Can you hear the world revolving?

Over the weekend I went to Andong, my first venture outside of Seoul. It's about 150 miles south of Seoul, three hours by bus. The buses here in Korea are fabulous! Very comfortable, large seats---only three across--clean, and they even give you water and a small bag of cookies---all for only $15.40 each way.

In our very mobile society (and I am one of its most mobile members), few of us remember where our grandparents lived, and almost none of us know where our great-grandparents are from. So it was a uniquely Korean experience for me to spend the weekend with a man who left his career behind to dedicate himself to preserving his family's home and history.

I stayed at the Jirye Artist's Colony, a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Kim. Mr. Kim was a professor of Korean literature at Andong National University and a published poet when, in 1988, the Korean government built a dam that submerged the land where his native village sat. Kim is the oldest son of the oldest son, going back 13 generations, who were the nobility and leaders of this village. He left his position at the university and moved ten buildings of his family's home up on the ridge, where it overlooks the lake created by the dam. Inspired by a Korean novelist friend, who taught in the U.S., Kim decided to create a place where artists could come and work and refresh themselves, similar to places in the U.S. where hs friend had stayed. The pictures document the beautiful setting that is the realization of his dream.

Korean traditional houses were made up of many small rooms organized around a courtyard. The pictures show the room where I stayed, another nearby building that used to be the family shrine, and a large building erected in 1800 as a Confucian school for family and village members. The oldest building out of the ten goes back to 1650, almost to the time of the Pilgrims. Mind boggling! The houses are a five-mile drive on windy roads from the nearest small town, where the closest neighbors live. It was so peaceful and quiet---except for the birds and the frogs, which I could hear throughout the night. No wonder Kim asked if I could hear the world revolving!