Frozen Fun

Growing up in the south doesn't provide many opportunities for winter activities. So I'm enjoying the cold and playing like a kid in it! My husband built a couple of sleds for the girls out of the products of a dumpster dive. (No, he did not actually get in a dumpster.) First, we tested them out in our still frozen parking lot.

homemade sled

After the successful test run, we took them out to the canal in Waegwan. My husband, ever leery of the danger of falling through the ice, trod carefully over it many times, till I got tired of waiting and strode on out. The oldest had a blast, though the youngest one got cold and spent most of the time in the (nearby) car watching through the window.

wheeee!!!!

Trick Art Museum

Thank goodness for indoor EXCO! It is way too cold to do anything outside these days, so fortunately I saw an advertisement for the Trick Art Museum being hosted at the Daegu EXCO this month.

I went with a couple of other ladies (and the girls of course!) and we had a great time. Trick Art is designed to "create the illusion that depicted objects really exist and are not just two-dimensional paintings." The whole point is to take fun pictures with it. When you view the painting in person, it doesn't look all that special. But viewed from behind a camera lens, magic happens!

This was so much fun that we went back with a group three days later! Here's a few more photos for your viewing pleasure.

While were milling around, one of the employees gave our daughters this big box with a Barbie style family and all kinds of accessories. Wow, the benefits of being cute!

Gyeongju: Day Two

Our second day in Gyeongju we thought it would be prudent to find some indoor activities to do to stay out of the cold. We decided on the Gyeongju World Culture EXPO Park. (I have no idea why the all caps EXPO.) It has several buildings on site and of course the exhibition hall itself. Unfortunately, there was no real exhibit in the EXPO going on at the time, just a display promoting the upcoming Thailand culture exchange and a small display of what I assume to be local artisans works.

The true centerpiece of the park is the Gyeongju Tower, that only has two actual floors, an observation deck and an exhibit floor. The exhibit floor contained Shilla related items from the Gyeongju museum of which I'm pretty certain at least some were replicas of the real museum pieces.

View over Shilla Millennium Park

overlooking the topiary garden

We went to the fossil museum located in the grounds, which proved to be of much better quality than I expected. It contained several complete prehistoric sea creature fossils, a few land animal fossils, plant fossils, and numerous rock displays and petrified wood. The girls had more fun playing with the snow and cement dinosaurs outside the entrance. You can see them in the center of the photo below.

There was also a building of popular Korean kids characters which, oddly, were all named in English letters. It also contained an art gallery of copies of famous pieces of art, such as the Mona Lisa, Prima Ballerina, etc. Why they chose to combine those two particular categories, who knows?

We walked around the outdoor sculpture garden and the topiary garden, both of which I'm sure would have been much nicer if it had been spring or summer. Nothing of extraordinary interest in the way of sculptures. This seemed to be the best one and the one displayed on the ad:

in the topiary garden

Our final stop before leaving Gyeongju was also our favorite: sledding on the frozen canal. The cold does have its advantages! They had a tent set up (with a smelly fire going) where we were able to rent a sled and pull the girls and each other around. It was a ton of fun!

Gyeongju in the Cold: Day One

We wanted to do something for the New Year weekend, so we decided to revisit Gyeongju. First off, it was cold. Next, it was really cold! But we were still able to enjoy a few attractions, and because of the cold, they were free of crowds.

After choosing a hotel, the Hyundai Hotel in the resort area of Bomun Lake, we went to the Shilla Millennium Park. It is designed to display the history of the Shilla kingdom that was centered in Gyeongju in the 8th century. It was still cold.

Notice the ice build up; there was even more when we left about 2 hours later.

It's a large park and I'll list most of the things we saw.

A replica of housing for royal families:

a commoner's view, peeping over the wall

Replicas of gangseung, village protectors, some of which are mechanized and talk or wiggle their tongues at you:

this one had a moving tongue

There was a reenactment of a battle on land and water called "Secret of Heavenly Chest". There's a special story behind this battle, as there seems to be with all things Shilla kingdom related, but I didn't understand what. It has to do with the heavenly treasures; what they are I don't know.

The stage is across the water from the seating, and it is raised, so it was a little difficult to see.

We also watched a display of the "Art of Hwarang". You can click on the link for a more detailed description of what hwarang were, but they are equated to knights. They shot arrows and sword fought while riding, did some displays of sword and pole wielding, and there was some 'trick' riding as well. One guy ran along side the horse, which was pretty impressive. (There is a short video at the bottom of this post you can watch.)

nice view, eh?

There were several other scenic areas around the park and little artisan workshops (glass art, painting, etc), all of which were closed, but had displays to view their work.

Next on the itinerary was dinner. My husband chose a Korean traditional restaurant, which was a little surprising to me. We went in and were seated on the nicely heated floor in our own room by a waitress dressed in hanbok, the traditional attire. The menu was all in Hangul and no one spoke any English, so we just pointed and nodded and smiled when she kept asking us questions we didn't understand. So they started bringing out the dishes. If you know anything about traditional Korean dining, you know you end up with about 30 dishes covering the table.

The first few dishes were some bean sprouts, kimchi, typical stuff. Then came some meat. From my prior perusal of Korean cookbooks, I knew what it was: seasoned raw beef.

Now I am willing to try many things, but eating raw beef goes against everything any American is taught their entire life, and I could not bring myself to do it. They brought out cooked meat as well, and many more dishes that I couldn't identify, and I did try most of those. Like the suspicious looking "fish nuts",

which we later found out via internet translation on the waitress' phone were tiny raw oysters. They also brought us what I would call normal size raw oysters and I ate one of those also. I ingested several other things still unknown, but overall the dinner was good.

Short Hwarang Display