The pic is from the free bus tour we took during the Hanji Festival a few weekends ago. This 1000 year old pagoda and one other are all that remain of a Buddhist temple. The turtle on the bottom has a dragon's head and above it are two dragons fighting over a magic stone that bestows omnipotence on the one who acquires it. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

During the festival one of the teachers from our hagwon was helping out by providing English to foreigners at the festival. Everytime we went to talk to her a woman would pop out of nowhere and try to take a candid picture of us with her. She was the one who recommended the tour to us. Even though it was only in Korean it sounded interesting to us. The tour had a still and movie camera men recording it. During the first part of the trip we caught them trying to take pictures of us. Finally the still camera guy asked for a photo and we obliged with hopes that it would stop, and the rest of the tour we weren't bothered. We were pretty lucky that most of the stops at least had an English sign or two to let us know the significance of the site.

It looks like we should get nine days in a row off for Christmas vacation. At first C was really set on Austalia for Christmas, but i think we want to try to see it on the way home. After checking it out we decided there just won't be enough time to really see as much as we want. I talked C into looking at Japan even though she had no interest and she's starting to get enthusiastic. Once she saw they have a Disneyland in Tokyo she started to perk up.

We should be going to Seoul this coming weekend, in part to celebrate the passing of yet another year in my life. It should be fun getting away from here for a bit and doing some shopping. I usually get pretty down this time of year, but so far so good. We'll see what happen in the next week or so...
Photos