Weekend Romp through Gyeongsan

Since I spent Saturday, pretty much just being a big couch potato, I made myself go out on Sunday.

I had been eyeing the Daegu map to see what things I wanted to see before I left Daegu and noticed that there was this area of Daegu that had a fortress and some tombs "nearby."

As I couldn't find anyone to go with me, I hopped the subway to the very last station, Sawol Station and started walking.

As I was walking I passed by a rather common sight in Korea, new apartment construction, so I took a couple of pictures for you all to see. This apartment complex will have underground parking for the residents. Anytime you don't have to fight over parking is always a good design. One thing that really disappoints me about Korean apartments is the lack of aesthetics, they're just huge BORING concrete buildings that lack any real personality. With all of the architects from Korea that study abroad in like Italy and France, this really makes NO sense.

 As I continued on my merry way, I noticed a sign for Gosan Seodang, which looking at the sign, seemed to mean that I was on the right track for the fortress. HAHAHAHA

So I went walking down the side road and got to walk a bit through some farming areas where I got to see a Farmer and his wife harvesting rice, which I thought was pretty cool. I'm just glad I wasn't the one out there doing the hard work, holy cow!

Honestly, in Korea, to be one of the educated people is really important. If not, then you're going to be in a world of hurt sitting on the cold streets trying to sell socks or vegetables from your garden to get money to feed yourself. Or you could be doing backbreaking farming. Or if you study hard in High School, you can possibly get into college and get a desk job and work 70 hours a week, but hey at least you have a steady paycheck. 

Doesn't it make you realize just how good we have it in the US?

So, yes as I continued walking to the Gosan Seodang, I realized that I was actually going to the village school and not the fortress that was shown on my map! Drat!

I'm showing you this particular picture of the school, just to point out that there was a path from where this picture was taken down into the farm field below to the school on the hill. I had the coolest experience.  As I climbed down and started walking through the Apple Orchard, I stirred up a huge dragonfly hangout.

Everywhere I walked, there was dragonflies flying around me and it was just awesome to have all these little dragonflies just kinda fly in front of my face and just kinda look at me as if to say, "Wow, you're funny looking" and parade me down the path to the school.  I don't think I've ever seen that many dragonflies in my life, it was really awesome.

So as I got to the school and read the sign, I was bummed. The school was a reconstruction of the original school, because of course, the overzealous Neo-Confucians. The more I read about the Neo-Confucianism movement, the less I like I them. These highly idealistic men tried really hard to save people, but instead come across as communists. So in order to force the Korean people to follow their ways, they pretty much destroyed anything that went against what a couple of men thought were the right thing to do. :oP So hey, why not tear down schools and burn books to help these "ignorant" people be enlightened. Ok, moving on...

I don't think you have to be an archeologist to look at this picture and see that the work is fairly recent. The concrete caps on the roof tiles and the walls of the school are a bit too perfect and smooth. Oh, one thing I overheard from somewhere, was that Korea was really big about balance and so if you look at the roof, you will see that it's got this overlapping over and under look. You can see the over look with the ridges on the roof, that is considered the Male (Yang) and the under part, which connects the male part together, is the female symbol (Yin), so each roof is made up of the union of man and woman. I know Kim is sleeping but I hope the rest of you all thought that was interesting.

Seeing how it was locked and all that walking I did to see the school, I decided to walk behind the school. Lo and behold, there was a crude stone stairway that lead to this stone monument.

No, I have no idea what it stays. I just wonder if this isn't the tablet the sign mentioned.

So I took out my map and started to head to the Tombs that didn't look to far way on my map. As I started walking I saw a sign that said that the tombs were 6.1 km, as I have no idea how far that was, I figured it was probably either 3 miles or 12 miles, couldn't remember which, but seeing how the map looked a bit off, I figured it was probably 12 miles. So I started looking for a taxi and got one. The guy just spoke Korean and as my Korean stinks, we had a difficult time, but the guy ended up charging me extra for some reason but whatever, at least I was there because seeing where he was driving there would have been NO way I would have gotten there on my own.

So just on the outside of this newly developed housing area, were these random mounds.

I was just so surprised that these tombs were just kinda there with nothing more than a chain-linked fence and an informational sign saying that royalty was buried in these mounds. Apparently the ruling class (not quite kings & queens, but more like Governors to the King) were buried in the tombs and that's why there isn't any huge ceremony over them. What I thought was kinda humorous about them was that the tomb area was the local exercise area. Can you imagine doing laps in a cemetery? LOL This one guy was doing laps with his loyal older dog and a young pup. The Pup wasn't really listening and decided the Korean ladies were more fun to follow instead.

Well, you can kinda see one of the ladies in this picture, definitely can't see the naughty puppy running behind her, what a shame. But, you know the story behind this picture anyway.

I took my map and started to head back to the subway. I ended up walking a lot farther than I had thought and ended up across the street from the Gyeongsan-hyanggyo Confucian Academy. As I have nothing but distain for Confucianism, I chose to skip checking out their campus and headed in the direction of the subway station. As I did, I walked though this really cool area of beautiful fall leaves.

As I got to the end of the path and was trying to figure out which direction I should go, a bus stopped that was headed to Daegu Station, which leads to downtown. Seeing how I was still in a fog, I let the bus pass me and it wasn't until after it sped off, that I realized how stupid I was for not getting on that bus. Thankfully, buses run every 10 minutes, so I waited with a group of folks and got on the next bus. After going around what felt like all of East Daegu and about 45 minutes later, I ended up downtown Daegu. There was no way by this time that I would be able to get back to the dorm for dinner, so I splurged and went to KFC. With my chicken dinner, I was given hot dipping sauce, which I was going to use until I found out that the chicken I ordered was spicy. O_O

A tip for those traveling in Korea, if your food isn't super sweet, then it's going to be spicy!   Salty food is very rare. Just because you picked up that bag of potato chips, don't assume it's going to be salty! More than likely it's going to be on the sweet side. 

Ok that's it for this "little" journal entry. Oh and sorry, forgot to post the link to the pictures from last time, so they're combined in this photo album.

CLICK HERE

Have a nice day!!