Aftermath

Well, we successfully made it to Hong Seong, and we're now on our way home, happy to have been able to visit somewhere new and to see Lorie for the first time since we first arrived in Korea.

An unexpected side effect of the bus ride was that Shan got a little motion sick on the way up, so we stopped by the pharmacy on our way back to the bus station to get her an anti-nauseant. We'll see how it works, and hopefully she'll have a more pleasant trip home.

Our day was really exciting, though, as Lorie showed us around her hometown, introduced us to some more new food (and I'm a horrible person for not remembering the name of it), and just generally showing us a great time. Hong Seong is much smaller than Daejeon (at a mere 35,000 or so, compared to Daejeon's 1.5 million), but there was still lots to fill up the afternoon. We went hiking around the mountain near Lorie's place and checked out the temple there, then she took us to the remains of the old Hong Seong fortress (we'll have pictures up on Facebook or Flickr once we're back at a computer and have time to sort through the hundreds that I took). It was really cool to see these buildings that are so old and then see how much of that heritage is in many modern buildings (like the pagoda-style roofs that you see modern iterations of in many places, to name just one example). Now I'm not much of a history buff (I leave such things to Shannon), but I can definitely appreciate being able to see (or more appropriately, 'take pictures of') things that have real historical significance.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day, and I can't wait to go on another adventure like this one where we get to see some of this rich history that exists throughout Asia.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]