불국사 / Bulguk Temple decorated for Buddha’s birthday with thousands of colorful lanterns.
The two lanterns at the temple were so much smaller than I thought they would be. According to the fifth grade textbook I use, the towers are the greatest and most famous towers in all of Asia. Mmm, yeah, they are like 25 feet tall in real life. I didn’t even realize they were the famous towers when I was looking at them. The textbook illustration suggested they were Eiffel Tower height. Anyway.
That’s the end of 경주 이야기. So peaceful!
Gyeongju story! To be continued…
Conservative Christian opponents worried South Korean children will become homosexual if bill is passed
Unsurprisingly, the bill, which would ban “discrimination in employment and other social treatments of people with difference in about 20 categories, including region of birth, skin color, schooling,age, thoughts, medical history, religion, sexual orientation, appearance and marriage” status got killed.
Yeouido Han River cherry blossom trees.
Where I went yesterday: 청풍호 (Cheongpung Lake) in JeCheon. There’s a big lake here and the area is famous for its cherry blossom trees. They line the entirety of the winding road that leads to the lake, which took about ten minutes to drive through. Unfortunately we went there a week before the blossoms are expected to be at their peak, so they weren’t as pretty as they could have been. Everything still looked nice, though, and it wasn’t crowded at all! It was nice to get out of Seoul for a day and it was really nice to be outside on the first somewhat warm day we’ve had this spring.
I’m surprised no one has uploaded this yet. Now I feel obligated to. “How Koreans See the Rest of Asia.” I like that Japan is “close yet distant.” That is a really succinct but somewhat accurate way to describe it. However, I’m not sure how accurate that translation or some of the others are.
“Borrowed” Hooters logo and type. Chicken restaurant near my school.
Adorable meat restaurant wall art.
The tiny stationery and toy shop near my house is the bomb. All this for 5,300.
Faces at the Mr. Toilet House (the first one is Mr. Toilet himself!)
Not to write an entire Wikipedia article or anything, but Mr. Toilet, Shim Jae Deok, is the founder of the World Toilet Organization. He worked really hard to make public restrooms in the city of Suwon clean and beautiful. You can even go on a guided tour of the famous public restrooms in the city. The WTO helps to make sanitary restrooms in developing countries. He was also mayor of Suwon for a few years and on the national assembly for one year. The museum is his house. Unfortunately he only had the chance to live there for 2 years. He passed away in 2009 and his family donated the house to the city of Suwon as a museum. The guide told me they get 18,000 visitors a year and 13 (or 30… accent trouble, oops) percent of the visitors are foreign.
More pictures of the Mr. Toilet House and museum in Suwon, Korea
