chillin' with the chingus

Last weekend, the three of us foreigners went with a group of teachers from our school to Yokjido for some more exciting island adventures. We were surprised that they wanted to come with us because they usually never do anything on the weekends except relax and rest up for the coming week at school. We think two of them had never been to Yokjido before and the other two hadn't been since they were little. It was a lot of fun to be able to show them some of the things that we find to do around here and to see them having so much fun.

mi sook, gerard, lily, grace, joanne, and me at the ferry terminal before all the fun began

brian and 'willy nilly' lily, one of our co-teachers



playing a korean game on the ferry ride to yokji. basically you go around in a circle and say a number. if the other players lift up that same number of thumbs, you win...and you get to smack the hands of the other players!





you can't really tell but my hands (far left) are super red from being smacked! notice lily's interesting thumb-lifting technique (far right).

this is what happens when you lose a korean game...lots of slaps on the back!
poor grace...

hanging out on the ferry

grace and brian go-karting around yokji!

lily and me...we were struggling a little bit at first because our go-kart was apparently 'just for girls' and could barely pick up the speed to make it up hills. lame!

the go-kart fleet

the views from these overlooks were beauuutiful

lily was a model the whole day

cruisin' along

brian swept me off my feet

some of the MCC (maple college crew)

from left to right: joanne, gerard, grace, brian, lily, and mi sook

see? beautiful.

another great view of yokji and the ocean

there was a random trailer set up on the side of the road with a sax displayed...i think we later heard it being played in the distance

brian being a daredevil / monkey / ghetto workout instructor

my favorite yokji view

there were people camping on these rocks! i have no idea how they got down there but it looked really cool

land ho!

we were told specifically not to take this picture of lily strutting her stuff...of course, brian did!

we formed a band...not quite sure of the name yet but apparently i'm the lead singer. we'll see how that goes! (this picture is really distorted b/c it was actually taken through a road mirror)

dumido, the mysterious island in the distance

after introducing the koreans to the joy that is go-karting, we went to a chinese restaurant they had heard of on the island. the owner/cook was a bit tempermental and refused to make what we wanted (because he 'didn't feel like making it') but after a bit of negotiation he gave in. we had some delicious sweet and sour pork with fried rice...mmm. easily the best chinese we've had in korea so far!

good trip, good trip. from the looks of things, we might have to get these guys out of the school more often!

The Millennium Empire, Day 2

We had big plans for Sunday, May 31st. Since our camera died on Saturday before we could get any pictures of the royal burial mounds, we were going to try to visit as many of those as we could, and since a big temple was on the way, we planned on stopping there first. However, there were many tourist attractions in the vicinity of our hotel so we decided to check out a few of those before we started on the others. After a wonderful breakfast at the hotel (lots of bread and butter, fruits, and hot soup) we headed in the general direction of the Silla Millennium Park, the Gyeongju World Expo, and an amusement park. We decided on the Silla Millennium Park because Katie gets sick on roller coasters and the expo looked a little lame.

It turned out to be a good decision because the Silla Millenium Park was a lot of fun and there was so much to do that we ended up spending the entire day there (by "entire" I mean 10:30-3... we had to get back to the bus station because the bus back to Tongyeong only departs four times on Sundays).

Statues of the twelve zodiac animals lined the entrance to the park

Katie posing under the ox. Our 1985 birth dates make us oxen! :P

At 11:00 there was a Korean play at the main stage. The play was about the founding of Korea, the invasion of the Chinese, and the battle to regain control of Korea in which the Koreans were victorious, obviously! The entire play was in Korean, so we didn't understand any of what was said, but we pieced most of the story line together for you.

The founder of Korea ascends the waterfall/cliff-boulder elevator and discovers Korea. A vacant castle was awaiting his arrival.

The Chinese come and conquer Korea despite half of their army being flag-bearers

The Koreans discover the three heavenly treasures that will aid them in their efforts to reclaim Korea as their own. The first of these is the gigantic flaming sword.

The second is the suit of armor that is way too big for anyone to wear

And, of course, the third and final heavenly treasure is the magical flute that comes out of the enormous jug (this is a terrible picture, but it's the only one we have of the flute, sorry). It seems magical flutes are as helpful in Korea as they are in Mario 3.

