Paragliding

Last weekend, my co-workers Steve and I went paragliding with one of our supervisors, Michelle. On Sunday we left Suji and took a bus ride for about 2 hours to Mung-young. Once we arrived we were picked up by the paragliding company and driven to their site. We had to wait a few minutes before we were drove to the top of the mountain. As the trucks were being unloaded we were all given equipment to carry. Soon staff members were swarming us, strapping us in, zipping us up and trying to give us some advice. One of the workers spoke broken English but he was able to get his point across. Most of the time, Michelle translated for us. In a matter of minutes Steve was strapped onto a worker and they were running off of the mountain. Michelle soon followed and I took up the rear. I had to try to take off twice as the wind was pushing us backwards. We were just told 'go' and we had to start running off the mountain. Soon the glider filled with wind and carried us up. I never felt as though I was falling, only being pulled backwards and up. We flew around for about 10 minutes. It was such a cool feeling! When we tried to land, on the top of the same mountain, my guide had a hard time landing. It took us about 5 attempts before we landed. We would miss the mark or come in too high. With each pass, more and more staff members were shouting in Korea. Michelle told me that they kept saying, "get lower" and "you are going to make her nervous." We finally landed and everything turned out fine. Steve and I were amazed that we didn't have to have hours of lessons or even sign one paper. We just got out of the car, into the equipment and off we went! We didn't even pay until we had finished the flight!

We then went into town for lunch before busing back. We could not get on any bus to our area so we had to taxi to another bus terminal about 20 minutes away. After waiting for about 3 hours we got on a bus. This weekend was also Parents Day so the highways were packed. It literally took us less than 2 hours to get there and 5 hours to get home!! Note to self: don't travel on a holiday weekend in a country the size of Missouri with 86 million people!

Steve, Michelle and I