Donghwasa Temple and Daegu Stadium

This post is a little late, but last Friday we went on a "new-teacher-field-trip" to the Donghwasa Temple and to the Daegu Stadium, which will be hosting the IAAF track championship. We hoped into the van with four other teachers, our headmaster, and Jack one of the office staff, who did all the driving. Our first stop was to the Temple which is located within a national park. We arrived at the Temple, parked the car, and then climbed the flights of granite stairs up to a flat area where the temple was located. The Temple was a large building (see attached photos) that had a symbol on it that resembled a swastika, but not tilted on its side. Our were allowed to go inside of the Temple, but not allowed to take any pictures... which made me sad because it was so beautiful inside. I called it the Korean version of the Sistine Chapel because the ceiling was all painted. They also had little statues, that looked like buddhas, with peoples names on it and a prayer... apparently you pay for that (just like how you could pay to have a roof tile placed with your name on it on top of the Temple). They also had a giant stone statue of a praying man along with some statues of a lion and a flower. We left there and went to a lower section which had more little prayer buildings along with a stone fountain that I took a drink from (with the help of Jack's instructions on how to do it).

Following the Temple, we drove down to the Daegu Stadium, which was used as the World Cup Soccer Stadium for the 2002 World Cup. It is now being used to host the IAAF Track Championships, so members of the world's Olympic teams will be coming to Daegu to compete. The stadium, I found, was very cool and amazing to look at and take pictures of. The building had all country flags around it and the inside reminded me a little bit of a baseball stadium. I made the comment that I could not imagine entering the stadium to the cheer of a crowd that big.

When we were finished walking around and inside the stadium we went to lunch at Outback. but since there was a 20 minute wait, we ventured into the Underground Mall, which I at first thought was a subway tunnel (because you only saw an escalator going down). The mail had plenty of shops and was really cool to walk around in... it was there where I took a picture of a poster with the backsides of two naked models... "only in Korea" could you see something like that. Outback in Korea has all the same foods, but they are just much more expensive... so a steak there was $33, compared to the $19.99 or less you would pay back in the States. The trip allowed us to explore the city, get to know some of our equally new faculty members, and have some good quality fun time.