Dec 13, Donghwasa

Very tired from the past few days and woke up around 1. For some reason my mom was on skype and I was able to talk to her and catch up with her. Happy Hanukkah to all, hope everyone is getting what they want! Brooke and an iPhone, needed indeed. After talking with my mom Max and I headed out to meet Evan because we were going hiking at Donghwasa which is about an 40 minutes from us. We met up with Evan, then proceeded to meet this guy Francis who has been here for almost 2 years and he was the one actually taking us there. Then we took another cab to meet up with this girl and finally got on a city bus to our destination. We walked around for bit, not really a hike because our destination which was a very tall Buddha was only fifteen minutes away. Before we headed to the giant Buddha, we walked around and saw some Buddhist temples and other interesting artifacts dating back to 493AD. The one big problem here that always gets under my skin is that the Swastika is everywhere including these beautiful Buddhist temples. For those of you who dont know, Hitler stole the symbol, which actually means eternity or universal harmony in the Tibetan culture. So it is on everything in South Korea and I see it everyday and it is hard to see the good in that symbol, at least for me.
Anyways, we saw some beautiful Buddhas and art then headed to the tall Buddha. This stone Buddha is breathtaking because it is so tall and surrounded by the mountains. Wonder around it for a bit, Max did his Buddhist bows because he is very into that sort of thing. After staying there for a while admiring the beauty we headed back because it started to get late and actually a lit bit chilly. Took the bus to the downtown area which took about an hour and headed back to the apartment. A pretty nice day after such a crazy couple of nights.