Donghwasa Temple

The weekend before last we went to Donghwasa Temple in Daegu with Tyler and Michelle.  Lucas absolutely loves them.  He's already planning what will be in their party bags when his birthday rolls around.

All of us near one of the smaller buildings.

Apparently we only like to visit temples when it's freezing cold and snowing.  When we left the house it wasn't too bad but within 20 minutes of driving the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and it started snowing.  But we were committed!  Afterall, we only have two years in this country.

That waterfall is frozen.  It was cold.

So much work goes into painting the temples.  They are just beautiful.  I can't even imagine the time and patience required to create something like this.  The pictures don't even do the colors justice.

It's very cool that all of the temples are still used.  There were many practicing Buddhists worshipping at this statue.

This Buddha statue is 17m tall.

This is another place we will definitely visit again when the weather is warmer.  Lucas always wants to be carried when it's cold so I carried him up and down flight after flight of stairs.  None of the stairs here are a standard size so it was killer for my legs.  Plus, I was constantly in fear that we'd both tumble down 30 or so stairs as my feet went to find a stair that just wasn't there.  I guess I always just assumed stairs were pretty standard but my experiences here prove otherwise. 

We spent several hours there but once I had to go to the bathroom, it was time to leave.

Common bathroom- game over

Many bathrooms here are basically holes in the ground but they flush.  You have to get your toilet paper before you go in the stall then hope & pray you don't pee all over yourself.  I certainly wasn't prepared for this.

Apsan Mountain Park

I'm making a list of places I absolutely want to see while we're in Korea and Apsan Mountain Park is one of them.  So way back in December (the 15h) we ventured out to the park.  It is near our house, only about a 10-15 minute drive if you know where you're going.  If you're Adam and I am navigating, it's about a 45 minute drive.

The park is quite pretty.  It's hard to imagine this huge park is in the same city covered in high rise apartment buildings.  There is exercise equipment lining the main path.  In fact, there are tons of places with exercise equipment placed randomly throughout the city.  People were actually using it, too.  I couldn't help but think that if this sort of thing were in the States it would be covered in graffiti and broken.  And in the States, we would consider the hike to be the workout but here they hike to get to the workout.  

Anyone up for a workout?

Within the park there are quite a few temples.  The temples are some of my favorite things about Korea.  All of them are beautiful beyond words and ornately painted.  They are simply amazing.  We went to Eunjeoksa Temple. 

We visited after it had been snowing so it was pretty cold and grey.  It's hard for a picture to do the temple's beauty justice.

Lucas hitched a ride back to the car.

And what do you do when you're done hiking and your feet are all muddy?  You clean them off, of course!  Oh, Korea.  You've thought of everything.

Lucas wasn't too sure, though.

There is much, much more to this park.  There is a gondola that goes up to one of the peaks, museum, even an amusement park.  We'll definitely go back to explore more.  Hopefully when it's a little warmer and less snowy.