Anywhos, on September 4th a bunch of us went to the DMZ (de-militarized zone). It was Etaoin, Etaoin's parents, Katie, Sara, Louis, Nick, Ben, Lindsey, and one of Etaoin's friends. To be quite honest, it was relatively boring because we spent most of our time on the bus traveling from stop to stop to stop. BUT learning more about the history and stuff was awesome! Here's what we did, or at least, as well as I can remember it :)
We first stopped at Imjingak. This is where the Freedom Bridge is located, as well as a memorial that they hold a special service at every so often. ALSO, it's where an abandoned train was left. The train has 1200 bullet holes in it! Pretty neat. Imjingak had this amazing barbed wire fence up with beautifully colored ribbons attached to it. Korean words and phrases and whatnot was written on each and every single one of them. I thought it was a beautiful because I imagined what was written on each of those ribbons; words of love and forgiveness and memories... I would post a picture, but it's all sideways and stuff. Sad face.
After we checked out Imjingak and the Freedom Bridge, we traveled to lunch? I think? Bah, I'm horrible at this. Oh well. So we went to lunch at one point during the day. It was chill. Same ol' same ol' Korean food. Pretty good stuff. It was such a pretty day, too! I was super please with that. Gorgeous blue skies and fluffy white clouds. :) Happiness.
We visited the 3rd tunnel, I believe (that's what it says on Adventure Korea's website, anyhow). This was ballerness. We watched a documentary about the tunnels first. There are four tunnels as of right now (these tunnels were dug by North Korea in order to invade Seoul quickly). They believe there to be more tunnels, but, alas, they've only found four. So, we got to put on some awesome yellow hardhats and walk down, down, down, down, dooooooooown into the tunnel. It was cold! So COOL! I barely had to duck my head (yay for being short!). And we could only walk so far, because it was blocked by this teeny tiny metal door, and we turned back around and started back, then up up up (what a workout, I tell ya). It was neat. We also took pictures next to giant D-M-Z letters at this place. Coolio.
We visted the Dora Observatory, which is basically a lookout place overlooking (weird.. a lookout. Overlooking stuff. Imagine that, huh) North Korea. We could only take pictures from behind a picture line that was placed waaaaay far away from the wall. But when you got up to the wall you could see a city in North Korea. Someone said that this was an empty said, designed to fool South Koreans. You were so not allowed to take pictures at this wall, though. One lady snapped some photos, and the South Korean military kid ran over and promptly deleted all of those pictures, nice try though, lady. So, that was... cool. At least to see North Korea and snap some awesome photos of some guys' heads cos I'm too short. Oh wellzzzz. Edit: the city is totally a scam, I just read the website. It was built so that South Korea would think of North Korea as a prosperous nation or something like that. Hm, whatevs.
Then we went up to Dorasan station, which is the last station of South Korea before it goes up to North Korea. Supposedly a train really does go to North Korea! With goods and people and stuff! Cool. We got to see the train come in (oooohhhhh, aaaaahhhh). Got some coolio pictures of me "unitying" the two Koreas, cos I'm just that AWESOME. I mean, come on, let's be honest folks.
So, uh, yea. That was pretty much that. Like I said, nothing all that exciting, but it was really cool learning more about the war and stuff of the country I'm living in. History is always exciting.
Etaoin, moi, Katie, and Sara
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