Memorial Weekend

Yes, Memorial Day is an American holiday. So there was nothing special going on in Korea. The weather has been just perfect here, so on Saturday we drove out to Guemosan again, where we had previously seen the paddle boats on the lake at the base of the mountain. It is a small man made lake, though it is fed by the small stream that runs down from the mountain. The place was packed with Koreans spending a day in nature, away from the city. There were only a few people out on the lake though, so it was nice to be paddled around by my husband! The girls were complete opposites; one of them was scared and kept asking to go back, while I had to keep both hands on the other to prevent her from jumping out of the boat!







Across the street from the lake is a small amusement park, with rides comparable to a traveling fair. We took the girls there, but you had to buy different tickets for each ride at the central ticket kiosk for each ride, which was difficult for us since we don't speak Korean. Turns out it didn't really matter since they were too small for most of them anyway. They had numerous coin operated rides, like you see at the mall, so we let them ride several of those.

Daddy joining the fun!

On Monday, Memorial Day itself, some people from church went back to Guemosan and I decided to go with them. We paddled the boats around the lake again, then took the cable car up to the top of the mountain. The last time I went up it was winter, so this time everything was different. I didn't have my camera since I was man-handling two children. Take my word, it was beautiful. We met a curious squirrel who would get within an arms reach, then run up the rocks again. We also saw some cute chipmunks, and watched another squirrel get punished for invading a magpie nest. Everyone else went up to the cave, but I've been on that path before and was not eager to retrace those steps! We finished up the day with late lunch/early dinner at the Lotte Mart food court.

While I was out on the lake paddling, Matt was on the ocean fishing. Actually it was more like in the harbor, but whatever. He took an MWR (Morale, Welfare, & Recreation) fishing trip. They had a boat driver and supplies provided and caught some fish, which were then pooled and filleted, and they all ate sushi from their freshly caught fish.


So, the lake,the ocean harbor, and on Tuesday some shopping in downtown Daegu complete with awesome Krispy Kreme doughnuts! (One of the things I bought was a t-shirt that says "Boston, Massachubatts"! {not a typo}) Turned out to be a typical American holiday weekend after all!

Party on Post

This past weekend they celebrated the 50th anniversary of Camp Carrol. It was a lot of fun. They opened the post to the public and had numerous performances, most of them by Koreans. First up was the Republic of Korea (ROK) Army drill team.

They spun and tossed their bayoneted weapons around. If you've ever seen a drill team before then you've seen this. Pretty standard show. There were a couple of differences I did notice. First was instead of one person calling commands the whole time there were different people calling them out at different times. Second was when you watch a US drill team, they are eyes front, stone faced, dead silent. The ROK team was talking to each other and looking around. I always like watching drill teams though.
There were several displays of traditional Korean music and dancing.

samoul nori - traditional percussion music

Traditional folk song. After the first song they started 'breaking it down' and were lightly twirling around and circling. It almost sounded like she was rapping at one point! Unfortunately they only had two handheld microphones for these group performances. I think it detracted from the whole effect because you could only hear one or two people and not the group. The group pictured below all sang but only the women had the mics, so you couldn't hear the men or the large wooden flute. At the beginning they held it up to the flute while he soloed, and it sounded beautiful, but then they took it away to sing and the flute was lost in the soprano voices.

Traditional poetic song. They explained before the start what it was about but I couldn't understand what they were saying.


Hwagwanmoo - traditional dance. This was my favorite performance. There is a whole row of ladies behind her.

There were several helicopters and motorized vehicles displayed that they let people get in. Matt enjoyed this as much as the girls! Toward the end of the event the ROK army had to fly their helis off and we were there to watch, which was fascinating for the girls (and Matt!) also.


The event closed with a concert by Fred Shaffer, which was pretty good. Matt took the baby home and Carrie and I stayed to watch a bit of it. She was fascinated at first, then she said it was too loud.

Bye bye!

Manbulsa

The weather has just been fantastic the past couple of weeks creating a wonderful opportunity to explore outside. This weekend we went to Manbulsa, a temple. And yes, most of the temples just kind of run together after a while but this one is a little different. There are supposed to be 10,000 small buddhas in the main temple, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were more! According to what I read, people will buy these and have a name engraved. These buddhas will then bring happiness and good luck to that person. The inside and outside of the temple is covered with these tiny statues plus other sizes, and with the lights it has a glowing effect. Behind each small light you see on the wall is a tiny buddha.

They also have a bone enshrined, called a sarira, which is supposed to one of buddha's. You can actually see it inside its' little dome! There was too much light shining on it to get a better picture than this.

This is also said to be the only temple with stone coffins in its premises. The body is cremated and then placed inside these domes. The website called them pagodas.

We walked on all the scenic and buddha lined paths to the different things they had.


Avaloketeshvara hall. Maitreya statue flanked by 'lucky bags'. If I understand the (bad) translation correctly, one is for merit, the other for virtuos deeds. If you pray facing one of the bags you can "accumulate" the aforementioned virtues.


The Great Lantern Tower,a small model of one in India.


Nirvana buddha


33 meters buddha



I'm pretty sure they were doing some remodeling because there were some things on the website we didn't see or that were in a different place. There was also a lot of digging going on while we were there.

Rambling Randomness

It only takes a short time to recover from one trip before I'm rarin' to go on the next! Since we have to stay local for now I've been watching the brown signs; you know, the ones that mean 'historical spot ahead'. I spotted one that said Gayasan Botanical Gardens, so one Sunday after church we went. The signs for the garden were intermittent after we got off the main road, but we found it without too much difficulty. The drive was fairly mundane until we were almost there, then there were some beautiful flowers and a few statues and a pagoda along the road. I made Matt stop at the pagoda for a picture. It was built in 802 as part of a large Buddhist temple complex that was destroyed in the Japanese invasion during the 1590s.


When we arrived at the gardens there were two paths and we couldn't tell which way to go as there were no more signs. So we followed the crowd. Turns out your mom was right, don't follow; the crowd was wrong! We ended up walking up a very steep hill to a newly and not completely constructed Buddhist temple. At least the scenery was pretty! This was at a fairly high altitude so the climate was milder and the cherry blossoms were still in full bloom here. I like this shot:

These show how rocky the terrain is here!




The garden itself was disappointing since there was nothing in bloom except a few azaleas, which are all around our apartment and everywhere else, so big deal. And that was a Sunday afternoon.

The following Saturday I wanted to go to Juwangsan National Park and walk on the trails. Somehow we didn't make it. I won't say how, just somehow. (We ended up in Andong again!!) There was a lovely place we stopped to have a picnic. It looked like it was once a really beautiful garden but hasn't been tended to recently. Spring in Korea is fantastic and these are a few examples of why:




Flowers like these are everywhere! But so fleeting. It was a great scenic spot and I took a few more pictures of the things around us.





We never did make it to Juwangsan Park. Guess we were meant to see other things instead. Since we were in Andong I wanted to try to get to the mask museum that I had been wanting to see the first two times we were here. However, the road signs were shall we say spotty, so we ended up on the wrong road. Instead we stopped at Bongjeongsa, where the oldest wooden building in Korea is located, circa 1363. I cannot attest to the veracity of that statement because to be honest it seemed in pretty good condition to be 600+ years old. Here is the building. You had to climb a set of stone steps up to a small courtyard that wasn't big enough to take a full shot, so I had to take the picture from the steps.

I chose to walk up the road since it was such a nice day and a pretty path; Matt drove the girls up. A few more pictures for your viewing pleasure!

love the lanterns!

pagoda said to have been built around the 12th century