T48 designates the sleeper train from Qiqihaer to Beijing and has two classes: "soft sleeper", or first class, and "hard sleeper" or second class. The hard sleeper is further sub-divided in price by bunk levels: lower, middle and upper. The prices rise as the bunk levels fall (the narrow ladders up are tricky.) Due to availability and cost, we ended up with two hard upper bunks. Each bunk level has progressively less space from lower to upper so a person can sit up straight in the former, while the latter requires a type of low crawling. Lying on my back with my arms over my head, my ankles hung over the end of the bunk. There was no worry that even a tall person would bump into them walking through the aisle because the height of the bunk is well above the top of the door frame (the nose-bleed section.) With my arms vertical and straight, I pressed both palms to the ceiling with my back and shoulders firmly pressed to the bed. When I lowered my arms to my sides, each elbow touched either the wall or the metal railing. Needless to write, I didn't sleep especially well.

The next morning, we met our neighbors, a family, grandmother, father, mother and son. The son, who spoke a little English, and I worked to communicate, but the going was difficult. In the end, he practiced some phrases, pointed out interesting sites in Beijing, and I worked on my pronunciation, especially the difference between two provinces we plan to visit, Shaanxi and Shanxi, which sound lightly separated by tone. Living in Qiqihaer, they were touring Beijing, which is the only place in China they have travelled. The previous night, the family did not speak to us because they thought we were Russian, which is not an uncommon identification for the northern Chinese who receive large numbers of vacationing Russians each year. The grandmother even thought Leah looked like a Russian volleyball player, which is funny because she hasn't played volleyball in years--I mean, ever.

-David

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Qiqihar is 'famous' for the nature reserve 30 kms south that provides breeding grounds for over 260 species of birds, including several species of cranes. The red-crowned crane is especially famous because in some East Asian cultures it has been revered as a symbol of longevity. We found this ironic, since it's estimated that there are now only about 1900 of the red-crowned cranes in the wild.

Despite the low number, the reserve, which we visited yesterday, does have several of the endangered cranes. The area through which people are allowed to tromp is fairly small, but they have a tower with really powerful binoculars and a very nice woman who finds interesting things for you to see and then brings the unwieldy lenses into focus. We saw a (presumably) female red-crowned crane sitting on a nest built at least 5 feet off the ground and another (again, presumably) female out feeding with a chick. The chick was really cute--very fuzzy and only about a fifth of the size of its parent, which stood about 4.5 feet high. They're huge birds and there are several warnings not to get too close to any of them for fear of crane attacks.

The reserve, and Qiqihar in general, have been very pleasant and have made a nice break from the bigger, more hectic cities through which we've been. Qiqihar has under a million people (downright tiny, in China!) and is amazingly flat! This is of interest because our hotel room was on the 13th floor and we could see for miles and miles. Not that there's too much to see; it's largely an industrial, though pleasant, city.

Our hotel room is in the past tense, because we've checked out and are 'killing time' until the overnight train to Beijing leaves at 4:50 (2 hours to go!). We arrive tomorrow morning at about 8:30, which makes me slightly nervous. Beijing is enormous and there's a ton to see. We haven't decided how long we'll be staying, but sometime next week we'll be heading to Datong in Shanxi province and then eventually over to Xi'an in Shaanxi province, home of the stone warriors. But first there's the 16 hour train ride to experience!

-Leah

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China is bizarre (although probably no more than any other country we've traveled to), and here is an incomplete, unalphabetized glossary of miscellaneous insights:

Money: the base is the RMB (the People's Money) or yuan, sometimes simply written as a 'Y' before numbers. Y8 is about a US dollar. Y1 has two different paper forms and a coin version. A tenth of an RMB is called a jiao. A tenth of a jiao is called a fen (confused yet?), which has approximately no value (I can't even use one to pry open the battery cover on the GPS!).

Food: cheap and greasy. My first meal in China was a plate of fried noodles from a street vendor for Y2 (25 cents.) From a restaurant in Qiqiha-er, my last meal was a huge plate of shredded vegetables/potatoes, transparent yellow crepes used to wrap the former, a thick bready pancake, cilantro,onions, sauce and tea. Leah and I both ate until we were stuffed for a total cost of Y11 (less than $1.50). My favorite food is cold noodles with cucumbers in a spicy sauce. In hotels with breakfast, Western and Asian foods are offered. The strangest is what I have named 'white bread topiary', which tastes like white bread and is fashioned into all sorts of unusual shapes--spirals, twist, etc. The food has all tasted good, if a little too oily, with the exception of a sweet "pastry" roll that was dipped in a finely shredded sweet meat and filled with mayonnaise (Just mentioning this breakfast makes Leah a bit sick).

