Day 6, 7 and 8: Tours Everywhere

I'm going to put together the past three days as we did so much travelling that not a lot of things actually happened. I should also give a little background on a new friend I have made: Vincent from Taiwan. I met him during the speech contest along with his tutor -who is from Australia originally, studied at ANU and has a blue small Mohawk for hair - interesting guy. The tutor gave me some feedback regarding how fast I had talked on the first day. Vincent himself was confusing for the organisers as whilst he was representing Taiwan, he is actually originally from South Africa and, like the Canadians and Australians, European and English as a first language. Whilst he didn't make it to the Top 20, he also enjoyed himself and is talking about coming back next year.

Anyway...

We didn't have anything to do until the scheduled "brunch" at 11am, so Brit and I didn't actually get out of bed until 10:15. Well, I slept mostly all the way through but Brit had been up on and off since before 5am trying to fix our air-conditioner. Without any air conditioning, the room had become at best swampy - the air was still, hot and humid which did absolutely nothing to help my congestion. When the Korean host girls came around the make an announcement about the change of times they were shocked by how hot our room was and quickly jumped onto trying to fix the problem. That is one thing that has been very impressive about our hosts - they will always try and solve your problem immediately.

Brunch was served down the street at a buffet. That was pretty cool because they had so many different foods - including pork stir fry and fried chicken. It was nice to have some variety and the self-serving meant I could pick and chose to my hearts content. Certainly enjoyed breakfast more than I have in the past couple of days.

After brunch we walked to the monorail - that's right Sydney, they still have an operational and useful monorail - to catch it to the CBD. It was really interesting - the single trip ticket is like a casino token that you scan to enter and then drop in the slot to leave. But the monorail itself is like any other part of the train system, except it runs on a single rail above the city instead of below it on two rails.

Downtown itself was pretty standard. Lots of shops, mostly of clothes, phone cases or jewellery. It was essentially like visiting a shopping mall. It was okay - Brit enjoyed the shopping, mostly because of how cheap the clothes were. It was funny there wasn't any change rooms in any of the clothes stores. Brit was demonstrating her serious shopping skills by trying out the waist of pants by measuring it against her neck which was pretty cool. Sophie and I kind of just wandered around and tried a couple of coffee places (various cold drinks were required) and I tried every ATM I saw to no avail.

We found a park with a couple of cool water fountains

It was so hot we thought about just going for a quick splash

The next morning we started the actual camp. Our first job was to participate in some ice breakers. It was challenging given that our key instructor only spoke Korean and so had to be translator every time. We formed teams and were having competitions to do things such as "stand in a line youngest to oldest" - but our team was disadvantaged by the fact that we had no Korean speaker so we had to wait for the translation before we could begin - so naturally we lost all of them. But oh well, I can't win everything here.

After we finished that, we got on the bus to go to the Buddhist Temple. This temple is unique because it is a home for female monks who are completely self-sustaining. But you wouldn't recognise them as female, because like all Buddhist monks they have clean-shaven heads and look very muscular due to the labour of caring for the monastery. The monastery itself is gorgeous - painted like the palaces in Seoul due to its high status in the community. It was up a fairly secluded path through forest, which made it seem even more impressive when we arrived.

One of the small monuments on our way to the temple

One of the signs on the bridge - not sure what it says

I assume that when it rains the river runs through here

A map of the monastery and information

The top of the entrance gate

One of the beautiful parts of the garden area

The main temple itself - as you can see in the background we were now in a mountainous area

The full entrance gate - subtle and understated

Inside the main temple - we could also walk around inside instead of peering through the windows, but no photos were allowed as people were worshipping inside

By the time we arrived at our overnight accommodation in Miryang it had started to rain. And I mean really rain. Because we were in a remote location - we were surrounded by mountains and the forest and it smelt absolutely amazing and was incredibly refreshing. We made a quick dash from the bus to accommodation, where we found a different style of college board rooms, designed for six people. From there you could almost be totally self-sufficient, with a kitchenette included and living room space and TV. Shintya and I slept in the living room area because the two sleeping rooms seemed a bit small for six people to squish in. The sleeping arrangements were similar to my Hanok experience in that each person had a mattress on the ground instead of an actual bed - but fortunately I was not sharing a bed this time. 

The accommodation was pretty cool in all, including the free cafe that provided drinks for us all and also free access to the snack bar which was a good supplement for dinner. I am pretty much over even seeing Kim Chi at this point. Bring me a steak! I can't even eat Kim Chi as it is 90% garlic in the sauce. 

After dinner we had a talent night. I did not perform (I have already demonstrated my single talent I have) but we were able to enjoy some traditional singing and dancing from other nations and it was an incredibly warm and supportive environment - no different to the attitude presented by the audience at the public speaking competition earlier.

Breakfast the next morning brought joy to the Chinese tutor, because we had Olympic coverage of his favourite sport - Table Tennis! And China was beating South Korea. Before we left I also managed to see a 400m women's hurdles heat (where the Jamaican runner blew up big time in the final 110m) and also a bit of slippery pole vaulting. It is so odd to be so unaware of what is happening with the Olympics - I would have thought we would be more engaged given the globalness of our group. 

We were then back on the bus, arriving in Busan in time for lunch. Lunch for today was brought to us thanks to America because we were supplied by both McDonalds and Burger King. I have to admit, I was super happy to be having a meal without Kim Chi involved. After lunch, we headed down to the beach, where I demonstrated my body surfing skills and managed to get sunburnt on only the front half of my body. I should have been more careful applying sunscreen - silly Elyse.

Our return to our Daegu sleeping quarters has been uneventful. I have managed to fill our shower with sand and that's about it. We're off to volunteer at a centre for people with disabilities tomorrow. It should be an incredibly eye-opening experience.

Only four days left in Korea! How time has flown.