GyeungJu School Field Trip
Recently our school went on a double field trip day with some of our Garden school funding.
NOTE: Our school was designated a “Garden School” earlier this year and given some huge amount of money to renovate and redesign the programming. Kate and I have no idea really why our school was given this “honor” but we can assume it has something to do with our Vice Principal who last year was a supervisor at the office of education, so he has lots of connections. This all doesn’t really affect us toooo much except that everyone is going crazy trying to figure out how to spend all the money and we’re cramming in a bunch of field trips before the end of the school year to use some of it up. Hence.. the double field trip day.
The 4-6 graders went to Seoul for 2 days to visit another Garden school and to see some museums etc. The 1st-3rd graders went to Gyeungju. This city is about 3 hours south of Samcheok and used to be one of the dynasty capitals before the country was unified and Seoul became the capital. We’re talking 600-1000 years ago… So we toured some of the major historic sites, a museum, and a famous Buddhist temple. I’m glad we got to go on this trip even though the 1st-3rd graders are more difficult to handle than the older kids. We’ve seen Seoul so many times, it was nice to check off another place (even if our trip was very fast and not at all comprehensive 
).
Here are some of our pictures from the trip. If you’d like to see the full gallery check it out in the photo pages or click here.
*A note to the reader, Chad did the grunt work for this and I am filling in the captions. Now you know why Chad suddenly became much more effeminate. It’s just me! -K
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The sunrise on our way to see the old city. We have to leave at 7!
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Approaching the tombs. They are from the Silla dynasty (they think). They were enormous and I think they are one of Korea 1 billion wonders. I think we saw about 10 that day. They are scattered all over the place which was very striking when we were driving up. Did we mention the cold? It was cold.
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This is one of the fist astronomical observatories in Korea! It’s next to the tombs. We stopped there long enough for each class to get a picture then we moved on.
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Next we visited the old royal palace. If my memory serves me well I’d say it burned down a few hundred years ago and the building are abotu 20 years old (replicas). There was a time lapse.
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Now we are visiting a temple. I have to say, the Korean temples have sadly started to melt together in my memory but this one really stands alone. It has two towers inside and they were beautiful. One of the towers was being restored and we got to climb the scaffolding and peak at the man working.
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This is one amazing picture! That new lens has really been paying off!
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Isn’t this amazing?
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Here is the man working on the tower.
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That’s me and my man!
Well, on another note, we are doing very well. I have been grinding away on my applications and Chad has been AMAZING through it all. He deserves lot’s of high-fives.
I hope that everyone is doing well. This is out last Christmas in Korea. We are pretty excited – there are a lot of wonderful things coming up!
Oh, and Molly will be here in 2 weeks then we get to go to the Philippines! Lucky dogs!
Kate & Chad
2 comments
So it is cold in Korea too. We had about 4 inches of snow last Wednesday with white out conditions on the highways.
Today it is melting some with 38 degrees so happy for that.
Had a nice church service this a.m. with the christmas carols and our anthem “Sing we now of Christmas” which went well. Then Grandpa and our new music director played a wonderful offertory-duet with organ and string bass.
Titled Veni, Emmanuel…….very nice.
Off to a movie this afternoon.
Love, Grandma and Grandpa J.
Yes it’s coooold. Especially today… At least it’s sunny – that always helps. Glad to hear your snow is melting away. I love “Sing we now of Christmas” – always reminds me of a madrigals in high school. Organ and Bass sounds interesting… Would have loved to have heard that. Definitely missing the Christmas music over here, but we’ve got a few classics on our computers that we rotate sparingly- so as not to get too sick of them too quickly
We’ll be having a multi-religious holiday season this year. On New Years eve we’re going to Odaesan National Park to the Woljeongsa Buddhist Temple for a “Temple stay”. We’ll learn about buddhism and the meaning behind their practices and the temple elements – and participate in the daily rituals of the monks studying there. Should be an interesting experience. All we know is we’ll be bowing 108 times at 4 in the morning and doing some intense hiking. (Told us to bring Crampons!) Should be memorable. Kate’s sister will be here for it – we’re giving here a big shot of Asian culture in 10 days 
Love,
Chad