Traffic: mayhem!

Parks: relaxing with lots of people of all ages. Kids run around, young adults play badminton or basketball, adults walk, and the elderly use the park's outdoor exercise equipment, such as walking machines, parallel bars, twisting platforms and gym rings, just to name a few.

TV: almost nothing in English. If we do turn the TV on, we watch the World Cup, since soccer doesn't require translations. Once or twice we've tried to watch a Chinese movie and do our own dubbing, which can be hilarious.

Internet bars: noisy, smoky and filled with kids playing video games or watching movies.

Chinglish: most English sentences are strange--ranging from just awkward to completely incomprehensible. Here is a sample of my favorites:
1. In Dalian at the hotel, a price on a disposable razor reinforced with the label "uncomplimentary."
2. On the road to Qiqiha-er a large official looking sign reading, "Rearendcolusion: Keep Space."
3. In Harbin at the restored church of St. Sophia, a panel painting of the Virgin Mary entitled, "Board picture of Holy Mother."

-David

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We're in Qiqihar (pronounced chee-chee-hair, which seems odd to someone completely unused to Asian languages) after yet another bus ride of about 4 hours. The ostensible reason we're here is because there's a nature reserve 30 kms away that is the breeding grounds for the endangered red-crowned crane. Really it's just another place to see, though we rarely need an excuse for that.

After arriving, we found the hotel where we wanted to stay and proceeded through the complicated business of checking in without a mutually intelligible language. At most of the hotels in China a breakfast buffet is included in the price. So we were totally prepared for two small paper tickets that came with our key when we checked in. We were not, however, prepared for the two plastic tickets that also came with the key. We stopped at the desk on our way out for dinner to 'ask' about them and ended up completely side tracked.

After much giggling by the desk clerks, we were pointed to another area of the large lobby. When we got there, a very nice young man took our tickets and indicated we should sit down in the plastic seats in front of a large desk, where we were clearly supposed to remove our shoes. There were some other people sitting already, wearing plastic flip-flops. As we were trying to figure out what was going on, the same attendant returned pairs of shoes to each of them, which made me exclaim to David, "I think it's a shoe shine service." David was extremely skeptical of this idea, quite rightly as it turns out.

After our shoes were taken away and we were each given a little key the attendant motioned us to follow him into an elevator. David and the attendant got off at the 3rd floor, but I had to stay with a woman who was going further up. The two of us got off on the 7th floor and I followed her into a changing room with several female attendants in simple uniforms. I'd decided by this point that maybe it was a free massage. We get calls in our room every night asking if we want one, although I think the "massages" are aimed at David since the phone is often hung up whenever I answer. Walking into the changing room I realized that the enormous marble tiled room that led off from the changing room had several shower heads and decided that instead of a massage, it was a Turkish-style bath, similar to the one I went to with my friend Samira in Morocco. I walked over to the locker that matched the number on my key and opened it up and then was watching the woman who I'd followed out of the elevator for ques as to appropriate behavior. When she took off her skirt, I took off my pants; she took off her blouse, so I took off my shirt; our socks followed and then I realized that it wasn't exactly like the hamam experience in Morocco--we weren't keeping our underwear on for the sake of modesty.

While telling myself that American body image issues were clearly out of place, I took an extremely long shower. It turns out massages were available, as was being thoroughly scrubbed down by one of the attendants, but there was a price list on the opposite wall and without my glasses, I couldn't see if I had enough money with me for any of the extras. Also, I wasn't sure how long David would be, and didn't want to keep him waiting too long. As it turns out he was not overly impressed with the set-up, so he was down earlier than I was and then we departed for our much delayed dinner.

One of the most rewarding, though painfully learned, aspects of traveling and living overseas is the ability to give up control. Sometimes you just have to believe that the strange people around you aren't going to let you come to any serious harm. Trusting people with whom you can't converse is really difficult, but it's also often the only way to have a truly good time. Or in this case, be really clean for awhile.

-Leah

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We left Changchun by another 'luxury' bus on Friday and arrived in Haerbin, four hours later. Haerbin is famous in China for it's Russian district. The city (and presumably the area) belonged to the Russian empire for about 50 years, ending in the 1920s. One of the results of this is a long pedestrian street with French-style Russian architecture on either side. There used to be several Orthodox churches as well, but most of them were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. One of them, St. Sophia, has been somewhat restored and now houses a collection of photographs from the turn of the century in Haerbin. It's a neat space and the exhibition is somewhat interesting, but there are no captions in English, so we weren't really sure of the point of the collection or the photographs themselves.

