Seoul_to

This past weekend we had a 3 day weekend. Some sort of holiday fell on Friday, but I'm not sure what it was. I briefly asked, but it didn't seem all that important to remember, so obviously it slipped right out the other ear after they told me.
Anyhow...Clinton and I took advantage of things and got the hell out of dodge for a few days. There was a mask festival going on in a city a few short train hours away that we had both been looking forward to getting to.
We arrived at Andong Friday night and slept off a long day and previous night of not sleeping pretty much right away. It was Clinton's bright idea to not sleep the night before so that we could sleep on the train more. Didn't so much matter though. I zonked out on the train and was still exhausted when we got there.
But...after a nice hotel room sleep the following day I was good as new. We went to the biggest folk village in the whole country and stayed there for the day and night. Because of the festival schedule, we didn't actually see any korean mask dances, but we did see a decent Thai one. That wasn't the highlight though. The best part of things was walking around this living folk village and taking in all the people and houses there. Clinton and I couldn't help but notice how beautiful everything was and wonder how people could still live in these 19th century houses. Course, our answer soon came after we realized cable and electricy had been long ago wired into the village. It was more than a little funny seeing houses that have old korean paper for windows, but yet also have satelite dishes set up on the sides of the houses. We got a "homestay" at one of the houses and enjoyed our little paper windowed room with floor heating from a fire. The old woman that owned the house was rather amusing in her korean babble too. I love old people like that. They just keep on 'a rambling, even if you have this "I'm clueless" look on your face. Oh...even without seeing a good mask dance though, we did see a couple really good performers of the old singing and instrument playing. Then there was an amazing firework display and cliff side program. It had something to do with historically of ousting the japanese. I'm still working on asking the korean teachers about that part of things a little more.

Seoul_to_Soul
		~ Monday, October 06, 2003 This past weekend we had a 3 day weekend. Some sort of holiday fell on Friday, but I'm not sure what it was. I briefly asked, but it didn't seem all that important to remember, so obviously it slipped right out the other ear after they told me. Anyhow...Clinton and I took advantage of things and got the hell out of dodge for a few days. There was a mask festival going on in a city a few short train hours away that we had both been looking forward to getting to. We arrived at Andong Friday night and slept off a long day and previous night of not sleeping pretty much right away. It was Clinton's bright idea to not sleep the night before so that we could sleep on the train more. Didn't so much matter though. I zonked out on the train and was still exhausted when we got there. But...after a nice hotel room sleep the following day I was good as new. We went to the biggest folk village in the whole country and stayed there for the day and night. Because of the festival schedule, we didn't actually see any korean mask dances, but we did see a decent Thai one. That wasn't the highlight though. The best part of things was walking around this living folk village and taking in all the people and houses there. Clinton and I couldn't help but notice how beautiful everything was and wonder how people could still live in these 19th century houses. Course, our answer soon came after we realized cable and electricy had been long ago wired into the village. It was more than a little funny seeing houses that have old korean paper for windows, but yet also have satelite dishes set up on the sides of the houses. We got a "homestay" at one of the houses and enjoyed our little paper windowed room with floor heating from a fire. The old woman that owned the house was rather amusing in her korean babble too. I love old people like that. They just keep on 'a rambling, even if you have this "I'm clueless" look on your face. Oh...even without seeing a good mask dance though, we did see a couple really good performers of the old singing and instrument playing. Then there was an amazing firework display and cliff side program. It had something to do with historically of ousting the japanese. I'm still working on asking the korean teachers about that part of things a little more. posted by ~B~ at 6:41 AM