Traditional Village and a Water Park!

The morning after Lotte World, my host parents took me to a traditional village to spend the night. It took about 2 hours to get there, and a bit longer to get home, so I was late to school the next day :p Anyway, on the way to the village we stopped at an ancient Buddhist temple in the mountains. They had some really nice things to look at and 500 year-old walnut trees. I was told that most Buddhist temples were in the mountains so that they could hide from the king's suppression of them. The kings felt that Buddhism was becoming too powerful amongst the people and that it rivaled their own power. Because of this, they tried to suppress the influence of Buddhism, causing the temples to relocate. I got to see the different temples, interesting sand art that took an Indian man 3 months to make, and my host siblings and I bowed at the temple. There was also a cool tradition in which people painted roofing tiles with their hopes and dreams, and also the things that were holding them back. They were meant to heal them once the temple repaired their roofs with them. After the temple, we went to the traditional village to settle in. As expected, there wasn't much there, but it was a cool experience anyway. We had an open 3-bedroom sort of hut that was for the lower class (as distinguished by the roof). Surrounding were other huts of different classes, farmland, and lotus plants. We left the village for some fun at a water park/jimjilbang nearby. We went to the waterpark first, and nobody informed me that NO ONE wore bikinis. Also, Koreans make tieing your hair up mandatory in swimming pools because they don't want peoples' hair everywhere. It makes sense, but then no one can look good ;p I played with my host siblings, and our whole family went down the waterslides (mom got stuck ;p). I was also the only foreigner there...and the lifeguards noticed me A LOT. My mom and I were rating their hottness...and she's a really good wingman. If I said a guy was cute, she would instantly take me up to talk to him! The workers in the cafeteria both were staring at me, so she took me up to talk to them. They gave me free food and a beer because they thought I was older. Right before I left, they asked me which was cuter and for me to guess their ages (Koreans ALWAYS ask these questions it seems). Later, all of the lifeguards called everyone out of the pool, and once I got out, they crowded around me and wanted hugs :p One guy gave me his phone number and I texted him for a bit :p After all that fun we went to dinner...and it was the first meal I really didn't like. (okay the second...) It was icky in the first place, but waaaaaaay too spicy to even take more bites out of hunger. My host dad ordered me a bowl of rice instead...but when you're REALLY hungry, it just doesn't cut it. The night in the traditional village was pretty boring, but worth going to. My siblings helped me with my homework, my host sister texted the cute lifeguard for me, and I read some Harry Potter =] It was a productive day!