The architecture along the Russian row is really fun, but it's much more enjoyable just because there are no cars. David's mentioned the traffic as being anarchic and it really is. We talked about it being chaotic, at first, but his mathematically inclined self couldn't deal with that, since there are actually patterns, or order, in chaos. No such order exists in traffic here, so the pedestrian only street is especially nice. There's an enormous river that the street runs into and running parallel to it is a lengthy boardwalk. It has rollerbladers, a neat park with gymnastics and other sports equipment, lots of ice cream vendors and plenty of people watchers.

This morning, we went to two of the three Buddhist temples in town. The third is an active monastery that non-community members are only allowed to enter twice a month, but the first two, the Temple of Sacred Bliss and the Temple of the Seven-tiered Pagoda, are open to the public everyday. The Sacred Bliss temple, unfortunately was anything but blissful (too much noise), but the Seven-tiered Pagoda temple had two halls filled with hundreds of wonderful carved wooden deities, painted (or layered?) with gold. Unfortunately we need an art history class in Chinese Buddhist art to appreciate most of what we saw, but it was really lovely nonetheless.

-Leah

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David and I have been together for long enough that today was the 10th birthday of mine we've spent together. He asked, this morning, where I've been on all my birthdays and going through the list, I thought it was kind of neat.

Turned 22 in Boise, ID
Turned 23 in Zurich, Switerland
Turned 24 in Boise, ID
Turned 25 in Bursa, Turkey
Turned 26 in Boise, ID
Turned 27 in Essaouira, Morocco
Turned 28 in Padova, Italy
Turned 29 on the Mulange Massif in Malawi
Turned 30 in Old Jeshwang, The Gambia
Turned 31 in Haerbin, China

Tentatively we'll be biking in Scotland or Ireland for my next birthday, but you can be sure we'll keep you all updated.

-Leah

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On our cross-country/family trip in May we stopped in Las Vegas to see David's family, where we also saw my cousins Betsy and Kjersten and Kjersten's husband Cole. Betsy and Kjersten are sisters, but due to extremely different work schedules, they don't get to see each other, so we got each of them to ourselves for awhile. We went to the Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant, with Kjersten and Cole. We were all a little unsure of how the whole experience was supposed to go, since none of us had 'done' fondue at this particular restaurant before. David and I had had a fondue night at a friend's years ago, but the restaurant experience was completely different, especially since we all had to agree on some things like the same cheese mixture for the appetizer and a dipping style/broth for the main course. But we figured it out in the end and had a really nice time to boot.

Yesterday for lunch in Changchun, not only were we unsure of what we were doing, we didn't even know what we were ordering. We had found a variation on the food court idea in a dingy open-air style mall the night before where we'd had fabulous dumplings. There were about 25 different stalls so we wandered back for lunch and ended up sitting at a serpentine lunch counter with a hole in front of each seat about 8 inches wide. The waitress and we didn't speak a mutually intelligible language, so to get the ordering ball rolling I pointed to a plate of something sitting in front of another patron that looked like dumplings (I'm a sucker for them). The waitress then tried to convince David he had to order something that cost 12 yuan ($1.50), which he was reluctant to do, since we had no idea what it was, but agreed in the end. We were then 'encouraged' to order some greens, which we also did. After completing the ordering process to the satisfaction of the waitress, we each had a pot set in the hole in front of us into which boiling broth was poured. It turned out that all of the food we'd ordered was to be 'cooked' in the pot, removed with a strainer and then set on a little plate after which we poured sauce on it. As complete novices we received help in the appropriate sauce mixing not only from the waitress (me), but from another patron (David). The sauce, which we had thought was a thick yellow mustard, was actually similar to a Thai peanut sauce after all of the accoutrements were added and tasted quite good. The 12 yuan dish, as it turns out, was thinly sliced beef, the 'dumplings' were actually fish balls (blech) and the greens we got were cabbage, cilantro and something that could be a lettuce, but we're not sure. All in all it was a fun lunch.

