The agility of Koreans.

As I have been in Korea so far, I have noticed how important walking and "exercising" is to them (especially middle-aged and older adults). First of all, there are parks all over the city with padded walking circles that surround the parks. Inside of these parks, there are the normal things such as basketball hoops and fountains. But Korean parks seem to be a little different compared to American parks as they have outdoor exercise equipment. Now, I'm not really sure what these are supposed to do besides working your joints because there seems to be almost no resistence to help build muscle. Now, if seeing old men and women on these things that swing back and forth isn't entertaining enough, it's even better seeing them all decked out in special outdoor wear, large visors and mouth masks (like doctors wear). Needless to say, I make it a point to walk past these exercise fanatics on my way home from work and try to be subtle about watching them. I havne't been brave enough to stop and take pictures but below are some that I found online.
But, my main point of writing this post is to share with you the funniest thing I have yet seen in Korea, which I witnessed this morning. I was on my way to work, walking along the padded walkway. I look up and see these three middle-aged women walking towards me, one of which has this 15 foot hooked pole. I am immediately intrigued and slow down to see what they are going to do witht the pole. They step off the walking path and approach one of the small tangerine trees and the woman with the hook starts hitting the withered fruit hoping it will fall. All of a sudden, one of the women grabs the tree limbs and literally flings her body up, wraps her legs around the trunk and is hanging at a 90 degree angle. As this was happening, I decided it was okay for me to stop since other Koreans around me were slowing down to watch. Apparently, she couldn't quite pull herself all the way up to climb to the top of the tree so one of her friends had to push her back up closer to the trunk. I just stood there trying to hold my laughter in. I didn't know old women could be so spry and fly into trees like that, but apparently Korean women are a special kind. Personally, I think I stopped climbing trees after I re-broke my arm while it was in the cast while climbing a tree-congrats to me. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my story and can picture it because I think I will always remember that tree in Paris Park where the old woman vaulted into the tree.