A Giant Fortress

Now I am finally finishing my posts on when my family was here at the beginning of the year. It was a really nice week. We got to visit some tourist destinations in Seoul, and they also came to visit mine and Kelsey's city of Seosan. They even got to visit our school and meet some of our students. Actually, in the afternoon classes I forced each of my students to write ten questions to ask my family, and they were rewarded with candy when they could answer one.

We also ate a lot of great food when they were here. I got to show them some of my favorite Korean meals; such as bibimbap, budaejigae (hotdog soup), kimbap, and of course Korean barbeque. I think that they really liked most of it.

This post is about a trip we took on the last Sunday they had in Korea, when we went to Suwon to visit Hwaseong Fortress. I don't know a lot about the history, but by checking here I know that it was built in 1796.

The trip involved a pretty long train ride and a short taxi ride, so we left bright and early to spend the day there. The fortress is basically a giant wall surrounding the former center of the city. There were a few points of interest along the wall, so we went and checked them out. Here is a view of the lookout tower, which was way up on a hill:

Kelsey, Dave, and I were feeling energetic, so headed up the hill:

About half-way to the lookout point was our first encounter with the dragon bus. More about this creature later:

So here is the lookout point. I took this photo of Dave, which is one of my favorites. I think that it was his facebook picture for a while:

I like this picture of Kelsey walking up the stairs even though it is framed wrong:

We walked a ways along the wall and got to what is probably the coolest part of the fortress. It's a giant bell, probably bigger than a Cadillac. You can ring it three times, for about two bucks. Here is a nice video of Dave ringing the bell:

Each ring turned out to have some meaning in terms of who we are honoring. I'll let you read below in their weirdly unspaced English translation:

This is another picture of Kelsey's back looking along the fortress wall:

Next we went back down the hill toward the dragon bus to meet up with the rest of the family. The guide to the dragon bus said that it operates only in above freezing weather. Although the day we visited was below zero, it was luckily (or unluckily?) still operating. You could say that we were freezing and shivering the entire way. We rode to the other side of the fortress where there were traditional Korean restaurants. Here is a picture of Kelsey, Dave, and Amber. I'm not really sure what's wrong with Dave. Maybe he's just sleepy:

Another picture of the dragon bus driving along the fortress:

We were so hungry for lunch by the time we arrived at the restaurant area that we had trouble finding the actual restaurant. We wandered around and ended up in a tea shop before finally finding the restaurant. Once inside, it took forever, but it was worth the wait to eat our bulgogi (seasoned pork) soup and makgeoli (Korean alcoholic rice wine).

We finally made it out of Suwon after sitting in traffic for a while and headed back to Seoul. We were so exhausted from walking around the fortress in below freezing weather that we had to take a break for a while. We also went to one of my favorite restaurants, Thai Orchid. That night we attended this wacky comedy-cooking show called Nanta which was pretty cool.

The next day was Monday, and since we are in the future compared to the U.S.A., this was when we were able to watch the Packer playoff game. It was something like 6:00 in the morning when we had to get up to watch it. Amber was sick that morning, unfortunately, and couldn't join us to watch the game.

The Packers won while we watched and ate kimbap, so we were in a good mood although we had to say our tearful goodbyes. Amber eventually recovered, although I'm sure her plane ride wasn't great, and my Dad suffered from jetlag for weeks after returing. Other than that, the visit was a nice time.