This past Friday, October 1st to Monday, October 4th (yea it's been a while since I last posted an entry) every Fulbright ETA gathered in the historic city of Gyeongju for a conference. I loosely use the term "conference" here because it ended up being 3 hours of singing practice each day for our upcoming Fulbright song performance during the Fulbright 60th Anniversary in Seoul the following weekend. I'm a bit jaded about the whole experience because a) I didn't sign up to be a singing, dancing monkey when I came to Korea, and b) I found the discussion time very useful, informative, and would have loved more of it in order to...you know...make me a better teacher since that's what I thought I was here to do. Anyway, in order to avoid sounding overtly bitter (which I am), I'll focus on the good parts of the conference, for example the awesome American snacks the wonderful Fulbright office prepared for us. I never thought I would enjoy Doritos, Sunchips and Costco cookies as much as I did.
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| Gyeongju |
On Sunday, we went on a Gyeongju tour and saw Anapji Pond, Bulguksa Temple, Cheomseongdae Observatory, Gyeongju National Museum, Seokguram Grotto, and Cheonmachong Tomb. Briefly, Anapji Pond was a man made pond created sometime during the Silla period within the palace walls. It was incredibly beautiful and picturesque. Bulguksa Temple is a UNESCO World Cultural Asset and was built in 528 during the Silla dynasty's reign. Cheomseongdae Observatory (if you can call it that) is a stone building no more than 2 stories tall and is the oldest existing astronomical observatory in Asia. It was orignally built in order to forecast the weather. I like museums, and have always been fascinated by history. However, so far the museums in Korea have not satiated my appetite. The Gyeongju National Museum was no exception, as there was very little to note about the artifacts on display, except King Seongdeok's Bell which was a massive beautiful bell. Can you even call a bell beautiful? Lastly, we went to Daereung-won Tumuli Park which contains the Cheonmachong Tomb. These are large ancient tombs from the Silla period that are contained in these massive mounds or man made hills.
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| I saw everyone else rubbing this anteater looking thing so I did the same. Later, I found out it was a pig that people touched for good luck. I still think it looks like an anteater. |
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| The beautiful bell I was talking about |
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| Anapji Pond |
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| Anapji Pond koi, which brought back memories of feeding the koi at Florida's Morikami Museum |
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| Asia's oldest astronomical observatory |
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| Cheonmachong Tombs |
After the conference I had a train ticket back to Daegu on Monday. Making a pretty rash decision (but one that worked out nicely), I took a bus to Jinju for the lantern festival instead with a bunch of other ETAs, a couple of which my Aunt graciously hosted for the night. I had the following day off because of midterms at my school so it worked out perfectly. The Jinju lantern festival can't be described in words because these aren't your typical lanterns. They are more like monuments that happen to light up. Take a look for yourself!
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| These lanterns all floated on the Nam gang river |
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| In front of a dragon lantern, for all you 1988 babies |
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| A Non Gae lantern, commemorating the beautiful Non Gae who killed herself along with a Japanese general by throwing herself off a rock while holding onto him, drowning them both |
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| Nam gang river |
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| Nam gang river |
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| Nam gang river |
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| Nam gang river |
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| No festival in Korea is complete without a lavish tale about fending off Japanese attacks while faced with being out numbered 10-1 |
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| These are the types of lanterns I pictured when I heard of the festival. Here people write their name and a wish/desire and hang it up in this massive tunnel filled with other lanterns. Most people wished for a) a boyfriend/girlfriend b) health for their family c) money |
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| Nam gang river |
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| The festival also had a huge market where you could buy trinkets, socks, and eat anything from crab to whale to rotisserie pork to octopus to plain old kimchi |
Lastly, I want to note that there were a lot of carnival type games featured at the market. I did participate in one that I hadn't seen before: an eel race (or that's what I'm going to call it for lack of a better name). Basically, for 3,000 won, or a little under 3 bucks, one gets to pick up a small eel, drop it into a container and watch it swim towards one of 12 different doors. Depending which door it swims through, one gets a prize. I got some sort of worthless hello kitty esque dashboard ornament, which I quickly gave to one of my friends.