We were in Changchun because we left Shenyang on Thursday and took a 'luxury' bus similar to a Greyhound, but nicer, on our journey north. Changchun is the former capital of the 'puppet' Manchurian empire under the Japanese occupation. The last Qing emperor, Puyi, who was forced from power after the Chinese revolution in 1911, was brought back by the Japanese and ruled the northeastern part of China until the end of WWII. The palace is now open to tourists and the translation of the signs into English is hilarious. Chinglish, in general, is really funny, but as propaganda against both the Japanese and the colluding Chinese officials, with the exception of 'poor Puyi,' it's somehow especially amusing.

-Leah

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Shenyang's botanical gardens have been temporarily consumed by the 2006 International Horticultural Expo, or so we discovered when the bus dropped us at a stop we had hoped would be the gardens. Since we can't really communicate, we just smiled and tried to pronounce the Chinese name for the botanical garden and then hoped for the best. Well placed on a massive area of land, the Expo had a grand entrance, loads of services and an impressive spire named the Lily Tower, which yes, looks a bit like a lily. Sadly, most of the exhibits didn't live up to the venue, though.

There just weren't enough plants and flowers. For example, in the internationally-themed section, most countries had large shop-like areas with prominently placed vendors selling bobbles, and seemed to just stuff a few flowers off to the side. On the up side, the Turkish exhibit offered several Turkish dishes. Leah made a bee-line towards this "exhibit" and snapped up a pide, a sort of oblong pizza. I veered to the Turkish ice cream window, watched the show where the Turkish vendors were playing with their patrons by throwing the very sticky ice cream around, pretending to drop it and yelling while clanging a bell. After getting tapped on the bill of my hat with the bottom of the cone and having it pulled from my hand, I finally got to eat it. Yum.

-David

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Recalling the fun we had biking in Gyeongju, Leah and I decided to rent a tandem bike to enjoy Beiling Park in the northern part of Shenyang. The theory is straightforward: each person contributes their own share of pedaling power, which is summed and distributed equally, fairly to forward motion. However, in practice, one person may petal too slowly and I may petal too fast, which makes the other person (or one person) stop pedaling altogether for short periods of time. I won't even mention steering problems. After much painful practice and accusations of unequal contribution, we had the bike moving slowly along and both agreed to use individual bikes next time. A welcome break from the biking was a spacious tomb that offered nice architecture and history of the early Qing empire.

Outside of the park, we walked. Unfortunately, Shenyang is not pedestrian friendly. The city is crammed with anarchist pedestrians, bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, cars and trucks. Basically, the biggest buses and trucks barrel through the streets (and the sidewalks!) and honk, ignoring lights, pedestrians, bikes and shockingly, the traffic police, who lamely wave orange batons at vehicles that try to run them over. Each smaller vehicle, in turn, speeds past and honks at even smaller transport. It's more than a little stressful and completely belies the peace of pleasant parks, tombs and a nearby botanical garden. It also left us with a somewhat negative impression of the city.

-David

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I really enjoy traveling. Sometimes I get cranky or tired, and I often get hungry when we're walking past dozens of places to eat because David's just sure there's a better one up the road. Sometimes I'm scared of the unknown and wish the language, culture, people--whatever--were just a little more comprehensible, but overall I love the exploring aspect of travel. Meeting new people, seeing how they live, hearing about very similar and wildly different ways of things. Traveling, too, has a way of reducing life to it's most basic, which can be oddly invigorating. Worrying about finding food and shelter and interacting with strangers in a way that will prove helpful, makes me so much more aware of everything. I worry about things I don't at home, too: finding the nearest bathroom, trying to decipher a menu enough so that I don't order fish, which I detest, wondering whether the bus I'm on is actually going where I want, and even if it is, how I will recognize the stop. It's all a lot of fun, even if it's stressful.

Even more than traveling, though, I love reading. It has the same exploratory aspect for me, without the physical discomfort. The mental discomfort from reading a really well written book can be as great as that from traveling, though you can always take a break and return to the safe and known world of the everyday. And reading while traveling can be especially rewarding. The intersection of two new worlds can be really exciting. I've read some great books while traveling and hope to read several more on many other trips.

But there are some new worlds that probably shouldn't intersect. Some worlds are better explored from the physical comfort of home, because they're so mentally taxing. *Blindness*, by Jose Saramago, is one of those. It's an excellent world to explore, but since it's concerned with the breakdown of modern society and what happens when people are reduced to a life without an infrastructure they're used to, rather like traveling, reading *Blindness* on a train from Dalian to Shenyang is not the best idea. So read it, and explore other worlds through travel, but don't do the two together.

