Gyeongju is all about the Silla dynasty tombs (random grassy knolls scattered around the city) and a few temples and castles. It was pretty cool actually, since most other "history" in Korea outside of Seoul consists of kitschy pop memorabilia and funny-looking stones masquerading as a tourist attraction (see: Mokpo Gatbawi park). I've mentioned before that, unlike American joints, Korean restaurants tend to specialize in one thing. The same applies to most of the cities in one way or another--a rejuvenating mud bath, the pear capital of the world, etc, etc. Anyway, Gyeongju's specialty is bread...this sweet little bean past filled concoction of love. I mean, they're good; delicious actually, but I think the town's economy is actually based on these little morsels since 1 out of 3 stores in the town sells nothing but bread. That must be an extremely boring place to work...there's no "what do you want,"no "how do you want that steak cooked".....just "how many."Alright, enough of that. This past weekend's FB Conference was HIGHLY appreciated. For an event that only consisted of one day (Saturday), I got a four day weekend. That actually rolled into my school's midterm testing dates...turning the whole affair into a 6 day weekend. The conference itself was...OK. If nothing else it was nice to listen to other ETAs' funny stories, schools that have better kids than mine and distaster home stays that make me appreciate this one that much more.
I may not have genius kids reading the Times in middle school, but at least my home stay siblings don't hit me and run off crying or crawl into bed with me in the middle of the night. It all evens out in the end...I guess. Well, after sharing stories and not paying attention during large group presentation, half of us hopped on a tour bus to check out the historic sites. Some of the Buddhist shrines and old temples were pretty amazing, but as with most Korean attractions, they were loaded with old ladies and little kids. This only makes me appreciate America that much more. I mean, we have our fair share of paved park trails and giant road-side hot dogs...but in pretty much any national park you can get yourself off the beaten path and live on the wild side for a couple days.After Geyongju, I headed south to Jinju for the night to hang out with Neill and check out the "Lantern festival"....I guess Jinju must be the lantern capital of South Korea or something.
In all seriousness though, the festival was pretty impressive at night and well worth the trip. During the day we toured an old castle on the river's edge--apparently famous for a Korean geisha that pushed a Japanese general off a cliff in the 16th century. I know it sounds odd, but the whole "famous" thing is just the norm over here. To give you an idea, we get in the cab to head to the castle on Monday, tell the cabbie where to go, and then he's like "Oh, so you know the story of the geisha who"....as if the entire city it defined by this one event.
Well, during the day the festival was little more than a bunch of oversized cartoon characters floating around in the river--anything form dragon floats and Buddhist shrines to giant weightlifters and miniature sports stadiums.
At night they've got them all lit up, putting on a pretty good show along side the food stalls and Korean carny' games. Yes, Korean carnies do exist. They have the typical baseball throw and bb gun shoot....mixed in with the 'eel dump' in case you ever forgot you were in Korea. In that last one, you just grab an eel out of a jar and dump it in a big trough with little rooms--whichever room it goes in you get the prize with the same number...plenty of room for interpretation there. The festival goes on all week, so anyone who's reading this over here and has the time to check it out, I highly recommend it. Over and out.
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