The Wet Season?

Howdy! Cindy here.

We have been living through the wet season here in Korea. Every week someone tells me that it should be over at the end of that week, and then every week it continues on to the next week. Although the weather has been terrible, we are also feeling the pressure of being down to our last 4 weeks here. We feel like we need to make the most of our time. So, with that in mind, we agreed to go on a bus tour to Suncheong on Sunday. Since the majority of our time on this tour would be spent outside, we knew it was a risk. We packed umbrellas and hoped for the best. We should have packed life preservers and innertubes.

Our first stop was a pretty little road where we rented tandem bikes and enjoyed a quick ride amongst some big trees. The attraction here was the "big trees". One girl said to me, "You will amaze at the size, so beautiful". Well, these people need to come to Canada. The trees were midgets in comparison to ours. But still a fun bike ride.

Next stop was a Bamboo Forest. We took a million photos. I kept looking at the time because we were due back to the bus by a certain hour. As the time approached I kept telling our group that we should start to go back. I get a bit stressed about being late. I hate it. It is one of my little pet peeves. I would rather be VERY early than even a little late. I tried to keep my comments to a minimum. I know not everyone wants to be reminded about the time every five minutes. However, when finally everyone agreed to go back, we realized we were lost...and on the completely opposite side of the forest from where we needed to be. Yes indeed we were late. Very late. So late that the tour guide met us at the entrance to the forest because the rest of the bus had gone on to lunch. He walked us to the restaurant, where everyone was just finishing. So again, they all boarded the bus and waited for us to eat.

Well, Karma got us. As we left the restaurant, the biggest rainstorm I have seen here, pelted down on us. We screamed and ran in the direction of the bus. The wind broke our umbrellas, puddles soaked our shoes, the rain drenched every layer of clothing we had on....and this could all be seen by the bus of people waiting patiently for my group to finish lunch. As we got on the bus- hair a mess, umbrellas inside out, leaving puddles as we walked- the expression on the faces of the Korean passengers was one I could not read. We splish sploshed our way to our seats, and sat there dripping in total disbelief of what had just happened. I looked at the clock and said "Well the good news is we only have eight hours to go". Of course by this time the storm was over and it was just raining lightly.

For the rest of our day, it rained off and on, never as hard as the few minutes we were caught between the restaurant and the bus. We bought huge plastic rain jackets/garbage bags to keep us dry and to help us with any future need to impersonate Big Bird. Although our shoes made a sloshing sound everytime we stepped down, we managed to stay in pretty good spirits as we walked along a three hour path to a suspension bridge and then back again.

Would we do it again? Probably not. But do we regret going? Nope. When it rains everyday, sometimes you just have to take the risk. This one turned out a bit mucky. Maybe the next one won't. We'll let ya know!