Journey to a traditional village

Pictures-
1. Even though the roofs are now made of non-traditional plastic, at least the layout is the same as it would have been for an upper class home about a hundred years ago.
2. Old walls, houses, mountains in the background, and a desterted country road, a nice early spring shot of Korea
3. How long has this tumbling wall, this narrow path been in this spot?
4. A very traditional house. If I would have gotten closer you could see the crumbling rice paper in the windows.
5. A friendly puppy coming over to take a look while I was shooting pictures.

Journey to a Traditional Village

2.3.07

March second was a wonderful holiday, a day that the state of Korea celebrated the 1919 uprising against Japanese by working as any normal day, constructing buildings and driving taxis well us English teachers got the day off to go explore yet a little bit more of rural Korea.

Conner and I went out at our usual time of around noon and hiked over Chun-dae-sun mountain, a little hill that lies just to the west of town and on our way to a very traditional farming village that we had seen many times while on the bus to Sorak but had never explored.

Like previous hikes I had been on the weather was nice and warm. I even got to take off my coat for a while and get some much-needed sun on my winter white arms.

It was a good feeling; it always is, on a decent spring day. You get to see some bright blue skies and feel the warmth of the sun on your body, warmth that no indoor heater can hope to match. It always makes me feel really good.

After strolling along a few empty rice roads, the cement paths through the rice paddies, we came to a very nice little village, framed by the mountains to the west, north, and south, and the opening to the sea a few miles away to the east.

It’s a nice village and was worth exploring for a day. A couple of hundred fairly traditional houses, some nicer than others, a few, in the far edges of the village abandoned and sinking slowly into decay.

Of course, the houses were not as old fashioned, as I would have liked. Most of the homes, instead of having the traditional roofs of slate or rice straw were topped with molded plastic shingles but at least the walls had the old style mud dabbing on them and the roofs were at least framed with nicely painted and decorative posts.