Happy Thanksgiving

Well, after 5 days, 4 nights, 3 taxis, 2 bus trips and 1 train ride our short vacation is over. We went from Daejeon to Andong for the mask festival and then to Gyeongju for sight-seeing. I think we did more walking than anything and I don't know how I will stand all day tomorrow because my feet are killing me.

Andong was pretty cool. The mask festival was kind of like FolkFest. In addition to the displays from across Korea they had different dances from all over the world - Latvia, Slovakia, Costa Rica, Mexico.. etc.. Except in Korea they actually bring dancers in from their respective countries (maybe because there really aren't any Latvians here). We stayed in a homestay in a small, slightly touristy, 'authentic' village about 40 minutes away from Andong. The village, Hahoe (Ha-hway), also had a stage there for the mask festival.

For anyone who doesn't know, a homestay is where you stay with a local family. We had a small... tiny room that was really just a wall papered cube with a wood/paper door that opened to the outside. It was actually pretty comfortable... but I think we were a little late in booking the place because some of the other homestay places looked a lot nicer.

We arrived at our homestay at around noon on Tuesday and headed back into Andong to watch an event called a Chachan-nori (or so I think). It was pretty cool.. some kind of pseudo-fight between two teams. Each team carries a man wearing impressive armour on a log platform. They fight it out in a kind of pushing contest. I will put up a picture or two of this. We wandered around for a few hours and barely caught the last bus to get back to Hahoe. We had been given a bus schedule but when we asked bus drivers about when the bus was coming they would make an X with their arms to indicate that the bus was cancelled.

So yeah, caught the very last bus that night. Supper was pretty decent - had some fish and soup... pretty typical Korean food. After supper we took a quiet walk around the town - it was really a beautiful little place. As the town was pretty much dead after 7pm we had a pretty early night. Now as you will see in the pictures, there is no bed in the room... only some thick sheets that lay on the floor. It wasn't too bad... not really something I would want to do long term though. But anyway, I woke up after maybe an hour of sleep to find I was really, really hot. Now after trying out the saunas I realize that Koreans really like the heat, but this was ridiculous. So after throwing off the thin sheet and still being way too hot I thought maybe the floor would be nice to sleep on. Wrong. The floor was actually too hot to touch for longer than a couple of seconds. It was like sand on a beach on a hot day. I don't know how people can be comfortable like this.

We planned to spend the next day/night in Hahoe checking out the village and the mask dance events. So we got up in the morning and quickly realized that there was really nothing for breakfast. The fried fish and soup from the night before really didn't look as good for breakfast as it was for supper. We spent a loooong time looking for something to eat that was somewhat 'breakfasty'. We finally settled for some kind of peanut/nougat candy, a few cans of orange juice, some rice cakes, and some bibimbap (if I haven't explained before, some seaweed and noodles in a bowl with an egg on top) without the egg. For the rest of the day we explored the town, went across the river by pole boat to see an old temple/residence, and took in some Mexican and Slovakian dance shows... then spent another night in the sauna cube with the hot floors.

The next morning as we were trying to leave the homestay we found that the only family member around was the grandmother (or maybe housekeeper.. she seemed to be doing all the work) and she didn't speak any English. Since we weren't sure how much we owed so this was kind of difficult. After ten minutes of trying to communicate to her that we were leaving and wanting to pay I finally just gave her a bunch of money, she smiled, and we left. We spent the rest of the day walking around Andong and taking the train ride to Gyeongju.

We got to Gyeongju around 5 and by the time we were settled into our hotel it was 6 or so. We took the bus out to a ritzy area known as the Bomun Lake Resort. There were a ton of fancy hotels with rooms starting at $200 a night (and going up to at least $3000) and they were packed full of Koreans taking advantage of the holiday. After walking for about an hour trying to find a place to eat with food that A. We wanted to eat and B. we could afford we found a nice restaurant that had a few appetizing dishes in our price range.

It was kind of funny - it was a really fancy restaurant, with French doors, chandeliers, bells to call for the waiters etc etc. Tara ordered a fish cutlet... and we were kind of anticipating maybe a nice filet, some rice maybe... what came was: two fish sticks with bbq sauce and tartar sauce, a few mexi fries, and some corn. It is really funny when they try to make 'Western food' at some of these places.

Anyway, the next day we went to a number of really nice Silla (one of the various empires that existed in Korea around 1500 years ago) and Buddhist tourist sites including some tombs, temples, and other old things. The tombs were pretty interesting. They started by making a 3m x 3m x 1m wooden box and placed inside the deceased important person with all his belongings. They then piled about 4m of stones all around and on top of the box to form a mound. The mound of stones was then covered with 1/2m of clay. They clay was covered with 5m of earth. Apparently the method worked really well as most of the tombs were untouched when the archeologists of the 20th century started digging them up. There were a lot of these tombs too... maybe 20 that we saw, all over the city just popping up all over the place.

The next day was spent just walking around the city as there was a large shopping area. We probably walked for about 8 hours. I was really ready to leave by the time when headed back to Daejeon. We arrived back around 9 and today we went to downtown Daejeon. It is pretty impressive (minus the smog). There is a huge underground shopping area... I mean huge. It stretches for blocks and blocks. We went there with some people we met in Gyeongju who are also teaching in Daejeon. They also took us to Costco which was pretty nice. Managed to buy some things we have been missing - black beans, nachos/salsa/guacamole, dried blueberries, spices, cereal, and lots more. Unfortunately they didn't have any chickpeas...

So anyway, I'm sure this is long and boring enough. Hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving!

P.S. I've uploaded a bunch more pictures for your viewing pleasure!