old vs. new

Exploring our small town we walked from the old town Jinyeong to the new town.  The old town was worn down with dirty alleyways, smelly shops, dog poop, and I even saw a dead rat!  My first rat, belly up.  We found the train station - Korail - which will take us to Mokpo in about 6 hours, Busan in 2, Seoul in +4, Masan in 18 mins.  After our last bus ride to Gwangju we are a lot more excited to try the train system. In the old town I also encountered some puppies, even an older basset hound howling at us as we stood over it on the bridge.  ( A good sign is that they do have an animal hospital). There are very clear distinctions between the old and new.  

The old is on the south side of the major 3+ lane hwy.  The train tracks are also clearly defined to not cross.  They use bridges, underground tunnels and flag men to ensure that no one walks out on the tracks at their own will.  The underground tunnel was interesting.  At one end it was short in height, I even had to duck as I went through it.  It had the sewage also running under it.  

It was a very short trip under the train tracks that we are not wanting to take again, unless maybe if our city is on fire.  Mostly because at the end of it we encountered a spider that was probably the size of my palm. 

 On the left is the old city and on the right is the new city, to see all of the photos taken today visit flickr - old vs. new set.

Across the main hwy you immediately enter the new city, where everything is developing, new trees, new homes, new high rise apartments!  Glen says they build up because the cost for land is too high to build out.  Probably also because 70% of South Korea are mountains.  The new city is clean and community built.  Thousands of people live in these apartment buildings.  We walked all the way around the gated community, mostly because the security guard came to talk to us and we couldn't understand him.  Within another 2 years a development just like this one will be duplicated on the north side of it.

To the right is the downtown "strip" of new Jinyeong.  It has many coffee shops, restaurants and even a dunkin donuts and basket robin's. A couple of family mart - convenience store - and GS supermarket in the basement. We think that the upper levels are office space, but we think soon to come this complex will be full with shopping franchises. 

After our downtown walk, we came across the best part of our city.  A park/plaza.  I didn't get any photos of this ,but all the children from school were in the park riding little atv's and scooters.  They were also having an art show of the stuff they made.  It was quite neat.  The kids in this city are a lot more energetic than the adults.  They are usually the ones that stare at us and say Annyeong (hello).  They are always surprised when we respond in Korean back.  I can say already that I will be spending a lot of time in this park.  It is probably the closest recognizable thing we have here to home - specially with a cup of hot coffee in hand.