Climbing Mountains and Kung Fu

I finally made it to Korea. After a long, tedious flight from Chicago (14 hours). Getting through Incheon International Airport was actually easier than O'Hare. I got my first cell phone ever, made it to Daejin University for a week of orientation, made a call home, and went to sleep.

First thing today was a Korean style breakfast, which was tasty. Then we had a tour of the campus which was great, except that campus is on the side of a mountain so we spent a lot of time and energy (in 90 degree weather with 80% humidity) climbing the mountain. It's very beautiful though. After the official tour I went with some of my new friends to look around and take pictures. The following are some of those.

This is some of the landscape that we drove through in order to get to Daejin University. There were a lot of mountains with little towns tucked into the valleys. 

Dajin University, or Daejin Dae, is a relatively small school with rooms for about 3-5 thousand students by my guess. What it's famous for is the temple here, Daaejoonsinraehae. It was built  in 1968 and was described a belonging to "a pagan group". It doesn't seem to serve religious purposes anymore though. The first picture is the view from my dorm room window. 

This is the plaza and the upper level of the temple which were were not allowed to visit for reasons unexplained.

One of the entrance gates had four blue and gold dragons protecting it and they were gorgeous!

 The temple was actively growing and drying their own hot red peppers to use to make the red pepper flakes that's in practically all Korean food. I thought that they had rolled the red carpet out for my arrival!

 In the afternoon we had a welcoming ceremony. The most interesting part was when the national taekwondo team preformed for us.  There was some traditional moves, lots of shouting, and a dance routine. It was an awesome performance.

This guy did a back flip in order to break the board!

The orientation guidebook has us scheduled to have health exams tomorrow, classes Wednesday, a field trip to Seoul Thursday, and on Friday we're doing taekwondo ourselves!

I've already met a lot of great people and seen a lot of amazing things in my first 24 hours in Korea!

Let the adventure continue!