Art, Religion, and Sake

So first of all, I wanted to add a couple pictures from last week's visit to the Busan Museum of Modern Art. And my haircut.




There, now for this weekend. Ted and I visited a number of sites of religious significance around the city. I don't think we planned to make it a religion themed adventure day, but it just so happened that all the things we were interested in seeing were connected somehow to various types of spirituality. Our first stop was a park in downtown Daegu. It had a temple, a number of stone shrine pillar type things, and lots of trees. I took a zillion pictures that I'm rather fond of, but here are just a few:


We also saw a guy walking around the park in his white hospital gown, IV in tow. I really wanted to take a picture, but I couldn't manage to get one without being blatantly obvious and rude. Ted got a picture, but he hasn't sent it to me yet, and I'm too impatient to wait for it, so I'll post it later.
Anyway, our next stop was the Catholic Martyr's Shrine. Apparently, Korea only has one Catholic saint, and this shrine was dedicated to him.
This is a little display inside the shrine museum that shows the type of torture the Korean saint endured. And these are pictures from the top of the shrine:

Our next visit was to a Confucian Academy. They still hold lectures in the lecture hall, and it is often used as a venue for various ceremonies and weddings. It's a place where people can come to learn about/appreciate/worship Confucius and the other sages for their great wisdom.



The last stop was Satgat-bawi (bawi means rock). This rock used to be a very popular place for people to come to pray for luck, health, happiness, etc. Also, barren women used to come to the rock to pray for fertility. I'm not sure how the rock grants that particular wish, but perhaps that's the reason people don't go there much anymore.
We hit up The Holy Grill for dinner again (ooh, the Mac & Cheese), and we met up with a new Korean friend named Jake. Jake invited a couple of his Korean friends, Erica and Ta Hee, so now I have three new Korean friends. They took Ted and me out for sake at a Japanese style restaurant.
We're planning a trip with them to Cheongdo in the near future to watch bullfighting, and as it turns out Erica is a bit of a thrill-seeker as well so she's going to help me look into bungee jumping and paragliding. It figures that I'd start making friends AFTER I decided to leave, but at least I'll have some people to keep me company during my last few weeks. 40 days left!