-Leah

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We took the ferry from Incheon to Dalian on Saturday night. We shared a cabin with Sang Wook, a very energetic 7 year old, his mom and his grandfather. They were on their way to Dalian for a month to visit Sang Wook's older sister, who we think is going to a private Canadian school there. Language exchange was limited, but we made do and everyone was very cheerful.

We got into Dalian at 10 in the morning and planned to head straight to Shenyang, the provincial capital, but trying to change money left us trudging between banks and by the time we had enough RMB to feel comfortable, the only train tickets we could get were for a sleeper. While we plan to try a sleeper before we leave, doing so for a 4 hour journey seemed silly, so we got a room for the night and wandered around, instead. Dalian is referred to as the Hong Kong of the north and as you can imagine, given that description, the people are more affluent than in most of China and aspire to be so. The city, while large at 5 million people, is fairly relaxed and everyone seemed to be in a good mood.

We spent a very pleasant evening sitting in Zhongshan Square (which is actually a circle) watching people exercise small dogs and play with all sorts of toys: badminton, hacky sack, bikes, roller blades, scooter, cell phones, cameras, bird chasers, bouncy balls, big sponge brushes (the pavement is your Buddha board), people watchers, skates and a top kept spinning by a whip. We had such a good time watching the hacky sack players with their home made hackies, which David kept calling 'hacky-minton', we bought one for ourselves. It's made of plastic discs with metal discs in the middle and four very brightly colored feathers coming out of the top. The construction makes it much easier to hit, which being fabulously uncoordinated, I find very helpful.

Our circuit for the next week, or thereabouts, will take us north. We're planning on traveling from Shenyang to Changchun, Haerbin and then Qiqiha'er, which is as far north as we're allowed to go (more or less). Then we'll shoot down to Beijing and after a couple of days try a more southern (though really central) tour, but more on that later.

-Leah

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China is the first 'Communist' country we've visited, although I would personally call it an oligarchy, but we needn't quibble over labels. Still, while we've visited our share of countries with different types of political systems, China is the biggest country we've been to that's not a democracy. In their search for political control, we'd heard about the need for all sites to go through one routing system (or whatever the technical term is), so that the government could control subversive content. We did not, though, think that this would mean we couldn't access our site. But we can't. So our lovely friend Amy, who hosts this site on her space, is also going to start posting for us. We're backdating a couple to match where we were at the time we would have posted, but otherwise, hopefully they'll come through whenever we get a chance to email.

-Leah

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Whatever anyone tells you, "noraebang" (노래방) is not just Korean karaoke. There are two major differences: the setting is not a bar, but a small private room for you and a few friends; and, you can't buy or carry in alcohol, which, ironically, has been scientifically proven to lubricate any one's singing voice. If anyone out there is considering a first trip to the local noriban, here are some of my suggestions, in a particular order, which I don't now recall:

1. Before you go, drink lots of "soju" (소주), which is the national paint thinner.
2. Bring someone along that knows how to use the karaoke keyboard.
3. Don't sing songs you like; sing what you know, like Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
4. If you're gifted with a deep voice, don't attempt to sing anything by Brittany Spears. (Oops, I won't do it again.)
5. Disregard the incongruous video playing behind the words of the song. For example, the rap song you're singing has nothing to do with the video of the man singing a ballad during a fake snow storm in a dark room.
6. Laugh all you want at your friends singing, because the music is too loud for you to be heard.

On a completely different note, tomorrow, Leah and I will board a ferry for Dalian, China--and, just 16 hours later, will be there!

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We spent last weekend in Gyeongju, the historical capital of the Silla (신라 pronounced Shil-la) kingdom . Given the longevity of the kingdom (roughly a thousand years, from 57 BCE-935 CE), Gyeongju has lots of burial mounds/tombs, a very nice museum, several temple complexes and ancient Buddha carvings, and, like the rest of Korea, some great National Parks. One of the parks, Namsan, is actually in the middle of the city, and has paths most of the way around it, so hiring bikes is extremely popular. We reinforced all sorts of Western gender stereotypes, since I was given a pink beach cruiser and David got a blue and sliver mountain bike. We had a lot of fun riding around, although I wish we could have gone out for the full day instead of just 3 hours. There are several sites of interest (mostly Buddhas into rocks) off the path and up trails into the mountains. We locked the bikes up and visited a couple of them, but then had to get back due to time.

