friday night after work i went on a trip down to the southeastern part of korea with some of my coworkers. mrs. kim, the owner and president of the school, drove her car. our destination was 경주 (gyeong-ju), korea's ancient cultural city, the capital of the silla kingdom, which was at the height of its power around 600-800 a.d. it was about a four and a half hour drive, we finally arrived there around 11:00p.

from left: mrs. kim (�장님), sun, sunny, natalie, and me. we stayed in a cheapo condo, sleeping on the floor korean style. saturday morning we set out to see the cherry blossoms and ancient buddhist temples in the area.

the first place we went after this was to�글암 (seokguram), a buddhist temple built high up on a mountain. after driving up the mountain for quite a while, we walked even further up a long path and finally up stone steps to a tiny structure built into a cave in the mountain. inside was a 3.5 meter high buddha carved from white granite. in 1995 it was designated as a united nations world heritage site, which you can read about more here.

next we went to nearby 불국사 (bulguk-sa), a much larger buddhist temple.

from left: mrs. kim (�장님), sun, me, natalie, selena, and sunny.

some japanese tourists were on a guided tour, you can see them in shadow in the upper right part of the picture. as we passed them, sunny whispered defiantly to me, ��는 우리땅 (dokdo-nun, oodi dang), which means dokdo is our land! it's the koreans slogan for the current dispute over the island of dokdo, which recently the japanese have tried to claim as their own. many koreans are still resentful towards japan for it's brutal occupation and colonization of korea in the first half of the twentieth century. the recent custody battle over the small island has only brought back all the bad feelings koreans have for the japanese.

after we left there, we headed back into the main part of town for lunch. on the way we stopped off where there were more pretty cherry blossoms lining the road.

various vegetables and some seafood are added with rice and wrapped in different types of leaves to make a tasty and healthy meal. i ate so much, i was thoroughly full after that.

after lunch we went to a park with tons of grassy mounds that apparently are ancient tombs. it was a really serene park, parts of it were wooded while others were open and sunny.

before heading back to seoul, we stopped at the apparently famous 황남빵 (hwangnam bread) store. there we got some really tasty red bean bread, that was especially good since it was hot after having been freshly made. check them out at hwangnam.co.kr.

it's hard to imagine we did all that and were back in seoul less than thirty hours after we left. it was my first time really outside seoul, and i definitely enjoyed it. i'm looking forward to more trips to other areas of korea in the coming months.