Gyeongju

I just got back today from our all staff retreat at Gyeongju. We took many buses on Friday after school and just got back this Sunday evening. It was a beautiful ride through the country, we saw lots of green forests covering the mountains. The city of Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom a long time ago. From the mountain we hiked you can see the coast and the East Sea. The hike was pretty tough, but my ankle has been feeling a lot better, so I just felt out of shape. It took us 3 hours to hike to the top and go back down. The view was stunning from the top. To one side is the city, and the other the mountains and sea in the distance. It was totally worth the hard work. It's amazing all the little old Korean men and women who were walking up the mountain. I should have taken some pictures of that. Saturday afternoon I went on a cultural tour and saw a Buddist temple, the historical museum, and the huge burial mounds that they buried the kings in. They are pretty strange and huge-these kings were quite important. I guess one of the teachers thought a mound was just a hill and rolled down it. Let's just say you don't do that or Koreans will be very upset. This happened a few years ago, so I was warned and didn't have a strong enough urge to try it myself. Saturday night we had a cultural show in the hotel and I have some video from that. It was an awesome weekend and great time to spend with our staff and the sister school, GSIS in Suwon, South Korea. Tonight we planned our trip to Busan over the Chusok holiday. We get some days off for a Korean holiday in September. We booked a hotel over the phone and it was so funny because you can never really tell if the people understand exactly what you want. There's a lot of back and forth, okay, okay, okay, yes, what did you say again? It's always an adventure living here in Korea! Paul-that last photo was people from our school practicing rugby for the touch rugby tournament in Seoul.