Birthdays & Paragliding

The weekend after the song festival was spent in Busan. I took it easy Friday night for once, then headed to Busan on Saturday to hang out with my friends. I actually got lucky and ran into quite a few different groups of friends at the bar we went to in Busan. It was nice to briefly catch up with everyone.

Now up to this past weekend. Since Jinae and Kristin both had birthday in October, Jinae arranged for us girls to go paragliding for their birthday celebration. Even though it was a bit pricey, I am always willing to try something new & exciting. Now it wasn't as risky as skydiving or anything, but it was still flying in the sky which sounded awesome to me!

Here are some pics from Kristin's b-day dinner this past Tuesday. Since Gumi is only a 30 minute train ride from Daegu I joined everyone for dinner. 

So, back to the paragliding story. We had to wake up super early Saturday morning to make sure we got seats on the 7am bus to the town about 2 hours from Daegu. That Friday night we spent just taking it easy and working on our Halloween costumes for Saturday evening. 

Once we got to Mungyeong it had started to drizzle rain. Luckily it never fully rained so we were still able to do our jumps. There were 13 of us along with another group of foreigners and a Korean family. So with three groups we had a bit of down time waiting for our turn. We broke our group up into 2 jumps. I went with the first group :) 

We rode in this massive truck that took us up the winding mountain to the top. The fall foliage and mountain scenery was beautiful, despite the rain and clouds. Once we arrived to the top it was time to get suited up in our gear.

After we were suited up, our instructor attached themselves to our backs. That was when he said "Ok, 1, 2, 3, run off the mountain!" It took a couple tries to get the parachute up and going, but finally we were in the air! I took my camera with me, with it tied tightly to my wrist of course, so I managed to take a video and some pictures of my own. Not sure how high we were up in the air, but it felt amazing!

Since we had such a big group going, we asked for a discount. The guy said he couldn't give us a discount, but he would include video and pictures for everyone. So here are a couple of the pics from the camera they provided:

After our group's jump we went back to the waiting area. Actually while waiting for the second group to go (due to the rain) all of us decided to play with our cash that we had brought to pay with. Since it was 110,000WON per person we decided to "make it rain" with our stack of WON. The video's we took are priceless! We even managed to find some music to match the occasion. I'm sure the Koreans watching from outside were highly entertained. Here are a couple pics from our silliness:

Of course, picking up the money off the ground wasn't as much fun as throwing it in the air and dancing under it, lol. Still a fun time! Finally the rain let up enough for the other half of girls to do their jump. Afterwards we snapped a group pic & then headed back to Daegu to get ready for the Halloween festivities. 

XOXO,

Amanda