked to about chuncheon asked if i’ve tried the chicken dish haha.
:DDDD
After we ate like most of it, the ahjumma threw in our rice and egg and seaweed and spices and cooked fried rice!! It was super delicious T__T After the dish we headed off to visit a temple.
I honestly didnt’ listen much to our tour guide HAHAHA. Sorry T.T She was nice though, she said she’s brought around a group of Singaporeans from SMU a while back, Liz said it’s the scholars programme or smth. Damn i’m not smart enough to even know about the existence of the programme LOL The views at the temple was nice though!
The story of this statue facing a certain direction to protect Korea from outside invasion.
And finally it was time to head to our accommodation! The tour guide warned us not to expect much because it was a traditional condominium style haha and all of us singaporeans girls ended up in one room xD Amber was put in another room with other Westerners but she snuck out and joined us in the end haha she is seriously practically Singaporean now!! The other day when Jasmine said she went shopping Amber was like, “You went shopping without me! Walao-eh!!” that’s the most relevant application of Singlish i’ve heard from a Westerner HAHAHA. Most of the others i’ve met (like the Mich from Canada) mostly just add lah at the back of their sentences.
We reached our hotel by night time where it was freezing and checked out our rooms. I was shocked because i reallye xpected a small place but it was huge!! a nice spacey living room with two cosy rooms (prolly the size of my room back in Spore) and a large bathroom with luxurious looking bathtub haha.
Heated floor system! We had to lay out the beds ourselves. Had a nice peaceful sleep ahaha ❤ I love these kinds of cosy environments. If we had a board game it would be so great! Convenient store was closed so we didn’t get alcohol. Other rooms had though, i think they brought from Seoul. So we just played normal drinking games with cider LOL and in the middle of our games some people knocked on our doors wanting to join us but they were just looking for alcohol anyways. Haha. We slept a little earlier that night because of the hiking the next day.
Next day came around and i woke up the last as expected, but also as expected i was the fastest to get ready. No makeup or face care products, no fuss, this is a hiking trip after all hahaha. We piled out to the lobby area and got breakfast, chatted a while and got on the bus. We were brought to a mountainous area where they said we can take a cable car up and explore the area. This isn’t the hiking yet tho, the ‘real’ hiking was supposed to be after breakfast.
The Singapore gang + one american at the foot of the mountain!
Waiting for the cable car up!
In the middle of the ‘hike’
Sort of at the top of the mountain! As you can see there was snow everywhere although it’s supposed to be spring haha, luckily i was dressed warmly. Some were not that prepared though.
Touristy shot
Demure touristy shot
We climbed these rocks to the top. It looks fairly simple from the picture but trust me it was damn tricky with all the snow and wet rocks, especially when climbing with sneakers or sports shoes. Climbing down was easier because we just sat our butts down and slid down slowly rock after rock. It’s unglam but it keeps me alive so why not. Lucky i was wearing leggings and not jeans. Pretty sure i had a few shots of me taken from below in the most unflattering angle. Should hunt down those pictures. It was fun though, sitting at the top and looking at everyone and all the mountains and ignoring the risk that you could slip and break your skull anytime yes. Regardless, i escaped with only a few scratches on my hands~
More pretty touristy shots
The view from the cable car when we headed back down. We reached solid ground a little late and so our tour guide said plans would be changed and the hiking would be replaced with a lake visit, since we technically did hike on this mountain. I don’t think she expected that a lot of us would want to climb personally to the top and people were trying to chase us back down because
- It’s obviously not really a common touristy hiking trail to go all the way to the top, and obviously not for amateurs like us
- It’s still a student trip so they have to be responsible for us
- They didn’t expect it to still be so snowy in April and thus slippery
- We were taking way too long waiting for each other to climb all the way up and taking jump shots and doing all those nightmare-y dangerous stuff students do on school trips
- A student fell and had to be sent to the hospital orz
So yeah. That took a little too long and so they cancelled the hike and i was secretly happy because i was tired as shit LOL. They took us to a lake which was a bit lame sorry hahaha, like nothing special but ok i took an obligatory pretty pic anyway!
oh btw, an obligatory selfie of myself barefaced complete with black eyebrows and flattened cap-hair screaming at me accusingly After that it was time to eat (YAY!) and we were brought to a meat buffet restaurant, legit one of my favorite things in Korea here. Especially the fatty pork parts…
YUMMY
Luckily after that it was time to head back to Seoul. Phew. It was a long ride with traffic jam and I fell sick on the way, perhaps from too much BBQ or the cold weather in Chuncheon :< anyways, I headed straight to my parents’ hotel because they just arrived that day!! Will update on the parents soon~
darmawanders 