More tales from the road trip

Sorry for the brief hiatus, the last hotel we were in didn't have a business center, but now I am back at the university and free to blog once again!
Quick update here of some highlights from the past few days, then I'm going to go plan a little hiking excursion with a friend.
A definite highlight was Thursday morning's breakfast buffet, where I totally lost my mind as one tends to do at lavish breakfast buffets. We began the day at a Buddhist mountain temple, and I could have spent all day in its peaceful confines. To enter, you pass through three gates, each symbolizing a level of purification from worldly desires and concerns, and at the heart is the temple (with a mighty large Buddha inside). This might have been my favorite place to visit on the trip so far.
As much as I would have loved to stay at the temple among the mountain flowers, we left to spend the afternoon at a cultural center learning traditional drumming (where I was used as the example for the video, so all those years of music lessons certainly have paid off!) and Korean mask dances. For the evening, we saw a performance of a classical Korean instrumental ensemble playing more modern style music, which was not only exciting to listen to, but I also find it reflective of the quickly advancing Korean society, where in each street the new merges with the old, and traditional styles mesh with modern trends.
Today, I started out with a run through a more traditional part of the city of Jeonju, where many still live in hanok, or traditional Korean houses. If only we had brought cameras, the run through the streets with buildings just peeking out from the morning fog could have certainly been a candidate for a Runner's World "rave run" shot! We traveled through this area today, and then, for an abrupt change of scene, went to Everland, rated 4th in the world for amusement parks, and with the world's steepest rollercoaster, which of course I had to ride (it was super fun, in case you were wondering!).
More updates to come!