Korea - Day 3

Our third day started with a train ride south.  The train was traveling at or above 300 km/hr and felt smooth as silk.  Impressive!  After the train we again loaded onto a small bus.  This one was butterfly themed

• Bottom middle: Hector taking a picture of the train station
• Bottom right: Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high.  Take a look, its in a book.  A reading rainbow...do you remember that show?

We took the bus to Gyeongju for some historical learnin’.  We started at the National museum for a look at some archeological finds from different eras in Korea.  My favorite thing was the model of the ancient city and the model to show how they cast these enormous bells for the Buddhist temples.

• Top middle-left: You can see how they would pour boiling metal into a bell shaped hole in the ground
• Middle right: A large model of the historical city (which was a planned city with straight roads).  Amazing!

Next we headed to the burial grounds of the kings from the Silla dynasty (53 BC to 935 AD).  We met some people who are ancestors of these kings and each person is responsible for maintaining a burial mound.  Someone else got a picture of us with a couple of these guys, but I don’t have that picture yet.

• Middle right: Korean's love strange cartoon figures...and we love to make human MITs...so its perfect.
• Bottom right: Descendants of the Silla dynasty.
  

Then we headed to lunch!  This lunch was fun because it was a tiny little shack (they had a squatty potty) with delicious food.  Definitely not an American tourist place.

Next we bussed up some crazy mountain roads (no guardrails) to one of Korea’s most famous Buddhist temples.

• Everybody ring the bell and make a wish!
  

We finished the site seeing by visiting another temple complex that was quite large.  There were just too many temples to take pictures of.

• Top middle-right: Chris Lin doing shadow puppets
• Top right: Said shadow puppets
  

After that we checked into our hotel and then made our way to dinner for duck stuffed inside of pumpkin (I was able to get just duck).  After dinner we went to a traditional Korean spa where we all got oversized clothes so we could sit in boy/girl spas.  We all learned that the two spa temperatures that are available are really hot and try not to pass out as you walk hot.  After a relaxing spa visit we headed back to our resort.  The resort we were staying at had a 24-hour convenient store and a karaoke bar that was open late…so we proceeded into karaoke which went long into the night.

• Top middle: My voice hurt from singing so poorly