Gyeongju.

February 04, 2014

Gyeongju.

Saturday Hannah and I went to Gyeongju. Gyeongju is about an hour or so away from Yangsan. It's one of Korea's most beautiful and historical cities. All of the buildings were the traditional style buildings. I really liked this about the city. It hasn't really been industrialized with skyscrapers as the other cities I've been to have. We took a walk in the park and came across a bunch of tombs. The tombs looked like big giant hills of grass, however, they were behind a fence and couldn't be touched. We also came across an old observatory that was used to look at constellations back in the day. You couldn't go inside and the tower didn't look all that tall - but it was a piece of history and it was pretty interesting. It's considered to be a national treasure as claimed by the Korean government. There were a lot of national treasures in this city.

I enjoy spending time with Hannah because she kind of tests my knowledge. Sometimes, it's hard for her to come up with the right English word so she will give me an explanation of what the word is and I have to come up with the right word. On occasion, I have no idea what she's talking about and it's hard for me to come up with the word. It's really testing my vocabulary and I love it. For example, she was trying to think of a word and used the explanation "not an outgoing person, but a person who likes to spend time by themselves with their thoughts." I was threw out words like "loner" or "not out-going?" Sometimes it's hard! She was thinking of the word "introspective."

lunch

We went to the biggest temple of the city - Bulguksa. It was my first time visiting a temple so I was really excited. There were a bunch of buildings that you were able to go into (if you took your shoes off!) and pray. Inside smelt of incense and contained a giant golden Buddha statue. No pictures were allowed inside but it was a very relaxing atmosphere. I saw a lot of foreigners here and they will look at you in a friendly manner when they see you speaking English but no one says hi or anything. Next time, I'm going to spark up a conversation with one of these foreigner strangers.

Anyways, next we went to Seokguram Grotto. It is this beautiful, giant Buddha statue that was created by man as a present to his parents in his previous life. I've seen pictures of this Buddha statue but never knew it was located here. We had to drive to the top of a mountain to get here. The scenery was beautiful and the walk to the statue was great. The whole place was lined with lanterns. They recently built walls around the statue, unfortunately. You weren't allowed to take pictures inside. I think it would have been so much cooler to see this great statue just carved in the middle of a mountain. I wondered how that man even got up to the top of that mountain so many years ago. I always think about how long it took men to create highways and stuff. But how on earth did they create this road all the way to the top of this huge mountain? My mind was blown. Although it was a quick walkthrough - it was very enjoyable. This statue and the temple I went to are also national treasures and they are world heritage sites according to UNESCO - which is a place of special cultural or physical significance by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. I plan to definitely come back here because there's so much more to see. Maybe I'll do a bus tour or something. It was fantastic.

Before I peace out, I'll leave you with some info. Yanno that big fat Buddha statue that is always laughing or smiling? He actually isn't Buddha. He is just a Chinese monk named Budai. A lot of people think that he is Buddha but he is not. People forget that Buddha's teachings were mainly in India. It wasn't until later that Buddha became associated with Asia.