More Gimhae...

(see below for thoughts on north korea nuclear insanity...)

Sunday: after spending saturday recuperating from friday, i decided that i needed to do something... anything... so i headed downtown. i got off the bus in the general vicinity of where i thought the Gimhae National Museum was. Of course, i was pretty far off, and so i had to walk... which i'm not scared of... been doing all kinds of it since i arrived in SK... not that i didn't before, but i digress. it was cool to have to wander around because i came across this really neat looking fountain (Kat: the water was ON) as you can see on the left. here's another cool shot i took of it:

i thought it was nice, and so i took a lot more shots of it, but i think two are enough for here.... right next to it, going all the way down the street was a photo exhibit of photos from around the world:






i spent a long time looking at them all and imagining that i could take photos just as nice as the ones up there. i've seen the same kind of exhibit in montreal on McGill College many times, seems like they've always got one going on there, but it wasn't expected here. it was really nice though, especially since the weather was so great... sunny and about 27 degrees C. (sorry to rub it in to the canadians.)

at the end of the exhibit, i found the museum.
it cost 1,000 won to get in - about ninety cents... so it was a real steal. i had no idea what i would find inside... turns out it's a museum dedicated to the Gaya State (Gimhae used to be called Gaya), for which very little information is known - as i discovered after my tour. they have lots of ancient bowls, pots, swords, jewelry, and other evidences of the Gaya state but not much information. most of the objects come from excavated tombs around the area of Gyeongsangnam-do (my province) and Gyeongsangbuk-do (the province north of me). most information inside was in Korean and English, but the English got worse as the exhibit went on, and eventually there was none for certain peices... wonder if this is laziness (not enough foreigners to make it worth while) or if they lost their translator... i don't know... but i pretty much stopped reading them by the end anyway, because they were pretty similar to ones before. i've seen better museums, and i've seen worse museums... it killed an hour or so of my day, so it served its purpose. the best part was at the end... right before you walk out the front door there is a work station set up, where you can make your own ancient Korean art! i couldn't resist. you have to buy the paper (really nice thick Korean paper) but it only cost about 45 cents - ha! ha! so cheap that i bought two! here is the process:

first you put your paper on a mold and soak it.

then you smack it with what looks like a hairbrush until the paper takes the shape of the mold.

then you partially dry it with a fan... manually... this is the hard labour part!

then you take this little packet of something covered in some material... dip in in ink and have at you paper...by slowly dabbing the ink onto it.

here is the first one partially completed...

...and here it is finished. since it wasn't enough work for me and i had a second peice of paper, i made another:
i think it turned out a lot better than the first.

i'm not sure what to do with them now... i'd like to put them up on my wall, but i still need to get some tape... and i don't know if i want to put tape on them... or wait until i can frame them - one day...

after the museum i tried to find a bus stop to get me home and happened upon another "museum" which is really a walking tour of the tomb grounds that were dug up to find all the objects for the museum... good thing i found it second... it was lovely though, a very quiet and relaxing walk. this is in the middle of the city. koreans are very "into" nature and preserving it even in the "big city"... i even took a video from the top, but i won't post it here, unless people ask me for it... then i came home and relaxed to prepare for "back to work" on monday... it's always harder after a week off... all in all, my chuseok holiday was great... as you have read (hopefully).

now i just have to worry about those crazy northerners... i'll keep you posted on what's up with them, but i'm not really worried about them just yet... we'll see where this goes...

stay tuned for my korean jack-o-lantern and my second attempt at cooking "korean"... hope you all had a nice thanksgiving!