Working for the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education comes with a lot of perks. The DMOE is the only one that includes air conditioning for our apartments in our contracts, they offer free Korean classes, they greeted us with a banquet (which I know the local POE didn’t offer its teachers), and from what I heard Daegu is the only city that takes its teachers on all expenses paid overnight culture trips. It’s a pretty sweet arrangement here in Daegu.
Last month DMOE offered its native language teachers (in addition to English teachers some schools have native Chinese and Japanese teachers) a free, overnight trip to Gyeongju. It even began on a Friday, so we got a day off of work to participate. DMOE has been pretty regular with offerings such as this to help us learn more about Korean culture and this trip was a great opportunity.
Gyeongju is the cultural capital of Korea and is, in my opinion, and important stop for anyone travelling in search of real history and traditional culture. On the first day of the trip we ate and ultra-traditional lunch that was maybe a little to rustic for most of us, and we explored the Gyeongju tombs from the Silla era. These tombs, which you can find all around Korea and I actually have a bunch near my house, are large mounds of earth of different sizes and they are literally thousands of year old. We were taken on a tour to learn about the history of the Silla era in Gyeongju and to walk inside an enormous excavated tomb.
Following the tomb adventure we got to do some good old arts and crafts! We made soaps, printed paper with stone inscriptions, and decorated some items with traditional paper. We got to keep all of these things and DMOE presented us with gifts; scarves decorated with the famous horse painting from the tombs and decorated wooden coasters. We acquired a lot of stuff on this trip… Following the crafts we were given hand printed kites to match our Chinese zodiac signs (yes, we got to keep these) and went out to learn kite flying from some really nice old men.
Int he afternoon we went to Seoak Confucian Academy for a musical performance by some traditional musicians who even threw in a couple of Beatles covers. We sang along to the traditional “Ararang” and then played some traditional games. In small groups we were dressed in traditional wear and attended tea ceremonies with tea experts. Our teacher was really nice and taught us how to pour and appreciate the tea with two small tastes and one large drink to finish it off. Outside we took turns mashing rice to make rice cakes.
In the evening we were all given paper lanterns (another thing we got to keep) and taken for a night walk to an ancient observatory and to Anapji pond. It was really gorgeous walking in the dark among so many lanterns and nice to be in a place that is so dark and quiet at night.
We spent Friday night in a hotel, thanks DMOE! Saturday morning we were given a lesson in Taekkyeon, a form of Korean martial arts with fluid, dance-like movements. Later that day we were taken to Bulguksa Temple, a really beautiful temple on a hill overlooking Gyeongju. The fall colors were amazing (see this post) and the temple was larger than others I have visited here in Korea. I really enjoyed walking around its grounds, enjoying the beautiful landscape.
We boarded the buses and took a detour to the sea where we saw the remains of an ancient temple legend to have been built by a king’s son above a channel to the ocean so who father, who became a sea dragon, could swim under the temple. There is a small rock island off the coast that is legend to be his tomb. We whipped out those kites again for some real kite flying in the gusty wind, which ended in a lot of tangles and destruction. The kite instructors tied a bunch of kites together to make what they claimed to be a 400 meter kite. It was a nice relaxing weekend, enjoying Korean culture and some really amazing site. Just another reason to be grateful for this job!
