Dear Friends and Family,

If you were a third year in Korean high school, you would spend most of your senior year studying for the KSAT (Korean SAT). You would spend holidays, such as Chuseok, studying and even miss out on school festivals – although not all would be lost because you would end your hectic studying with lots of sticky rice cakes and even more good wishes from friends and family.

Last Thursday marked the culmination of the seniors’ studying and all over Korea, the third years sat for the KSAT exam. The day previous, our school held a "good luck" ceremony, which I managed to miss, but that reportedly involved origami airplanes filled with written good luck messages. I was sorry to miss that sight; however, I did not miss out on the goodies. Every day last week, rice cakes of some sort were placed on the teachers’ desks. My friend explained that we teachers “haul in rice cakes” because giving sticky rice cakes is a traditional way to encourage good scores so that the students can gain admittance into the University that they wish to attend.

Although I remained unclear why we teachers also deserved rice cakes, I was happy to throw my support behind the tradition by spearing colorful cakes with a toothpick and carefully lowering them into my mouth.

After a few days of chewing on the third years’ rice cakes, it seemed doubly unfair that on Thursday, while they were arduously taking their test, I lazed through a cloudy morning and then hiked one of Daegu’s favorite spots: Mt. Apsan.

Mt. Apsan is a forest covered hill that affords lovely 980 meters high views of the city and unfortunately, the route to the observation point was rather poorly signed. From Apsan’s base, I selected one promising stone step-clad path and walked up and up, enjoying the scenery, craning my head to listen to Buddhist chants in the distance, and greeting the elderly mountain climbers around me in Korean. Many loved that I greeted them in Korean and their smiles were hardly diminished when it became obvious that all I could say in Korean was “greetings.” Many were happy to point me in the right direction until one gentleman pointed to the path that I was on and used the Korean gesture for “no” (crossing of the forearms). I conceded to his wisdom with “nay” (yes) and thanked him – but didn’t understand what he was warning me against so as soon as his back was turned, I continued on and not five minutes later, found myself at a rock-edged dead end. I sighed, retraced my steps half way down the mount, and then returned upwards, this time using a ridged, concrete road. The road appeared long and steep and I had to keep promising myself “just to that next tree” or “just to that dirt pile.” But as I climbed, the Buddhist chants became louder and louder… until the road leveled and I was standing next to a small temple complex that had been taken over by a construction crew (I couldn’t tell what they were trying to do) and a public toilet. I glanced around for the singing monks (they were inside or a recording, I wasn’t certain which), used the remarkably clean toilet and then continued up another stone step-clad path. And eventually huffed and puffed my way to the top.

A cool wind must’ve scattered the clouds and as the sun shone with little warmth, I was able to see all of Daegu City and the hills beyond. It was beautiful. And so was the Starbucks chocolate cake and mocha that I treated myself to afterwards. My cheeks still slightly stinging, I returned home and in belated solidarity with the third years, got started on my homework.

Rice cakes anyone?

Love,

Laura

PS I: Mt. Apsan’s 980 meters = 3,215.2231 feet. Too many rice cakes aside, I had legitimate reason to be puffing.

PSII: Intriguingly, the Korean verb "붙다" (to stick to something) is used both in the case of rice cakes and admittance to the University. Frankly, this won’t particularly help me to use it in a full Korean sentence, but is good to know, eh?