Back to Suwon

With a minimum of rolling my bag down the street searching for my bus stop, yesterday I managed to get myself back to Suwon to spend the night and pick up the rest of my clothes (and my camera charger! No more cell phone photos for me! I can zoom again!).

Then I missed my stop in Suwon. I had to get off at the next one and walk back. Sigh.


Eun-mi met me when I got there. She took me downtown and to this old fortress.

The fortress was up this hill. Neither of us was very in shape, so we had to stop at each landing and pant for a while.

About halfway up there were these water spouts that looked like dragons. There were dippers so you could drink from them, and the water was actually really good. Apparently it's ground water filtered by the hill or something like that. There was a guy next to us filling a bunch of huge water bottles, and Eun-mi explained that some people still use these dragons to get all their drinking water instead of buying expensive bottled water. Man, we have it good in the Northwest were we can drink from the tap and not worry about getting some kind of disease.

There was this big pile of rocks partway up the trail. Eun-mi said that you're supposed to put a new rock on top and make a wish.

We made it!

The buildings were beautiful, and the view was great. Suwon is bigger than I had thought. Drew's friends had been joking about how small it was compared to Seoul, but it does seem to go on and on.

This is us at the top of a little lookout-turret. Eun-mi is shooting a bow and arrow at invading hordes through the hole in the wall. :)

It costs a dollar to ring the bell for real, but it's free to pretend.

Giant gold Buddha. Pretty impressive. Also, is it bad that I saw these lanterns and my first thought was, "SAVE POINT!"

After it got dark we went to a sort of street fair with cherry trees illuminated everywhere. It was really pretty, and I got a cotton candy (I frickin' love cotton candy!).

I'm really glad I got to hang out with Eun-mi. I think I'll come back to Suwon every once in a while, or she can come visit me in Seoul. We're kind of the same - we're both pretty shy, but we'd like to learn to cut loose and have fun. I asked her to invite her friends to Seoul sometime and we'd all go crazy.

Also, screw it I'm cutting my hair!