Kyle in Korea

Of course, we’re always doing things around Andong. As in Nebraska, fall is my favorite time of year here. So we’ve been trying to get outside more, but due to random scheduling problems and an epically rainy summer/fall, we haven’t got out as much as we’d like.  But even small walks and excursions can be interesting. Here’s some things we saw and did on small little trips around town.

The picture above is a traditional house near the dam. The tiles on the fence attract a really interesting lime green like moss that’s really beautiful.

There’s several Buddhist temples around. This one’s called the Watermelon Temple, I think, because there’s maybe watermelons growing in the area? I didn’t see any watermelons, but the walk up to the temple is cool, with lots of little farms dug into the side of a mountain overlooking our neighborhood in Andong. The view from near the top:

And here’s a picture of what a typical small farm looks like. Farms, and agricultural areas in general, in Korea are more interesting to me than farms in America because they are smaller and more varied. Nebraska’s fields are just enormous squares, stretching for as far as the eye can see, almost uninterrupted on the landscape. Usually you can’t tell much about the people who farm the corn, wheat, and soybeans in Nebraska, just by looking at their farm. In Korea, you often see the person, and each square acre of arable land is utilized and cared for. People have to be more resourceful on the land because there’s so little of it (Remember, Korea is overwhelmingly mountainous, and approximately the size of Indiana).

And all over the countryside, and in town too, you see people making kimchi and fermented bean paste in the traditional way, in large stone pots.

We also saw of first Korean snakes. The first one was just inches from my foot, hidden in some weeds along the road when I heard it rustling and jumped up. It was at least five feet long and thick. The second snake, which I got a picture of, was dead in the middle of the road, and smaller- maybe two feet long.

Here’s a view from the dam area. Nothing too special, it’s just nice to have the river and dam area only minutes from our apartment.

And of course, no discussion of the Andong outskirts would be complete without a mention of the ice storage cave. I have trouble imagining how the ice didn’t melt in the summer, even in the dugout cave, but I guess it worked. Inside the cave there were hundreds of spiders, some graffitti, and  grated fence prohibiting entry. Even though we didn’t get very far in, Ann still though it was very cold.