An Old Tree, Snow, Quail and Archery on Sunday

The head teacher of the second grade wanted to take me to see some of the special tourist attractions on Jeju Island, so he enlisted my friend and fellow English teacher, Soyeon (she is two years my junior), as a translator and we set the date for Sunday December 3rd. I was told that we would go hiking and then do some archery. So at 10am we were off! First we drove away from the coast, towards the middle of the island and as we did we gained in altitude; this meant that the rain became snow, the first time I've seen snow on Jeju Island.


Our first stop was the oldest tree on Jeju island (over 400 years old). After snapping some photos of the tree, we drove a little further, eventually arriving in what felt like the middle of a forest. I could not believe I was still on an island; we had been transported to a winter wonderland.


As we hiked through the woods, I enjoyed the silence that is so rare in Korea. The birds, bugs, animals, even people were all hiding away somewhere warmer, as our shoes crunched the snow and our breaths froze in the air. We were hiking a "small mountain", in Korean they're called "Odums" and there are 360 of them on Jeju Island. Odums were formed from lava when the island itself was formed, the largest "odum" being Halla Mountain itself. Each odum has a crater at the top of it, but the odum that we saw today is the only one that actually has water in the crater.


After the hike we enjoyed a lunch of quail, which was the best quail I've ever had. We dipped thin slices of raw quail into boiling water for a few minutes and then into a sort of wasabi/soy sauce mixture before eating them...it was really good. At the end of the meal we had soup and noodles.


After lunch we headed to the traditional archery place, which turned out to be sort of like a shooting club, but for archery. It was a really nice facility and the teacher was very patient with us.


It was a lot harder than it looks; I was just happy when I could hit the board, let alone the bull's eye. After I all my arrows had been shot for the last time, Mr. Kim handed me his last arrow and I shot it right into the target. I was pretty excited and so was everyone else; it was a good ending to a great day!

On the left is Mr. Kim, me and Soyeon. You can't see it, but in the picture is the arrow that I shot right into the target on my last shot for the day!