Exploring in Korea

My sister, artist Megan Jones , ( www.meganjones.com.au) recently took some of her paintings to the Korean International Art Fair, and after it was finished spent a couple of weeks exploring Korea. Here’s a selection from her account

“I went to the demilitarized zone, controlled by UN, South and North Korean forces, and US forces. It shows that the two Koreas have never signed a peace treaty, and are still prepared for war. To visit the Joint Security Area you have to be in a military bus, with U.N. soldier escort, and with military jeep preceding. North and South Korean soldiers face each other across the border, and photography is strictly controlled.

Following this I went down south to Jeju island, which is a self governing autonomous province off the south coast. It is a volcanic island, dominated by Mt Halla ( an extinct volcano) in the centre. Mt Halla is the highest mountain in South Korea, at 1950 metres above sea level. I climbed it- a 10 kilometre walk steadily upwards from where I got off the bus- and then down again ( a rise of about 1400 metres). It was extremely pleasant making my way upwards through forest in the mist, and then arriving near the top and finding that the mist cleared so that you could look out across to the sea.
From Jeju island I flew to Busan, and then caught a bus to Gyeongju, the previous capital of the unified Silla kindom, and home to many beautiful artefacts and mementos of the kingdom which held sway there for several hundred years. At Hae In Sa temple I saw the Tripitaka Koreana, the most complete set of Bhuddist scriptures printed in the ancient Asian world, and still preserved perfectly in a huge library of carved wooden blocks after almost 1,000 years.

After Gyongju I went to the Andong/Ha Hoe village mask festival ... Then I stayed in Jirye Artists Colony, sleeping in 300 year old traditional Confucian house in a small compound up in the forested hills beside a lake. It was so beautifully quiet and peaceful that I lay in bed on my futon on a heated floor and listened to the sound of individual raindrops falling. I came back to Andong with a Thai film crew.”

Photo shows mist on way up to Mt Halla. (When I work out how, I'll add a slide show of Megan's photos!)

Up up and away...

If you're going to go up in a balloon - you are, aren't you? - it's good to know how it works. Watch this, uploaded from YouTube.

Singing friends

Friends Deanne and Paul have put this little clip on YouTube. Have a listen...

Walking around Fiesole

Excavations at Fiesole: photo by Camille Nurka.


If you've been to Florence (Firenze) you'll know what I mean when I say walking round the streets there has a certain craziness about it, and we perfected getting lost to an art form. So it's good to jump on a bus and head up to Fiesole, in the hills above Firenze. You can walk a winding track up to Monte Ceceri, through terraces planted with olive trees, and cypress forests green as green. I loved it up there on the mountain, partly because this is where
Leonardo da Vinci practiced flying with the various ingenious contraptions he made! Sooner him than me. Rock was quarried there too, and we photographed some old workings.
Down the hill, in Fiesole itself, is the Museo Faesulanum, an incredibly interesting museum built in 1912, a copy of a first century Roman temple. The ancient Etruscan and Roman artefacts inside were fascinating (jars, bottles, belt buckles, statuary, friezes - AND a reconstructed grave with skeleton and grave objects!), but even better were the excavated sites down the hill from it: a Roman theatre, a temple, baths, a house. We could walk all over it, and along the paved Roman road where sandalled feet had walked two centuries earlier. (Photo above right: rock works on Monte Ceceri: Camille Nurka)
A PS question: how do I upload a photo from my computer, then attach a label right underneath it, where it belongs? Can someone enlighten me?

Wikis, and a backward glance to Rss feeds.

Forgetting about bushwalking just for a minute (oh no!) I want to record the fact that I've completed Week 5 of the Library2 course, on Wikis.
Wikipedia is quite a revolutionary notion, really, in a world still governed, at least externally, by authoritarian hierarchies. I'm relieved to read that it boasts a high rate of accuracy, and there are some checks and balances. I loved the Book Lovers Wiki at Princeton Public Library, though of course as it's discontinued I won't add a feed to my blog. Wookieepedia was fun, but Star Wars is all a bit of a yawn for me.
The State Library of Tassie site was a beauty. And Library Thing is a creative idea that I'll continue to visit. I've signed in, and added a few of my own books to a list which will grow in time.
So how might our library use wikis?
1. We already have our Readers in the Mist place for readers to place book reviews.
2.Heidi is designing a wiki for the Book Chains we've launched.
3. We can also put the monthly roundup of What the Staff are Reading, on a wiki.
Today, some of us at Blue Mts library had an intensive hour of help with some of these concepts, and I can't tell you how valuable that is! I understand the process, now, of linking other sites to my blog, as RSS feeds or blog links.

Adding to My Blog List

Now I've started a list of blogs I'm following.
To find them I went to google, putting in, for example, bushwalker blogs as a search term. That led me to some interesting blogs; I copied and pasted their URLs into my blog, via My Blog List.
Now I'll add a few more!