September 23, 2010

Chuseok Adventure Part 1

Chuseok! Its a Korean holiday for the harvest, similar to America's Thanksgiving. It means Tuesday to Thursday off work, and great deals on holidays in beach resort towns because most Koreans are with their families and September marks the end of beach season here, supposedly. So I packed up my luggage with clothing appropriate for wherever the week would lead me and a few bottles of wine and went south. Busan is beautiful, my hotel was on the beach and lovely. I was traveling alone and felt invigorated by the freedom.



Busan's Museum of Modern Art was having its Biennale, which is a biannual exhibit. This year's theme was Evolution, which, from my understanding, isn't a contentious issue in Korea. There seem to be references to evolution in every museum I go to here, actually.


This was the exhibit featured on the advertising campaigns, and it really captured my interest. Everything was set up on sand and was about as thin as a sheet of paper. The images really popped against the background and I spent a lot of time trying to guess their connections to one another.



This is a representation of how much blood the human heart pumps in one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Its a mind-blowing amount.


I miss my bright orange Buddha.


This reminds me of Rebekah. Also, its been installed in a handful of pretty cool places. You can see the pictures at the bottom of this shot, of abandoned apartment complexes and houses, a pile of rubble - the bird cages and broken dishes have been hung there, too, which would have actually been a much cooler location to view them.





I love aquariums, so of course I had to go here.


But the main pull was the fact that I am going to go swimming in this tank later this year! I discovered that you can, without a diving certification, dive in the shark tank for a really reasonable price. I checked out the aquarium and made sure it seemed worth the trip - it totally does, check out this video:



I tried to get a picture with a shark, but couldn't. I am really excited regardless.

I took a ton of pictures, and will look through them and update more soon - I also went to the UN Memorial Cemetery, the world's biggest department store, and Beomeosa Temple. You can expect more soon :]

2 comments:

  1. That blood piece is really neat. And I'm jealous that you've seen more sharks in Korea than I did in Africa :(

    You'd better get some amazing pictures when you swim with them. Thats my dream and I'm going to do it one day, but it'll be in open water off the coast.

    Looks like you had a great time!

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  2. Fortunately it appears the sharks are well fed, as they didn't look too hungry. I love aquariums as well, but prefer to stay dry!!

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