Our life is like a bread.

I’d like to start this post by apologizing for my grammar and spelling.  I’m having to type these on my phone with my thumbs, and it doesn’t have autocorrect for spelling  so if they’re hard to read, I apologize.

After sleeping in and repacking, we left Daegu this morning, arriving at Gyeongju by 10:30 AM.

Trading in city streets for country roads  

Gyeongju is famous for theirbmultie UNESCO world heritage sites, palaces, tombs, shrines, temples, and pretty much all things ancient. They even have an ancient astrological observatory tower. This city was founded as the capitol of one of the 3 kingdoms of Korea in 57 BC, eventually uniting and ruling all 3 kingdoms from this city for the next 1,000 years. The area is much less urban but it’s densely packed with the Korean historical sites we wanted to see. So what did we do as soon as we arrived in this ancient city?

Yeah, we went to an amusement park to ride huge roller coasters. History will wait another day. 

The entire population of the park were bus loads of school children, ranging from elementary to high school. They were polite, friendly toward us, and followed the rules. Not a rude or rowdy kid in the bunch. Lines were either super quick or non-existent, and the park was spotless enough that even Disney should do a case study to figure out how they do it. 

Oddly, every ride uses only a single car at a time. You never have more than one group of riders on the track, like you do in America. We were on at a ride where one’s feet dangles, and the school kids all take their shoes off at the station. They just leave them on the platform beneath their roller coaster seat and ride barefoot or in socks. We kept ours on, but the whole thing was charming. They were even playing ad videos with bare feet dangling from the ride. Koreans have some real fixed guidelines about when shoes are mandatory and when shoes are optional. 

One attraction at this park is a shop called “Emotional School Uniform”.  We could not even guess the meaning, so we sought it out in the park. We were shocked and pleased when we finally figured it out.   I won’t spoil it, because we may use one of the “Emotional School Uniform” businesses in town and will post pictures.

We wanted to give an update on our enjoyment of English text with a few new entries, some from the park and some from Daegu. 

Truth be told, my understanding of Korean geography is pretty limited, so I can’t laugh too hard at their understanding of American geo-political divisions.  Young Koreans seem obsessed with Atlanta right now and they had a lot of shirts to prove it.  We saw someone even wearing this one in the wild.

This isn’t English but the rabbit bawling his eyes out caught our attention. This is a “you break it you bought it” kind of sign. 

Best non-ironic use of English on a Tsbirt. 

We Americans enjoy the word “juicy” in lieu of “oily”, thank you very much. Nobody wants to be confronted with facts when they’re eating. 

We avoided this restaurant, lest we become the entree. 

Jane thinks teenaged boys in America would be foul if an amusement park had a snack shop called Cupnut. Just unspeakably foul. 

We forgot to photograph the best English of the day. It was a notebook that said “Out life is like a bread.”  We very much wanted them to elaborate so instead we must come up with our own answers and bread analogies. 

After the amusement park, we went back to our room at the Hilton resort next door. There are about 4 Hiltons in this country, and the other 3 are in Seoul.  We would’t normally stay in an expensive American Hotel chain abroad but in this case my Hilton point redemption did the talking. Turns out that our Hilton is the nicest hotel in the area and a major destination for those visiting town.  We got a great deal.

UPDATE:  Joel and I went for a walk while Jane stayed in the room for a class with her Spanish conversation partner.  connectrd to our hotel grounds is a stunning 6.5km path around the lake with colorful lighting and lightly piped in classical music.  It’s an enchanting scene.

Next up:  Intense and advanced history tour starting at 0900 tomorrow and lasting for 7 hours.