Armed with the three heavenly treasures and a high ratio of flag-bearers, the Koreans storm to victory.

All of Korea celebrates! The end

After the play was over, we started exploring the rest of the park. There were a couple other stages that were for little kids, like the puppet stage. What Katie and I found interesting were the areas where they had different crafts on display, such as wooden carvings, pottery, glass painting, etc. They also had historical areas where they had replicas of people's homes and how they changed throughout the centuries. We could never tell the difference between the different homes and since none of the signs were in English we never found out anything about it, but it was still fun and interesting.

A bunch of clay people

Katie mimicking a carved wooden face

Asian Mr. Magoo!!!

Us with our clay friends

This is how we would have looked if we lived in Korea 1500 years ago

A random waterfall - great for a hot day

Later in the day, there was another event at the opposite side of the park in an arena. Here are Silla warriors wielding flags, yet again.

(note from katie: these guys reminded me of a part in

Mulan...remember the part where all the chinese troops are finally getting awesome and they do all the cool karate-type moves? totally what these warriors did. it was great.)

A rider showing off

They did a lot of crazy gymnastic-esque stunts on their horses

Horse archers!

This guy held onto his horse with one hand and ran around the track with him. It looked really funny!

A palace replica

Katie trying to dodge the sprinklers, haha

Afterwards we got McDonald's lunch for the first time in over three months. Delicious!

The one picture we got of a royal tomb. We will be going back to get more, we promise!

The Millennium Empire, Day 1

The weather, and our schedules, finally cooperated for the last weekend of May to be our big trip to Gyeongju, the capital of the Silla Dynasty. The Silla Dynasty began just a few decades before the birth of Christ and lasted until the early 10th century AD, spanning 992 years (close enough :P). We originally thought that to get to Gyeongju from Tongyeong we would have to take a bus to Busan, get on the subway and go to the other bus station in Busan, and then get a bus to Gyeongju (all that would have added at least an hour to our trip each way, not to mention a lot of money). Lucky for us, we mentioned our trip to one of our Korean co-teachers and she called the Tongyeong inter-city bus terminal for us to figure out when and if we could get a direct bus. We could and we did; we got up around 6, made it to the bus terminal before 7 and we were in Gyeongju ready to see the sights before 11!

When we got there we found a tourist information booth right outside the bus terminal. Katie convinced me that we had better talk to them before we got started and she was right as usual :D They were extremely helpful and I will not hesitate to enter the next one. They provided us with a map of Gyeongju, the main tourist attractions, and the numbers of the city buses that took you to them. They even mapped out the best route to take to get to as many of the places in one day as we could. Good people, those Koreans. Our first stop was Bulguksa Temple.

An overview of the Bulguksa Temple complex

A pond outside the temple with huge fish that congregated by the bridge to be fed by passersby. You can see the roof of the temple in the background. Just moments after this picture was taken we ran into one of our students. Katie and I were flabbergasted, but he walked right up to us and said "hello" as if there was nothing strange about seeing your teachers miles away from home like that.

A guardian of the temple, perhaps? We're not sure. He looks like he's about to strike the group of school girls, haha.



One section of the front of the temple




Roughly half of the front side of the temple. We enjoyed the architecture; arches, towers, and long staircases are always a plus!





More of the front of the temple - Katie was sticking her tongue out when I took this one






The temple had four sections. The first one we came to was the largest and contained two 3-story pagodas. This one was under renovation and we were able to ascend a set of stairs on the outside of the construction zone to view the upper portion of it.



The other pagoda. The two pagodas constructed beside each other represent differing viewpoints that live in harmony with one another.





A large drum on top of a turtle. We have noticed that Koreans/Buddhists really like turtles and put them under heavy stuff in their artwork. I guess they admire their strength and probably their longevity, also.

A staircase that was steeper than it looked. Luckily, the JMU stairs prepared us well.