Because Gyeongju has so much to see in so small an area, it's a huge tourist destination. David was skeptical when he read that fact on the train ride there, but while it's the only place outside of Seoul we've seen so many other non-Asian tourists, it's not peak season, yet, so it wasn't too bad. Peak season starts next month and when we come back from China in August, rumor has it that accommodation prices double and you can't move because there are so many people here. We're hoping to escape to Sulaksan NP, but that may be awfully crowded, too. In the meantime, despite my cold we've had a lovely time in Korea, It really is a lot like traveling in Europe (if you ignore the fact that the language, culture and people are completely different).

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Rather than Buddhism, confusion-ism made up the bulk of my experience at our Haeinsa temple stay. Clearly, having never stayed in a temple and, more generally having only a scant knowledge of Buddhism, only being given a single sheet of paper with the summer schedule was inadequate. Help came from another temple guest, Mr. Woo, who was staying for a few days on his way to Seoul. Having decided to take me as his charge, he provided explanations and advice about the dorms, Buddhist symbolism, tradition and etiquette. For example, before we first entered the large cafeteria for dinner, Mr. Woo told us not to speak during meals. (A difficult and awkward task when an unaware couple living in Arizona plopped down at our table and said, "So, where are you from?") Mr. Woo also decoded the meaning of the various percussion devices used before each ceremony (briefly: the drum=earth, the suspended wooden fish=sea, the metal plate=sky and a bell=combination of all three) Mr. Woo even provided helpful notes scrawled on post-its, during the first two ceremonies.

Mr. Woo was at a different temple for the third ceremony, so I was left getting hints from the attending monk who was clearly obsessive and compulsive. For example, at one point, while sitting on my mat, I received a stern look and a mimed correction because a finger on my left hand was touching the floor. The monk also gestured for us to stand and sit, in time, with the other monks. However, without knowing exactly, when or how to execute the proper movements, I had a tendency to fall down and pop up in a modified jumping jack--not the dignity that was expected.

As we were preparing to leave, Mr. Woo provided his final three grave warnings about the following day's camping and hiking: snakes, which hide in the grasses at this time of year; large, dangerous mountain pigs, which can attack lone tents in the middle of the night, although I still don't quite understand their reasoning; and bad people or people with "vice." I listened carefully to Mr. Woo, thanked him and we left for a campsite just outside Haeinsa town. That night, we camped next to a waterfall of a small river, and I thought about Mr. Woo's warnings. The rest of his advice had been so sound, that that night I dreamt of a wave of small pink pigs rampaging our campsite.

The next day, our plan was to hike over the mountain, and we had just begun when the first of Mr. Woo's warnings appeared, a small snake near the path. It was a meek ambassador that quickly moved backward and coiled itself under a rock. I started planning for the next attack: what would we do when a mountain pig blundered into the path? Near the summit, I calmed myself with the realization that I was the mountain pig! It became clear, with two pieces of evidence: my Chinese zodiac is the pig and, at the temple lunch the day before, I had stuffed myself with three helpings (the top button of my pants was even temporarily relived of duty.) Two warnings down. The final warning, surprisingly, turned out to be the forest ranger on the other side of the mountain at the Baekungdong Ticket Booth. After 10km and up and down 900 vertical meters, the ranger unsympathetically and rudely told us we couldn't camp because the campground didn't open until July. This was in sharp contrast to the nice, helpful rangers in Haeinsa that told us even though the campgrounds were not open, we could camp, if we understood that some of the facilities (bathrooms, water, etc.) may not be available, which they turned out to be.

So, thanks for the warnings Mr. Woo.

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a.m. 03:00 :	rising
03:30 :	morning ritual ceremony
06:05 :	Breakfast
10:00 :	Ritual ceremony
11:15 :	Lunch
p.m. 18:10 :	Dinner
19:00 :	Evening ritual ceremony
21:00 :	Bedding down,lights out

Rules for temple stay
Please be punctual for ritual ceremonies and meals.
Please go to bed by 9 P.M. , and turn the light off.

This was the summer schedule, and the only information, we were given when we got to Haeinsa temple last Thursday. They have a temple stay program so if you pay W 10,000 (about $10) you get three meals (all meatless, since Buddhists are vegetarians) and accommodation for the night in traditional ondol-style dorm rooms. Ondol rooms are heated from below, formerly by burning wood in a clay-lined space, but now by electric heat. I shared the room with 8 Korean women (and one Polish speaking American), none of whom spoke English, but who were fabulously undeterred by this lack of verbal communication. I was fed an apple, delicious cherry tomatoes, and a rice cake stick. Two of the women were also clearly appalled by my inability to order my bedding, so they did it for me. Despite each of the other women sleeping on one blanket folded in half, with another for a cover, my bed was made up of two wool blankets, spread full, with a thick quilt on top and a thin quilt for covering. With all of the that and a heated floor, I was really quite hot during the night, but since we had to get up at 3, the discomfort didn't last too long. The men's dorm was not nearly so well organized and they almost missed the early ritual because the slept through the alarm, a monk who walked around the complex ringing a bell. In their defense, it sounded rather like a wind chime, but since several of the women in my room also set their cell phones as back up alarms, I'm not sure they should be excused.

