A doorway in the wall. 

More Buddhist prayer stones. 

Fungi, fungi, fungi! 

A view of one of the various peaks of the wall. Jeanette, looking very intrepid. 

Everything is so lush right now! 

A group of Koreans taking a lunch break under the bridge. "Like a Bridge over Dining Koreans... I will lay me down!!" 

Korea - land of Nazism? Not at all. The Nazis took what is a traditional Buddhist symbol and flipped its design, making it the swastika. Those crazy nazis liked to do that - just think of the upside-down cross... 

The Wolsan temples from afar. I would have liked to have taken pictures of the insides of the temple, but didn't out of respect for the holiness of the place! 

Two temples, with the white stone monument in the background. 

Check out the intricateness of the painting on the wood. It was beautiful. 

The side of the roof. I love the architecture! Also notice the hanging bell - often, the bells have metal fish hanging from them. A very Buddhist symbol, I'm told. 

A view looking down on the path that we climbed to get up to the temple. It was gruelling! 

One of the Wolsan (I think) temples in Namhansansong park 

Check out the dragon on the side of the temple! Cool stuff, man! 

In front of one of the Buddhist temples at Namhansansong park. 

At the temple site, there was this cool monolith. I'm not sure if there are them, but on the map, they were marked as "breast temples"... 

This is probably the weirdest looking church I've ever seen... 

Spices, veggies, meat, kitchen accessories, home funishings, clothes, you name it, you can find it at the Moran market we went to. It was amazing! 

Bulbs of garlic (?) being sold in bulk at the Moran market. 

Break Time

I am currently on a break from school. It's nice to have the time off, but the first of our only two real vacations in the year couldn't have come at a worse time. Having just got here, I have no money to spend to travel to somewhere nearby, like China, Japan, Thailand, or Australia. The other foreign teachers at our school who have been here for a while went to Australia. I'm jealous. Well, sorta. I have never really had a desire to see Australia all that badly. Seems like a fairly pretentious travel destination to me because it's where "all the parties are, man!".

Anyway, I'm hanging around in Bundang and the Seoul area. I spent last night playing Risk with Jeanette at a boardgame-bang - they have places where you can go pay to play boardgames - it's pretty cool. The night before, I went out with Charlie for Kalbi and then drinks. We had a good time socializing...

All in all, I've been spending a lot of time just hanging around, sleeping in, and resting. Tomorrow, I hope to go to the nearby mountains to do a little bit of hiking. Other things that have been suggested to me that I do: visit the DMZ, see the Salvador Dali exhibit at the Seoul Museum of Art, go see Dundaemun market (a huge open-air market in Seoul)... I think that I have a lot of stuff cut out for me to do, but I don't imagine I'll make it to many of those places. I am planning on going down to the south of Korea on Friday and Saturday with Jeanette and her friend.

To everyone back home: I miss you all and I wish you could come visit! Korea is great!