So far in 2012. . .

One day we went to Busan.  Maybe it was my first or second or so weekend back here in Korea.

We woke up and decided that we were bored and it was time to go somewhere.  We went to the train station and asked for three tickets for the first train out of there.  They asked us where we wanted to go and we shrugged and said that it didn't matter.  They laughed like crazy and gave us a choice between two places we had already been, so we chose the beach.

Busan.

On the bus to destination unknown.

Bound and determined to find something awesome.

At the train station, eating Oo-dong noodles.  Cheap and delicious!

On the train to Busan.  The only way to travel.

Anriette, ready for trouble.

We left a little later than we planned so here is the sun setting against the ocean.

Isn't it pretty?  And only about an hour from us :-)

Sunset against huge apartments.

So, we went to Busan and had a lovely time.  Then we came back and had to go to work for a bunch of days in a row.

That's pretty much how it worked around here.  Work all week and then go somewhere on the weekend, or sleep, or something.

But, now there's a new schedule.

We decided it was time to get serious about some things, namely, going to the gym and getting ready for our black belt test next month.  So, now we have a very strict schedule that we follow everyday, and Anriette thought it would be a good idea to take some photos, so here it is, our daily lives these days.

7:20am on a freezing cold morning, on the way to meet Lindie at the corner on the way to the gym.

Anriette in her cold weather wear for the long trek to the gym.

Not feeling it this morning. . .so cold and early.

It takes about 15 minutes or so to get to the gym.  Every morning we stop at this little convenience store called GS25 and get a few supplies, as you can see.  Dr. You breakfast bars, water, Hot 6 (like Red Bull) and this juice I love called "Salad Juice" that is kind of like V8 Splash.

Every morning.

This is the corner right outside of the GS.  This is Babo Street, which means Idiot Street, and is where all the university students go to get drunk and, well, act like idiots, I guess.

The view from behind us, the English Cafe is right there on the right, where we used to study Korean.

Almost there, this is the last crosswalk before the University, Anriette beat the light, but I guess Lindie and I were too slow.

Here is the main entrance to the University of Ulsan, where the gym is.

See?  University of Ulsan! :-)

Here is the gym!  Kinda pretty, isn't it?

Here is the lobby.  It's very shiny.  It's also the last thing we thought we could safely take photos of.  Here, they scan your card and give you work out clothes and a towel.  Then you walk through the endless locker room/shower room which is usually filled with naked women of all ages just, well, being naked.  Then you walk up the stairs and get to the pretty awesome work out room and we stretch then start kicking it hard.  :-)

 After the gym Anriette and I take off for the next 15 minute or so walk to the taekwondo gym.  This particular morning it was a little messy, so, we took a few minutes to get it straightened up.

Beating the mess with a padded bat thingy.

We take this stuff REALLY seriously.

That's what she gets for being flippant.

Kimchi!

Time to get started.

Master Jack and I. . .waiting for the rest of our class.

So, that's what we do Monday through Friday.  Now, on Saturdays we have a special sparring class, which is really just a kicking our butts cardio class with some fighting at the end.  Sometimes, after we get run ragged, Anriette and I stay after and practice some random things.  This particular Saturday we didn't have a scheduled class, but we convinced him to give us a key and let us practice on our own, since our apartments aren't big enough and it's still too cold outside.

So, last Saturday we got to class, unlocked the door and walked inside.  It was a wreck!

What even is all of this stuff???

So we spent a while straightening, vacuuming, and mopping.

All clean!  Time for work!

So, we did.  For a couple of hours.  Just practicing random stuff in our own studio.  Awesome.

BUT

Last Monday there was a special surprise while we were at the gym which caused us to go rushing out before we really did anything:

Woo hoo!!  Snow!!

Big, fat, lovely flakes of snow!

:-)

We stood out there for just a little while and it really started piling up.  We were having sweet dreams of a snow day. . .

First snow! :-)

Look at these snow flakes, man!

Getting ready for a snow ball fight.

