The trip to Busan was a four hour bus ride headed south east across the peninsula. The bus ride was a pleasure because it allowed us to see what the geography of the country looked like outside of Seoul. I particularly enjoyed this because I love taking trips by car and being able to check out the country side. A big city is a big city, to an extent, so I was thrilled with this weekend getaway. We left Seoul just before 6:30 am. Outside of the city, mountains began to appear. It was tough to see them clearly. I immagine this was due to the combination of both early morning clouds/ fog and air pollution. Korea is 70% mountains. The view from the bus was similar to I-40 between Knoxville, TN and Asheville, NC., except the vegetation appeared much more lush, green, and dense. There was a mix of hard woods, pines, and some type of tree with funny looking, kind of feathery, flowers. The sun looked liked a full moon through the haze. Lots of creeks and rivers. The majority of these were dried up. Leaving the city there were scattered business buildings, baptist churches, and multi-storied, boxy, drap, apartment buildings. As we went farther from the city, as one might guess, the more rural the landscape became. One thing I thought was strange is that quite often when we drove through the mountains, we literally drove through them. There would be a tunnel through the mountain, then the there would be a bridge across the valley and then you would drive through another tunnel through the next mountain. Some of the bridges appeared to be several hundred feet high. At the bottom of the valleys, there were small family plots of land that looked to be about an acre or so of land with scattered small houses. Another common sight on the side of the interstate were little cemetaries. These are easy to identify because the grave stone is usually a statue that looks kind of like a person or something else unlike the grave stones in the West. People buried their families in peaceful places so that they would rest in peace and that would bring the decendents good luck and fortune. I imagine they were buried there before the interstate went through because they are right on the side of the road and all appear at least every couple of miles. Not exactly peaceful anymore. Hopefully the families whose ancestors these are are not suffering or without money as a result of the road. My bet is that they are fine. As it became more agricultural, the plots of land got bigger, but nothing huge like the industrial agriculture in the US. I saw very little mechanization. Mostly people in pointy straw hats squatting in the field. Saw perhaps one or two tractors. Lots of greenhouses. The existence of livestock was virtually nonexistant. On the way there, I saw one field with about six horses. Occationally I saw some chickens or a goat. On the way home, I saw one place with about 50 dairy cows all clustered up in some sort shed. There were alot of crops covered by wooden skeletons and a tarp over it. I later learned that this was gensing. That land is still hilly and mountainous. Very little flat land. The tour guide on the bus informed us that there was once tigers, bears, fox, and wolves in the mountains, but when the Japanese camd in the early 20th century, they all exported and hunted. The Korean War finished off what ever was left of these animals. Today they have deer and birds. The county has been trying to reintroduce bears into the wild. There are eight bears in the Korean wilderness now. As it got later in the morning and we were farther from the city, the visibility became much greater. When we got the coast, it was fairly steep and rocky. Lots of scattered rice fields mixed in with the little buildings of the coastal towns. This areas is much different from Seoul. I was one woman tending som sort of crops that she had growing where a cement water way was crumbling by the ocean and I guess she found some dirt and planted stuff in it. Very strange. I guess you do what you've gotta do. These ladies in the field most likely had zero ego, which I liked alot. Much different from the women in law school. The women in these little fields seemed very down to earth. After the coast, we actually drove up into some mountains and was breathtaking. Saw some rivers along the road with some light whitewater, kind of like driving through the Nantahala. There was a very large lake up in the mountains and was just really relaxing. My kind of place. Different from Seoul, which I needed a break from, not that I don't really enjoy the city.