Retreat at Sobaeksan

Last weekend (well I guess it was two weekends ago) the Mennonite Church Canada Witness workers in Korea went on a retreat together. A MC Canada Witness worker from the Philippines also joined us as the guest speaker. It was a really good 4 days with lots of relaxing, discussing, watching movies and some sightseeing.

Here we are visiting the first Confucianist school in Korea. Confucianism is kind of confusing to explain (hence the name) so I'll leave it up to you to research it if you want to know more.
This was one of the classrooms. There were indoor ones as well but I guess on nice days they got to study here. I wish Connexus could get classrooms like this.
Mark got tired of walking. I can't quite explain my actions here, maybe I was standing like that in case he would fall...
Right by the school (I should say it is not used anymore, just a touristy place) was a traditional village with many houses like this. Here is the group together.

We stayed at one of our co-workers host parents country house. It was in a small farming village in the mountains. It was such a beautiful area! We spent a lot of time hanging out in this room.
Here is the outside of the house.
One of the days we went to a riverside beach. Since it's been a dry spring the river was almost nonexistent. You can see a tiny stream in the background. We enjoyed the space to throw a frisbee around. We're playing jackpot in this picture. If you look closely you can see Mark in the red shirt getting the disc right in front of me. I kind of suck at this game.
Still at the beach just enjoying the sun.
After the beach we went to a market to get some more food. Here are some random shots of the market. We see these kind of things a lot...I can't remember if I've posted pictures like this before.

I think these containers are filled with different side dishes like vegetables and fish...maybe some kimchi in there as well.
Here is some dried fish...a lot of it is squid...still not my favorite.
more vegetables:

On Monday was Buddha's birthday. It is a national holiday in Korea and I don't know very much about it. All I know is that lots of lanterns are hung up everywhere, around temples and along streets in towns and cities. They're really pretty at night when they're lit up. So on Buddha's birthday we visited Boseoksa Temple.

We had to climb up a hill to get to it and from the top the view was beautiful!
The last night we went out for some barbecued duck. It was tasty.
As we drove around the area we passed many rice fields as well as ginseng fields. Here is a picture of a ginseng field which is grown in shade.
On Tuesday night we got back to Seoul (Connexus was closed on Tuesday) we were so tired and all craved hamburgers so we went to T.G.I.Fridays. It is an american chain I believe, kind of like Applebees. So most of us ordered hamburgers and after waiting for about 10 minutes the manager came and told us that they only had two hamburger buns left! Can you believe it! It was disapointing but we moved on and still had a good time.