Going Strong in Miryang South Korea

Good Evening from Miryang, South Korea, population approx. 130,000. Did you know they actually made a movie about this city? It's called: Milyang "Secret Sunshine" I'd be curious to see if anybody could find out any info. on this movie. Please let me know if you do. Well things have been settling down quite nicely for me over the past 2 weeks. Starting with last Friday's 4th grade school field trip to Gyeongu, the country's oldest and probably most famous cultural city, known as an open air museum, literally a museum w/o walls. It's Korea's ancient cultural capital city of the once great Silla Kingdom dating back to 600 A.D. In 1979 it was named one of the world's 10 most important ancient cultural cities during the UNESCO meeting in Thailand. To me it was just a bunch of really really old stuff. The best part of the trip for me was being on the bus (one of 3 buses total carrying over 120 4th graders) and enjoying the movies, food, drinks and snacks they all shared with me. We watched Ice Age cartoon movie in Korean of course, and Tom & Jerry which I have not watched in a very long time (at least since I've moved out of Hoboken over 3 months ago.) The Korean students (people) are so so extremely generous and shared all sorts of drinks, juices, crackers, cookies, chocolates, candy, etc. It was a really treat and pleasure to be treated so warmly. One of the other English teachers said that the children try to 'out do' each other by giving the most (the best) snacks. What a crazed culture, but I certainly didn't mind it at all. We went to Bulguk-Sa Temple, one of the most frequented and well known temples in all of Korea. There were tons & tons of people there at 10am on a Friday, mostly young grade school students enjoying their class trip. It was extremely fun being there with all the kids and the four teachers. One of the teachers, "Kenny" was explaining to me th difference btw. a Temple and a Church. Do you want to know what the difference is???? He said that a temple is located up in the mountains, and a church is usually just located down on the ground. WOW, I thought that was some deep, thought-provoking information that you cannot learn anywhere else but in Korea. I was actually waiting to learn some profound, insightful distinction from him, but I guess not. We had a delicious Gim Bap (sushi-like rice roll, with ham, egg, radish, and other veggies) picnic outside on the grass. Again the children came up to me and gave me many many goodies. After the Temple, we drove to Ulsan to see where the Hyundai Motor Corp headquarters in located. We drove by the shipyards where they are manufacturing these ENORMOUS ocean liner cargo ships and transportation vessels. It was so massive to see how much steel and heavy equipment they had there. Then we got out and were able to walk through the Hyundai Motor Corp factory. There we got to see the thousands of cars being pumped out on the enormous assembly line. It was clean, efficient, and quite impressive looking. But I just couldn't imagine sitting there all day with a drill bolting down the same thing all day everyday. Does anyone know if the workers actually shift stations periodically, or do they stay at the same post all the time? That would really stink and be extremely monotonous. But that is the life for many people. Ulsan is a big port city of 1 million similar to that of Detroit. After our tour, we drove to the Soccer stadium where Korea & Japan co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup soccer matches. I believe Brazil won first place that year and Korea actually reached the semi-final round which was the first time an Asian country has ever advanced so far. After this we headed home back to Miryang. That evening I stopped by the acupuncturist's clinic where I got to lay down and relax for an hour on this wonderful heated table where they put a hot heat pad on my legs along with placing this got red heat lamp over my body. It was a wonderful way to end a long day of sightseeing.