What a day! About an hour away from Pohang lies Gyeongju, an amazing city, holding shrines and preserved areas from around 750 A.D. On the way, we visited a preserved Korean village, whose homes were about 500 years old. People still live in the homes. So, they live in the midst of a busy tourist destination. Ryu Dae Young, Ji Chulmi and I walked around, me snapping pictures, staying behind ropes that put family areas off limits. We saw thatched roofs for the lower class folk (thatching is renewed as needed, on a year by year basis) and tile roofed homes originally used by members of the yangban class (the intellectual elite). The tile roofs may only be repaired on a tile by tile basis. It is against the laws that regulate the town for an entire roof to be fixed all at once--too big a change to the original work. Nearby, we found the Seokguram Grotto, a place that holds a beautiful, peaceful Buddha, all carved in 751 from one stone, located in a human-made cave, whose stones are held together through a brilliant application of stress mechanics. The dome has a very heavy capstone on the top, pressing down the carefully cut and shaped stones of the wall. (No pictures are allowed of the interior). We did some shopping in a space devoted to Korean folk arts--I picked up some ceramics that I liked. (More shopping to follow with these two on an upcoming weekend in Seoul). Then, a stop at a museum, where we saw relics from prehistoric ages till now. Hungry after all that, we took dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the Hilton. What a beautiful meal! We shared a large cooked pumpkin type squash, filled with sweet and sour pork. After that, we ended the evening with a stroll through another preserved area where royalty took their recreation. Their original rockscaping, with waterfalls and purifying pools, survives from 1200 years ago. Then, home by 8 p.m. I'm still processing the history. In the states, our artifacts from long ago are few. Our documents explaining what things meant are also few. The European phase of our history began only 300 years or so ago. I can barely take in a culture that operated in a sophisticated, literate way for the past 1500 or so years!