Gyeongju

Today we had our tours around Gyeongju.  This meant about 3 hours of actually touring, with about 6 30-minute naps on the bus sprinkled in-between.

In the swanky hotel we're at, we had a full breakfast, and I hadn't realized how much I'd missed pancakes and coffee for breakfast until this morning.  It was a treat, but now knowing I probably won't have it again (at least not until I get home) after tomorrow morning is kind of depressing.  Not that I don't like the Korean food, but it is different.  I had thought that perhaps the meals would be very Americanized to make them more acceptable to us exchange students, but they haven't seemed that way.  Maybe the Korean students would disagree, but considering I have to ask what half (on average, sometimes not for much, sometimes for everything) of everything is, I'd say the meals are fairly Korean.

Then we went to Bulguksa Temple.  Unfortunately I couldn't catch what much of the tour guide said about it, seeing as there was one guide for a group of about 30 of us, but I did get that it was very old, and very sacred, and when my "bus buddy" (we have assigned seating on the buses) and I walked around, just the two of us, it was incredibly peaceful.  Made me kind of wish I was just visiting South Korea by myself and not in this huge group like I am.

After that we went to Seokgulam Grotto.  There was a beautiful statue of Buddha there, as well as hundreds of paper lanterns that families had written their names on, strung on wooden frames.  Made me wish that America had more of a culture where everyone was on the same page as far as festivals and things to do along those lines . . . I can't think of anything similar to festival lanterns in the US.

After that was a lunch of Bibimbap, which was delicious, but we've had it twice in two days now, so everyone is kind of OD-ed on it.

Then we went to the beach of the East Sea, which was absolutely wonderful.  Though it had rained earlier in the day, it was sunny at the shore, and the water was refreshing.  A number of people got thrown in, but considering I had gone in willingly, I avoided such issues.

Then we came back to the hotel to change, and then went out to Cheonmachong for dinner.  In that area there are many burial mounds and a lot of treasure has been found there.  The burial mounds were something to see, as they were quite pronounced and there's no way they could pass for natural.  I think now I want to go out west in the US to see our American Indian burial mounds.

Now we're back at the hotel once again, and tonight is club night at the club in the basement of the hotel, starting in about an hour.  The first round of drinks is free, which, given how much I know the room I'm sitting in costs, as well as everything that's been supplied for on this trip, makes me wonder who is paying for all this.  All I had to do was pay for my plane ticket and a $200 registration fee . . . that wouldn't even begin to scrape the surface of how much this program must cost to run.  Hmm . . .

The photos for everything I'm mentioning are on Facebook, as I assume that anyone reading this is my friend on Facebook, and it saves me time to not have to upload twice.  If anyone isn't on Facebook and wants to see the photos of everything I've described, drop me a line and I can send the links to the albums.