The rituals were all quite interesting and even at 3:30, we were surprisingly awake. We spent the first two rituals we attended (evening and morning) in the lecture hall, with the other guests and the one monk who did all of the chanting. The monk's voice was exceptionally monotonous and he droned on for the hour-long ceremony that is roughly divided into three parts, with bulk of the time spent sitting cross-legged. They were quite peaceful, though David and I are both really bad at meditating. David did math computations (!) and I thought about when we should leave for China and other logistical stuff.

For our last ritual, we went up to the main hall, because we wanted to see what it was like with all of the monks in one room. When we got there, I was surprised that there was only the one monk chanting, and another, extremely officious and rather obsessive-compulsive, monk who waived us away from the center alter and off to one side. Apparently if you dedicate your life to Buddha, attending just the last 20 minutes of the prayer is acceptable, since that's when the hall filled up. Hearing about 100 voices chanting together in the lower registers was really quite stirring. It should have been peaceful, too, but unlike in the lecture hall, where we were allowed to sit through the whole thing, the OCD monk indicated that we had to participate in the stand-prostrate-kneel cycle. I'm sure once you're used to it there's a meditative aspect to the movement, but David and I did an awful lot of flailing and flapping of arms, trying to stand up in one motion. Not that we're terribly graceful, anyway.

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As yet another example of Korean hospitality, we were each given a Sun chip by a little girl at the Gongju National Museum, where we were clearly as much on display as all of the artifacts from the Baekje kingdom. David talked to one of the docents for the children's area (my favorite kind of souvenir--we each did a rubbing!) who said that the last non-Asian tourists they had were two Germans who visited last June. It's really too bad that the area doesn't see more tourists, since the people are lovely and the sites and museum are quite nice, too. The little creature to the right is an imaginary one that the Baekje people believed would guard the dead in their tombs (think small Egyptian pyramids covered with dirt and planted with grass to look like hills).

King Muryeong was one of the last Baekje kings, before they were conquered by the Shilla Kingdom from the East, centered in present-day Gyeongju. By some oversight on the part of grave robbers throughout the last 1500 years, Muryeong's tomb wasn't plundered and when it was 'discovered' in 1971, about 3000 artifacts were found, now housed in the museum. There are several fancy gold ornaments, as well as pots that indicate trade with the Han in China. Being sadly ignorant of the poorly named Three Kingdoms period (there were actually briefly five kingdoms during the 100 BCE-700 CE stretch), I'm sure we're missing lots of clues and interconnections, but it's fun to look at everything anyway.

Somewhat more invigorating than the museum, though, is the old Baekje fortress. Originally built with wood, but burned down in the Japanese invasion of 1592, the fortress is now crumbling stone that tourists traverse. We saw the changing of the guard ceremony that is performed every hour during the summer, which was fun. It must be a rite of passage for young high school boys to work as guards: almost all of the boys were plugged into their ipods and a couple of them were conversing on their cell phones. Clearly historical accuracy is not paramount when you have to stand in the hot sun all day.

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For a break from hiking, Leah and I stayed at a hotel in the city of Gongju and visited a set of tombs and the museum nearby. While the 7 tombs (built from 500-529 C.E.) are closed for preservation, full scale replica tombs are available for tourists to learn more about the Baekje (one of four kingdoms of the poorly named Three Kingdoms period).

Tomb No. 6, similar to King Muryeong's Tomb, is not much bigger than a small shed, but we're proof that it can accommodate 6 adults and 25 tittering 8-10 year olds. We somehow ended up pressed to the back of the tomb, but Leah still managed to raise her arms to take this picture. The school lesson (taught by the male teacher on the right) only lasted about 10 minutes. When the kids had finally filed out, and we saw larger group on the way in, Leah pointed to the door and loudly whispered, "Go, go, go..."

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On our way down from the Munjangdae summit, in Songnisan National Park, we were passed by a large group of Koreans, who all seemed quite friendly. When we got to the next rest area, the group was seated around a large table, and waved us over to join them. Which we, of course, did. David tried using some of his Korean and they all laughed uproariously when he said we were from Migook (America) and then they got us drunk.

