The banners around Andong all read "We sincerely welcome Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II." The grammar was a little wrong but the welcoming spirit was very warm. (There is no need for "The") .

Andong is only one hour by car from Munkyong. My Korean friend and I drove there by car. We expected to find huge crowds and a parking problem because the visit was on all the television networks and in the newspapers. As it turned out only about 2000 tourists came to see the Queen but I would estimate that one quarter of them were uniformed or plain clothes police

The site of the village is really wonderful. There is an ancient looking cliff face across from the sandy elbow of land where this traditional homes have been preserved as a kind of living museum. This is also the place where the celebrated masked dances are held and I believe the Queen came here especially to see these entertaining dances that actually satirized the ruling "yangban' or aristocratic classes.

We met Andy Finch here, who is the head of the language center at Andong University. Andy is originally from Wales. He had a special invitation to see the dances in the same court yard as the Queen, where people had to pass security. Besides the Queen's entourage and the rag tag pack of journalists and press reporters, there were almost no other foreigners in attendance. Andy created a site for the Queen's visit at his University and you can click LIZ to go there.

We met another Canadian English teacher, named Doug J. Steedman, who taught at Andong Science College, but that was all for the foreign "tourists". It was Doug who brought to my attention the grammar mistake in the banners. I had only scanned it. The banners really read like they are expecting the visit of the ship "Queen Elizabeth", and not a monarch.

Now that she's gone home Hahoe Village is set to become a major tourist attraction. The question is, should it? It is really a small place, not even well known to Koreans. After getting international attention, maybe it will never be the same again.

There was a lot of newspaper coverage of the visit, which I read in the Korean Herald, an English newspaper, and the Cho-sun Ilbo, the Korean. The TV networks covered it heavily as well. I even appeared on TV when I was interviewed as a token foreigner by the TV station. Many of my students saw me on the news update that evening but I missed it. It made great material for conversation. One of my English teachers even remember what I said during the interview. I could not remember because I was too nervous speaking in front of a mike and a camera. I said "Andong is the real Korea."

The royal visit also inspired me to write a role play for my students. The speech contest students are always looking for some practice material so I wrote about a group of students from the school who present the Queen with flowers at Andong's HaHoe village. It's a hypothetical situation of course. The English in the role play uses only words that are found in the Year two students text book, with a few exceptions. The role play is called The Queen's Coming to Andong

Since the visit, Andong City has made a Homepage about the visit called the Queen's Visit Homepage.

A column in the Korea Times called "In Search of Ancient Vitality", by Lee Won-Sop noted that the Queen was very interested in kochujang when she visited Hahoe. In a May 13, 1999 article he said: "On a brighter note, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain showed a strong interest in the process of making kochujang and kimchi when she visited the traditional village of Hahoe in Andong, Kyonsang-pukto last April." Indeed she did. I saw Her Majesty on television asking about a woman who was making a big pot of kochujang. Kochujang is a red pepper paste that finds it's way into a lot of Korean food.

The Queen also visited a Buddhist temple near the village. This temple is called Bongjungsa. It is famous for having the oldest standing wooden structure in Korea, dating back to the 14th century. Most wooden temples were detroyed by the Japanese or burned down over the centuries. I went there to take pictures before the Queen's visit.

Here is a picture of a temple bell. This is a musician goddess or celestial being on the bell, a common theme of the big cast iron temple bells. The goddess theme is beautiful and kind of rare in Korean buddhist temple iconography.According to Dr. Frank Tedesco, a Korean Buddhist scholar, the celestial being is called an apsara in Sanksrit.