We got up around the same time for breakast this morning. The buffet was almost an exact replica of yesterday. We are done with the presentation/workshop portion of our conference, so we had a day of touring 경주; a WHOLE day of touring.
I promise I will upload photos as soon as possible; however, currently my computer is incapacitated. We visited a big Buddha. Many men and women were there praying, because it is 100 days until important school exams. At the 100 day mark, people flood in to pray to Buddha to help their children do well on the exam. We also visited many tombs which look like hills; large hills. One of the tombs we visited is called the "Hanging Tomb." It is called this because when the tomb was dug, there was too much water in the bottom to lie the coffin into; therefore, the coffin was hung above the water. It was near this tomb that some of the ETAs started playing Red Rover while waiting for the other ETAs to finish up taking pictures and whatnot. At another tomb, some ETAs were trying to feed a rat near the pond. That ended up being more exciting to many than seeing the tomb. I was pretty excited to see a rat; I like rats!
We visited a 경주 history museum also. If you know me very well, you know I do not incredibly enjoy visiting museums. It was interesting to see, but I didn't learn as much as I could have if someone was there to explain what everything was. It was up to us to read all of the information, and unfortunately no tours were provided for any of the places we visited. Outside of this particular museum is a bell. This bell has an interesting history. I don't know the whole story, but basically the bell wasn't loud enough, so a baby was sacrificed and placed inside the bell. Now, it is said that the bell, when rung, sounds like a baby crying.
Lunch was provided for us somewhere in between all of the traveling. I appreciate being able to see all of these places, but I think I would have been able to appreciate each place even more if we didn't visit everything all in the same day. People were getting cranky by the end of the trip. All in all, we saw: Seokguram, Bulgoksa, Goeneung, Cheomseongdae Observatory (This place is quite interesting. It is an observatory that you climb into and up to view stars. The bottom of the tower has 12 stones for the 12 astrological animals, there are 30 rows for the number of days in a month, and 365 or 366 stones in total for the number of days in a year.), Anapji, Gyeongju National Museum, and Cheonmachong tombs.
We got back to the hotel earlier than expected due to the fact that we didn't go to one of our scheduled stops. Instead of waiting to have a meeting after dinner, the group discussing the situation in Burma met early.
After the meeting, we headed to dinner. It was in the conference room in the basement and it was a buffet this time; a pretty amazing buffet!! I sat with Margaret and Ariah; we continued to discuss more from the meeting.
After dinner, I hung out in my room for a little bit with Lauren and Jenna. Lauren and I then moved to Amber and Laura's room to hang out in there. It was a lazy night; lots of hanging out and talking. At about 1:30AM, Jenna and I ended up in a room at the end of the hall with a bunch of people. I finally got to bed around 3:00AM.
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