One of the items sold at the mountainous rest areas (or carried, if there's a threat that it won't be available) is a brown, watery drink of fermented vegetables that we were eventually told is 5 or 6 degrees (I don't really know what that means, but David said it's similar to the percentage of alcohol). When we were handed the small white bowls, I thought it was miso soup and was quite excited. David, apparently, thought it might be alcohol, but then tasted it and decided it wasn't and finished his bowl which was promptly refilled and then swallowed. I tasted it, realized it was alcohol, and sipped the rest of the time we sat with the group.

There were 9 people in the group (see 5 of them in the picture from David's last post), all engineers working for Vina, a small electrical engineering firm based in Seoul. Once a month, this group goes hiking in a different park. We chatted about engineering stuff and traveling in Korea and during the 20 minutes we sat there, we were handed a whole cucumber (which David tried to pass off to me with a "Did you see this?" ploy), given kimbap (a rice and vegetable concoction rolled like sushi) and two choco-pies (vaguely like ding-dongs). David seemed to feel badly about taking all the food, but I happily ate my choco-pie (so much for having given up chocolate) and we had to take the cucumber with us when we left.

One of the two English speakers in the group explained that cucumbers are really good to take hiking because they give you a lot of energy and have a high water content. The cucumber tasted really good when we ate it half way down the mountain so we brought some on our hike today (Magoksa Temple complex) that we were then able to trade when we were given tomatoes by another very friendly group. So now we have to take cucumbers, tomatoes, choco-pies and water. David's determined to out-give the next group we meet hiking, but I don't think it's going to happen. We only carry one small backpack, but every hiker carries their own here, so they can cram a lot more food in. But we'll do what we can.

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Here are more pictures (clockwise from the top left): massive gold-plated standing Budda, new friends, summit marker, summit view.

Munjangdae Summit
Elevation: 1032m
N 36 34' 03.9"
E 127 51' 44.5"

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Here is the campground near the trailhead to an impressive temple (with an even more impressive gold-plated Budda) and several mountain summits, including the one we hiked, Munjangdae.

Elevation: 348m
N 36 31' 49.3"
E 127 49' 35.4"

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At the risk of geek-ifying our blog, here are the GPS coordinates for our hotel:

Elevation: 44m
N 37 34' 36.4"
E 126 59' 21.5"

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We're leaving Seoul this morning for Songnisan National Park to do some hiking and camping. This is actually a day later than we had planned to leave. Seoul is unbelievably comfortable, and having a nice hotel room certainly doesn't hurt. We've actually used the enormous TV to watch a Korean movie, Too Beautiful to Lie and the end of The Return of the King. David had seen the Korean movie at Pitt as part of the Korean movie night program, so he was able to explain the plot and some of the dialogue. The Return of the King was in English with Korean subtitles, so understanding it wasn't so much a problem. Both movies, though, led to an incredibly poor choice on our part: a nap. I don't think we've ever succumbed to the oh-let's-just-take-a-quick-nap decision while still in the grips of jet-lag before, and you'd think we wouldn't now, but we did. And without an alarm clock, too. David's been up since midnight, which wouldn't bode well for not napping today, except we'll be traveling in the afternoon, so it should be okay.

Outside of the very comfortable room, Seoul is quite nice, especially for a big city. We've been wandering through historic districts with old palaces and new financial districts (with a different kind of palace) and they're all really very pleasant. There are signs and banners every where, and street vendors are quite common. We saw a woman selling fried larva yesterday, outside an upscale grocery store, and bought some kiwi bubble tea from another vendor. (I'm not prepared to try the larva. Possibly fried grasshoppers, but not the larva.) We also went to Namdeamum market, a huge old outdoor market with nothing but vendors, either on the street, or hanging out of tiny shops on the side. It reminded me of the Marrakesh souq in design.

The smell of the city I find especially interesting. There are about 10 million people crowded in a relatively small space and while (generally speaking) Koreans are quite fastidious about personal care, they seem less concerned about the care of public spaces. This isn't to say that Seoul is especially dirty--it's cleaner than New York--but the smell is rather different. It's a sweetish sour smell that somehow manages to achieve a sticky quality. I think it's a lot of kimchi and fish mixed with other big city smells, but maybe not. Whatever it is, while it's not terribly noisome, I'll be glad to leave it for awhile and explore some of the national parks.

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