The view from one of the towers

The inside of the one building they allowed picture-taking. Bulguksa Temple definitely had the best artwork of any of the temples we have visited so far and we were upset that we couldn't take any pictures. One of the worship rooms was devoted to the god of the people and he was depicted as a person with many hands outstretched (there were hundreds, at least, on the tapestry probably meant to represent one for every human). In another room, there was a painting of Buddha with a ton of holy people surrounding him. They had Buddhist titles, but we don't know anything about the religion, unfortunately. I wish I had taken a class on Buddhism at some point...

Stacking rocks on top of each other for good luck - kind've like wishing wells for us, except more religious I'm sure.

Everybody wanted to touch the golden pig! It was funny to us, at least.

Some masks at the souvenir shop. The red arrow is pointing to the one I purchased for 30,000 won ($25 or so). The smaller ones were 15,000 I think, maybe 20k. Not bad considering they had these masks at all the tourist attractions around town and the prices were jacked up everywhere except here at the temple. They tended not to have the larger sizes and were trying to sell the smaller ones for 30,000. Being the finance major that I am, and coming from a long line of cheapos (Dad...), I was pleased to discover that I had bought my souvenirs from the cheapest place around.

Our next stop was the Seokguram Grottoes, just a 15 minute shuttle bus ride up the mountain from Bulguksa. This is the trail leading to the site. It reminded us of the trails around Chetola.

We didn't know it at the time, but later on we read in the brochure that chipmunks are part of the allure of the grottoes. People would leave crumbs for them and they would run up real quick and grab a handful and then run off again to eat in private. At first we just saw one and we were like whoa! there's a chipmunk. Then we saw another, and another, and then we noticed that people were feeding them... it doesn't sound crazy, but it was. Indeed, it was.

A map of the inner chamber of the grottoes. Pictures were not allowed here either, grrrrrrr

We were able to beat the system by taking a picture of the picture at the souvenir shop! Take that, Buddha. The Seokguram Grottoes were really amazing. This statue was really big; the people on the sides were probably life-size or possibly bigger, to give you an idea.

The view. The light green, field-lookin' areas are the rice paddies. We think that's what practically every person in Gyeongju does, because they were everywhere we went.

The next attraction on our route was the National Museum. By the time we got there it was 2 or 3 and we had eaten virtually nothing all day, so we had lunch at the museum's "rest area."

The National Museum had several mini-museums devoted to different aspects of the Korean culture. The archaeology building interested us the most, so that's where we spent most of our time. This is a wall with ancient drawings all over it. Supposedly there is "a man with exaggerated genitalia" somewhere on this wall. I'll give $5 to anyone who can find him.

Korean belt buckles from centuries past!

Earrings. I wouldn't want to have to put on those big fat ones.

A black and white picture of the burial mounds that we never got to see in person :'( We'll definitely have to make a return trip and stress the burial mounds

An overview of Anapji Pond which was only a few hundred meters away and was next on the list. The pond was man-made and the land around it was built as a pleasure garden for one of the early Silla emperors. The area was apparently widely-known for the exotic plants and animals he raised there. The 1, 3, and 5 refer to the numbers of the buildings that are still standing at Anapji - the rest have been gone for centuries. The Silla palace near these pleasure gardens is also no longer standing. The only things remaining are the ice house and a few scattered foundations.

It's hard to see in this picture, but there was a family of ducklings at the pond. They kept hopping up into the tall grass you see there and jumping back into the water. They looked like they were having a lot of fun.

A view of the pond and building #3 from building #1.

Enjoying the last bit of sunlight

Authentic Korean Scream masks were for sale at the Anapji souvenir shop. Only 20,000 won!!!

After we left Anapji, we wandered around until we found a park not too far away. There we saw the aforementioned ice house and remains of a great palace. The daylight was pretty much gone, so we directed our efforts to getting dinner and finding a place to stay the night. Finding a reasonably priced hotel was about as much of an adventure as the rest of the day had been. We decided the best course of action would be to get in a cab and tell the driver to take us to the foreigner-friendly section of town (using the map, of course). We ended up getting dropped off in front of the Hilton, which was 250,000 a night (over $200, not cool). It took a good bit of searching, but we were able to commandeer some fried chicken for dinner and we found a more modest hotel for 70,000 won.

We meant to plan out our second day in detail before we went to sleep, but a combination of weariness and Korean back-scratchers we bought at the temple souvenir shop was our undoing.