Korea Journal Page Five
Korea Page 1 Korea Page 2 |
That's what struck me about Korea all the time: the contrasts. For instance, you could walk directly from a crazy busy street straight into the forest! Or, an elderly woman, dressed in clothes from another century, would be sitting on the sidewalk selling lettuce as she chatted away on her cell phone. We don't have those kind of contrasts in Canada everywhere you go. So... back to Sunamsa Temple. Whenever I walked past this place I felt I just wanted to live forever at the foot of these stairs. I made it a priority to set a day aside to paint them. It probably took me about five hours to do this painting. I met many people as I worked since often passerbys were curious to see what I was doing. Foreigners are not common in Busan and that alone can get you a lot of attention...never mind if you are a foreigner sitting on the ground with pencil and paper! One man politely asked if he could take a photo of me with his cell phone. I agreed to his request because recently complete strangers had already asked to have their photos taken with me so I knew I was a novelty. I think for some people it was so astounding to see a westerner in real life that they wanted to record the moment. But, I can only guess at this since we only lived in Korea for four months and that's not long enough to understand everything. One thing I can say for sure and that is that people here were incredibly kind and friendly to us. I will never forget the graciousness of friends and strangers alike. |
"Stairs Leading to Sunamsa Temple" (above)
This street corner is across the street and up a steep hill |
"A Day at the Museum" (right)
Ivan and I visited a museum one Saturday afternoon and I did |
"Crowns and Earrings" (left)
Crowns and earrings at the museum. These crowns were |
"Korean Crowns" (right)
More crowns from the museum. The one on the left was very simple |
"Entrance to the Children's Park" (left)
This is the entrance way to the Grand Children's Park |
"Culvert Along the Fire Road" (right)
Up in the mountains close to where we lived were |
"Driveway at the Edge of the Forest" (left)
This is a driveway leading to a highschool that's tucked |
Korea Journal Page Five |