Gyeongju

Dear Friends,

It's been a while since I've updated. Last week I went to Gyeongju province of Korea, about two hours south of Seoul. It's a pretty neat area, where the archaeological remnants of Korea's history (up to 2000 years old) still remain. On the long train ride back to Seoul, I started two write a blog saying, "Unfortunately, I can't post any pictures yet, because both my camera and video camera were kaput this weekend. Doubly unfortunate, I won't be able to post this blog until late Sunday night, breaking my once a week blog update that I've kept since I got here."

I got back at 10pm that Sunday night, and promptly fell asleep, not posting anything with pictures or otherwise. All week long, I thought about getting around to finally finishing my update (Some wordy ramblings about the beauty of the countryside and the transience of life), but I was so busy with school that all I really did was post a blog poll on what people wanted to see more of--it seems to be more blog updates, which makes me feel even worse about not posting for two weeks. Anyway, in the interim time between the complaint that I had no camera and the posting of this blog, my classmates who went on the trip with me all posted pictures of the trip to Gyeongju. I stole some of my favorites and will post them here in no particular order and with my own commentary.  

This picture is funny to me, because I am being excessively polite.  I had had dinner the night before with my principal and vice principal.  My teacher had instructed me before hand, "You need to be polite--deferential. Hand the glass to principal with two hands." So here I am handing my glass to my Bonnie with two hands, averting my eyes and bowing my head.  I didn't even realize that I had done this until my friend Young posted the picture with the caption, "Here's Renee, being really polite for no reason." 

These pictures were taken by a temple and palace (I don't remember the name) that I visited last Saturday. In this tiny courtyard, people stacked hundreds of piles of flat rocks. Every stone that was placed was to make a wish.

My friend Crystal said, "Man, I should take a picture of someone stacking rocks. Quick Renee, make a wish."

"I wish someone would take my picture," I whispered, as I made a rocky pyramid.  Later, with the group we stood marveling the all the tiny hopes of hundreds of tourists.  "Look at all these wishes," said Smarmy Craig.

I grabbed my rock, "Yeah, but you know what? This one, this one right here, it was my dream, my wish and it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back."

No one else laughed. But even a week later, I am still laughing.

I don't remember exactly who these guys were. They were statues of gods that protected the temple, and each of them had a different musical instrument as a weapon, and each of them had differently color-coordinated undergarments. The tour guide made a point of mentioning that, probably to endear himself to the group of fourth-grade boys on the tour with us. I remember feeling a little dismayed that the statues were so old and withered, that nobody had brushed the dust from them or painstakingly given them a fresh coat of pain in many, many years.

These were two of my favorite things we saw. The first one is a 100+ year old observatory, the oldest in the world. I liked it especially, because it was built by a queen in a time period when women were considered intellectually inferior to men. After she built it, she was respected amongst the intellectual elite of her time, and is still remembered today, over 1000 years later. When I first saw the observatory, I was mildly interested, but hearing the story about it awakened the feisty feminism in me and I growled, "Yeah, that's right," and glared at all the men in the tour group.



The second picture has a pretty interesting story as well. The stone figure you see is a "floating pool" on the razed grounds of a king's "pleasure grounds" palace from the Silla dynasty. The phrase "pleasure grounds" conjures up all sorts of images of debauchery for me, but the king in question apparently used the grounds to have musical sessions with his friends. They would sit by the pool and float cups of water, and challenge each other to compose poetry. Anyway, the Japanese came in one day during one such poetry session and burned the palace down and murdered every nobleman EXCEPT for the king.  They looked at him disdainfully (I imagine him sitting there with a drooping beard, his clothes torn from running, and burnt along the edges. His face is covered in ash, with little bleeding cuts, and his eyes are still bewildered at losing his friends and everything in the blink of an eye), and sneered, "you're a worthless drunk that's not even worthy to kill."

It's interesting that after hundreds of years, with relatively little known about the daily lives of people, this story has still endured with such detail that conversations are recorded. Anyway, upon hearing such an overwhelming burn, the king grabbed a sword and cut off his own head, thereby proving (if only to himself) that someone (if only himself) thought he was important enough to kill. 

Here's the last group of photos. You can see the whole group sans Young (who took the photo). From left to right is Craig, Renee, Hyunkyung (the graduate assistant at KU), Crystal and Bonnie.  The other two shots are just because I wanted you to see how unbelievably beautiful the fall in Korea is. The pictures are like looking backwards through a pair of binoculars, and seeing the beautiful magnitude of everything diminished to tiny pinpricks. Still, in the following week many of the leaves have fallen, exposing the black, naked limbs of the trees. During the cold winter, I cherish every pinprick of the glory of autumn that I can get.

Anyway, to end this blog I just want to thank those of you who replied to my poll. Next week I will try to have a three update week (probably Monday, Wednesday and Saturday). I will try to make one of those updates a vlog, but no promises. Love you all.
-Renee Badenoch