Spending the past week and a half in Korea if learned and felt a lot of the Korean pride that Koreans show. I see this in our cultural classes, SNUE students, and in the general climate. This weekend we took a trip to 부산 (Busan). It was a lovely city on the coast. We visited the beach, ate and drank wonderful Korean food and Soju, and sang our hearts out in a local노래방 (NoRaeBang) aka Karaoke Room. On our last day we went to the City of 경주(GyeongJu). GyeongJu is sometimes called “A Museum without Walls” because of the many culturally significant sites that are in and right outside off the city. We took a tour bus to many of the sites. On the tour bus we were the only American tourists, the rest were Korean. We went to King’s tomb’s, a beautiful pond and garden used to host meetings in ancient times, and a Buddhist Temple called 불국사 (Bulguksa) up in the mountains. Patricia and went into the temple to bow and pay our respects to the Giant Buddha as many of the Korean visitors did as well. There was great respect in the air. GyeongJu was the capital city of many of the ancient Korean Kingdoms and many Koreans treat trips to Gyeongju as a kind of pilgrimage to see where they came from.
