Gyeongju and another amazing week

This past week has been another amazing experience here in South Korea. Classes are going great-so much more relaxed then classes at ONU and the trips have been so much fun. On Wednesday the 10th Hanyang brought us to Seoul's local water park/theme park (we had to choose one to go to). I went to the water park and had a great time on the slides, lazy river, and at their hot springs. It was a lot like an American water park just filled with Koreans. Thursday and Friday were back to classes with a little exploration throughout the city during the evenings. Friday night was the International Party hosted by Hanyang at a local bar. There were really great snacks, finally we got some fresh fruit! it is really expensive here. A dance floor was located on the bottom floor of the bar while the upper floor was a great space to hang out and talk to people. We went from the bar to Baskin Robbins which has so many choices all of which looked delicious. Saturday morning another ONU student and I got up early to catch a KTX bullet train out of the city to the southeastern area of Korea. We spent the weekend at Geongju which is the ancient capital of one of Korea's first dynasties. The city was full of history and surrounded by so many beautiful mountains. We spent Saturday visiting temples and other historical places in Geongju such as the National Museum and a Lotus flower field. We spent the night in a hostel before heading out again on Sunday for another day of exploring. After our traveling on Saturday we decided to spend Sunday hiking around Mt. Namsan so we caught a bus to Samneunggol Valley and found a trail with spectacular views and many sites of historical significance along the way to the top. It took us around 3 hours or so to make it to the top of the mountain where we were rewarded with wonderful views of the mountains surrounding us. We choose to travel down a different path than the one we climbed up and quickly found why our first path is the path most often taken. There were 3 different sections on our climb down that required climbing down a rope that had been hung from nearby trees. When we finally made it back to Gyeongju we spent a few hours exploring downtown before we had to catch a bus back to the KTX station to make our train back to Seoul. This trip was an amazing experience and definitely an experience that I will not forget for a long time. Unfortunately I have no pictures currently from Sunday because my camera died on Saturday but I will download pictures from my friend sometime later this week.