As of Korean Constitution Day 2001, Melissa and I had been in South Korea for little more than three weeks. Constitution Day was our first holiday, and we decided to spend it by going to the nearby city of GyeongJu (often transliterated as KyongJu). As part of that trip, I made my very first visit to a Buddhist temple, learned how to properly mix bibimbop, how not to burn garlic while cooking
As of Korean Constitution Day 2001, Melissa and I had been in South Korea for little more than three weeks. Constitution Day was our first holiday, and we decided to spend it by going to the nearby city of GyeongJu (often transliterated as KyongJu). As part of that trip, I made my very first visit to a Buddhist temple, learned how to properly mix bibimbop, how not to burn garlic while cooking galbi, and rode a bike 30+ kilometers. It seemed fitting that six years later I would return to GyeongJu to celebrate Constitution Day.We took the bus from the Express Bus Terminal next to Dongdaegu Station (cost about $3.70), and it took approximately one hour to get in to GyeongJu. A visit to the bathroom in the GyeongJu Express Bus Terminal yielded this gem:Turned out that the "foreigner only" toiletwas the only non-squatter. Yay!After making sure to photograph the foreigner only toilets, our first destination was Bulguksa (sometimes transliterated as Pulguksa), a Buddhist temple originally fou
Gyeongju, not to be confused with Gwangju, Jeonju or Jeju, is the ancient capital city of the Silla Dynasty that ruled parts of the peninsula for nearly a thousand years from 57 BC to 927 AD. It is a popular tourist destination due to the large number of historic sites in the area.We caught a KTX train from Seoul station and, with a change at Dongdaegu to a local train, the total journey time was just over 3 hours. The tourist information office at the station provided us with an excellent map of the area and we soon found our way to the guest house Sa Rang Chae which we'd booked earlier in the week. On the way we could not help but notice the prevalence of Gyeongju 'Bread' shops. Intrigued, we stopped at Hwangnam where we could see them making the cakes behind the shop counter and so we bought a box. It's not bread at all but pastry filled with Korean red bean paste, it made a very tasty breakfast snack.We took a 20 minute trip on the local bus (number 11) to Bulguksa. Statues lik
after spending much of the afternoon in the cold at the amusement park everyone split up to "play games or whatever" with the kids. my group ended up singing some kids songs - the muffin man, humpty dumpty, if you're happy and you know it - i knew all of them from my childhood, and these kids were really great at singing them. they were in four groups and i had to choose the 'winner' (the group that sang the best) of every song - the teams had names: peace, surprise, excalibur, and chicken! i excalibur won this game. (yes, excalibur, they couldn't tell us what it was, but they chose that as their name anyway)after that we played a "hugging game" where the kids all held hands in a circle and then i yelled out a number - say 13 - and they had to get into groups of that number. whoever was left out at the end was out of the game. the ten students left at the end were the winners. did i mention that if they won we showered them with lollies and chocolate? ya, that's a good idea, sugar
on tuesday i got an email from my friend emma. she was going to be working at a winter camp and they needed some extra waegooks (foreigners) to come along... so i volunteered. we would be going to gyeongju and staying overnight, everything was planned already, and all we had to do was show up.gyeongju is the ancient capital of the silla (pronounced shilla) dynasty which ruled korea for about a thousand years. it's about an hour and a half north of here (gimhae) in the province of gyeongsangbuk (i live in gyeongsangnam - nam means south and buk means north). in 1979 gyeongju was recognized as one of the worlds ten most important ancient cultural cities by UNESCO; it is also home to six world heritage sites. there are hundreds of royal tombs, temples, palace sites, fortress ruins, and pagodas. this is just to give you an idea of the kind of place we were going... so much history, interesting sites, and cultural heritage to learn about. we were excited. but, this being korea, the camp wa
