Matt's Fulbright Journey in South Korea: A busy weekend

On Saturday, I went to Busan with some friends for the fireworks festival. Living on the East River in NYC has allowed me to see spectacular firework shows every July 4th, but I had never ventured into the masses to watch them from the ground level. We gathered on Gwanali Beach in Daegu to watch the hour long show amongst 3.5 million people (that's what the Busan tourism website claims, although it can't be accurate). The show was pretty good, minus the pushing and the close proximity to a man who smelled like he had just bathed in kimchi. Busan itself is a pretty lively city. It's the second biggest city by population in SK and had a lot going on. I met up with Jim, who missed the fireworks but not the evening festivities.
Jim and I took the KTX back to Daegu in the morning and we both promptly fell asleep. Somehow, by a stroke of pure luck, Jim woke up while we were sitting at Dongdaegu station and he dragged me off the train (although we forgot our kimbap). I got home and went back to sleep for a few hours before waking up for lunch and to go hiking with my host family. However, it was raining so we decided to visit 부석사 in Yeongju, which is about 2 hours north by car. Since it was further north, the leaves were already starting to change colors here and the scenery was beautiful. This temple is one of the more famous ones in Korea (although I'm starting to think that Koreans say that about all their temples). While there, they bought me a 죽비 or a stick that's used by monks to wake each other up with a quick thwack. While sitting in a small restaurant after the temple visit, one of the waitresses approached me and asked me to help her with her thesis on rural tourism by foreigners in Korea. I agreed and she gave me an 8 page survey of almost incomprehensible English. After I finished, she gave me a small Andong mask as a token of her appreciation which was pretty cool.
Upon arriving back in Daegu, we went to a 오리 (duck) restaurant, which was one of the best meals I've had in Korea. I've never been a huge fan of duck because of how fatty it is, but Korea has desensitized me to eating fat off meat because Koreans don't really differentiate between fat and meat. With that said, there were two kinds of duck on the grill: regular and smoked. Both were delicious, although I think the smoked duck pleased my Americanized palette more than my Korean host family's.