On Sunday after church we headed back to our apartment where it was time to pack up, and head out for round two of our adventures in Korea. That of moving to the cute little mountain town of Sokcho out on the East Coast. This was a favorite location of the missionaries during Adam’s mission, but he unfortunately never got the chance to serve there. But he’d heard such great things about Sokcho, that we decided to make a trip out there anyway! Boy were we glad we did. It seriously was so so beautiful! And after a wonderful 8 days in Seoul, we were ready to get out of the city and into the mountains!
Getting to Sokcho and moving a family of 6 though took some finagling. Although we had sent MOST of our luggage home in our shipment from India, we still ended up having 9 pieces of luggage total to lug around when we went from place to place which made moving a little chaotic. Adam and I would both usually take 2 rolly bags, and then each carry a back pack as well. Then we’d also have to enlist our strong (but small) boys to help out – giving each of them a smaller rolly bag to pull.
Most of the time the boys were okay helping pull bags, but other times they’d have breakdowns because they couldn’t pull the bag over a bump, or curve – which would require Adam and I to put our bags down, pull their bags over, and then resume our own bags. It got especially chaotic when STAIRS were involved – which seemed to be very common and frequent in the subways. They became our biggest nightmare, especially when we’d get lost and end up taking the stairs up and down repeatedly looking for the RIGHT place.
Just moving to Sokcho required a set of stairs down from our 3rd floor apartment. Then dragging our luggage 2 blocks to the subway. Then going up and down on elevators and stairs to find the right platform to take the subway we needed. Then getting off the subway and taking more stairs up to the street where we needed to cross a busy street to get to the bus station. Then taking more stairs and elevators to get tickets for our bus, and then more to get TO our bus. But in the end we made it! And we all gave a great big “Yehaw!” when we did! đ
Our last challenge though was getting to our hotel from the bus stop late at night though, which in the end required us taking two different taxi’s (which always makes me nervous because we only had one cell phone between us and no way to contact each other if one of the taxi drivers got lost). And because I don’t speak a lick of Korean and have no idea how to communicate. Thankfully our taxi driver knew exactly where to go though and we arrived safely just moments behind Adam.
A shot of the kids and I on the subway with all our luggage waiting to get off at our upcoming transfer to another subway line.
At the bus stop eating snacks and dinner before our 4 hour bus ride to Sokcho
The kids loved the HUGE chairs on the bus and how each chair reclined.
Because we arrived in Socko quite late we all pretty much went straight to bed in our tiny little hotel room (where we slept 3 kids sleeping sideways on a queen sized bed, Adam and I in the other queen bed, and Ady in two chairs pushed together). It wasn’t until the next day that we actually got to see where we were. Here is a view from our hotel balcony! Wowsee Wow Wow! Gorgeous!
We luckily had heard that there weren’t many places to eat near the hotel since it was in a fairly remote area so we’d brought fruit and cereal and other food items with us for breakfast. We’d originally hoped to go hiking that first day, but the weather report showed it was going to be super foggy and rainy, so we opted to hit the beach instead and check out the nearby city. Below is a picture of us looking up at our hotel from the bus stop.
All dressed up and ready for the beach!
And then we headed into the city for our day of fun in the fog! đ
