At the end of July we had a much-needed vacation! Jin's family was kind enough to invite me to their trip to Baek-A mountain, which is a few hours southwest of Daegu. They were going to spend a few days in a cabin mountain.
This is our beautiful cabin in the woods!
Our cabin was split into two. The four of us on one side and another family on the other... the other family was fairly large and loud too!
On Thursday afternoon we took a tour of the countryside. We stopped by a bee farm and watched them add to the hives. There was a small convenience store with a kind old man! He built the wooden house and the store it was attached to. It was pretty awesome! It reminded me of a house you would see in Maine.
The people in the area were so nice too! They were very talkative, and gave us some of their Indian corn (ock-su-su) from their side-of-the-road gar
While we were in the area, we visited a few of the famous Buddha sites. This place was the "land of a 1000 Buddhas." Roughly. There were SO many! The myth for this area was that angels came down and were making all these Buddhas in one night, but the rooster crowd to signal daybreak and scared them all off. So most of them were left unfinished. Really interesting, but I wonder what the real story is.
This plant was used by women to paint their nails! If you crush up the flower it stains your fingers really easily. Jin's mom demonstrated for me. ^^
After MUCH hiking we finally reached the famous "Lying Buddha." It's the largest Buddha in Asia(?). But it's laying down... if I remember correctly it fell over because its base is too small. And in actuality there are two Buddhas stuck together... and they're actually carved into a bigger slab. Which I'm sure contributes to it being difficult to erect.
They have extra Buddha statues lying around every where! There really is no shortage of them.
The view from the top by the Lying Buddha was really amazing. There were both rolling hills and mountains everywhere. The weather was near perfect too... not too hot and a cool breeze at the top. I still remember Jin trying to catch dragonflies with his hat like an 8 year old... hehe.
Some of the Buddhas were definitely old.
This one reminded me of "The Thinker" statue.
I'm not exactly sure what kind of Buddha this is. I've never seen one in such a "come hither" pose. haha.
We took a break in the middle of the day on Sunday when we were seeing the "Dolman" stones. "Dol" means stone... So we were seeing "stone men." But the name is deceiving.
Basically all they are are large stones that don't belong there in the region. They were cut to build something, but that something was either never accomplished or so completely destroyed that they can't figure out what it used to be.
This is the largest dolman stone.
Apparently it has a hole in the top that looks like a vagina hole. The myth goes that if you throw a rock into it (and you're single) you will get married. If you miss the hole, you'll never get married. OR it could also mean that if you get your rock into the hole you'll have a boy for your first baby.
I got one in after the 4th try. Which either means I'll have to wait a helluva long time to get married... or I'll have 3 girls and a boy. haha.
If you can see the difference between the two pictures... congrats! You've found my rock.
It was a great trip with Jin's family. They really made me feel at home! It was nice being with a family again since I miss my own...
