Of Movies and Mountains
On Friday, I found that Juno was still playing at Joong Ang theater near Myeong Dong. Not one of my favorite theaters. They still have the old style Korean snack bars, where you can buy things like small canned drinks and squid jerky rather than popcorn and hot dogs. And the cinemas are really, really small. And the ticket prices are just as expensive as the upscale cinemas around town. The last time I went there was last summer (spring?) when Tristan and Isolde was playing there and nowhere else.
Anyway, Juno was a great flick. My wife and I met some business associates for dinner and a few glasses of wine before heading to the movie. The theater was rather empty -- there were fewer than 10 other people. The wine buzz we were both sporting probably made us a little louder than we should have been early on, but no one complained. As for the plot of the movie, I think my wife found it incredulous that parents could be so accepting and supportive of a pregnant teenage daughter. Not likely to happen like that in Korea, so she was probably not alone in wondering about that. I'm pretty sure a lot of the dialogue got lost in translation, too.
Saturday there was nothing much to speak of, but today was nice. We headed out early this morning to Pukhan mountain for a bit of a hike. This was my first hiking trip since November. It was my wife's first since we went on a date to a mountain ten years ago. I picked an easy route so as not to make it too tough on her. It's longer than most of the routes at mountains around Seoul, measuring about 4.3 km from the starting point. I walked it back in November and was rather disappointed at first at how easy it was, but the last several hundred meters are a good work out.
Rain was in the forecast today, but at Mt. Pukhan it was snow. And lots of it. That in and of itself wasn't so bad. The bad part was that the snow covered up all of the ice patches that sprinkled the trail. Serious Korean hikers wear climbing irons this time of year (called eisens in Korea) in order to gain traction on any ice they encounter. One of my students, being a serious hiker, recommended that I use some irons this weekend. I was convinced I wouldn't need any. But a little over 2.5 km into the hike this morning we encountered an icy spot that we couldn't go around, had nothing to hold on to, and was next to impossible to get past because our shoes had no traction. I had already slipped on a hidden ice patch once by then. My backpack cushioned the fall, so no harm done. We decided that even if we were able to eventually get past that point and any others along the way, coming back down was going to be an exercise in extreme caution. So we cut our hike short and headed back.
Even though it was only a 5 km hike over relatively easy terrain, my wife got a good work out at least. It was probably better for her that we didn't get to that last, difficult bit. Next week, we're off to the beach with my sister-in-law and her husband (don't ask me why). But two weeks from now we'll head back to Pukhan mountain, to the same trail. We'll have climbing irons then if we need them.