I think snow on bamboo looks really amazing :-)

Snow :-)

Annie's first snow angel ^^

It started to really slow down, but we still wanted to make the most of it, so we skipped taekwondo and walked all over town looking for a good place to throw snow at each other.  After it nearly stopped we realized we were starving and walked to the grocery store to buy some bacon.  I haven't had bacon that wasn't from McDonald's in Korea yet, but it sure sounded like a good idea to me.  So, we loaded up on home-style breakfast foods and headed back to my house.

Lindie on bacon duty, and I'm on eggs.

Bacon and little sausages.

Look at this breakfast :-)  OJ, cheesy scrambled eggs, pinapple, bacon, sausages, kiwi, toast, and my mom's home made jam :-)  Awesome.  Then. . .we had to go to work.

It's Saturday morning now, and I'm getting ready to go to sparring class.  Our black belt test is on March 27th and we're starting to get nervous.  We were on a really good schedule but then I hurt my ankle, Anriette hurt her knee and now I have a cold.  We are tragically fragile creatures.  But we will get there :-)

But that's most of what we've been doing lately.  Thank you for reading :-)

The night we thought we were hairdressers. . .

Ji Young has been beyond a faithful friend to us since we met her, and she has been our lovely, creative and ever-patient hairdresser since about two weeks after that.

Remember these times?

Way back in the day, Summer of 2010. . .wow.

The red. . .that's still there!  :-)

These do's are really still with us. . .

Then our part two about a week later.

Make it darker!

Make it redder!

Watch the evolution. . . :-)

And then there were the more recent times. . .this was a week before Christmas. . .this isn't even close to a decent sampling of the times poor Ji Young has done our hair, but here is the most recent adventure with Ji Young.

Make her blonde!

Her too!

And her!

We thought, surely, we'd seen it enough that we would be able to take a good crack at it ourselves.  Also, we're pretty free and loose with our hair so it wasn't too much pressure on us or each other. . .Lindie heard about a place in the downtown area that would mix color for you, so she checked it out and got some lovely bleach for some lovely blonde hair.  Ji Young had bleached most of it but she still had some purple at the bottom, and she knew that she probably couldn't get it all out, but she wanted to give it a try so I bleached it for her. . .it looks pretty cool, just you wait.

We went to the store together a few days later and got several boxes of bleach, a bottle of reddish/brown for Anriette's low lights, and a bottle of purple for me.  On our way back from downtown I told the girls that I bet we wouldn't be done until 2am.

No way, they said, it will be much sooner than that!

We begin with 8 boxes of bleach, a bottle of color, a bottle of manicure, gloves, pre-cut foil, combs, bowls, brushes, the works, at 20 to 6.

Look. At. This. Hair!  So long!  Now, remember, we needed low lights, highlights, and (eventually) purple.  So much to do!

Not sure what she's so nervous about, we are more than qualified!  

So, we get started, low lights and foils, and fear and trepidation.  

Part 1: basic success :-)

Part 1 finished, washed and dried.  On to the next!

I needed my roots done and wanted purple put in underneath, because it's just been such a long time since I had more than one color in my hair (except for the red/pink of course. . .)

Here's what I did to Lindie.  And also, she's wearing my glasses for some reason.

While I was busy washing the bleach out, Lindie got started on Anriette's second low lights, and ended up doing pretty much everything else for the rest of the night, which was good, because I was way too nervous to do it for some reason.  This is NOT the purple, by the way, this is the reddish/brown. . .that just sort of changed color after it was exposed to air. . .

My roots: done.  Anriette's first and second batch of low lights:  done.  Check the time.  Still so much left to do!  :-)

Here comes the purple!

Anriette did an amazing job making sure that not a stray purple strand touched anything.  That stuff was strong and fast-acting!  And smelled like grape baby cough syrup.

Purple!

That didn't take too long, time for a wash!

It's time for Anriette's highlights now!

This is poor Anriette after she called every single restaurant in Mugeo Dong trying to get someone to deliver to us, but they were all closed early because of the holiday.

Check.  The.  Time.

Then Anriette and I put more purple in. . .then washed and dried again.  And here's how we ended up!

Look how colorful!

Look how bright!

Look at the time!  :-)

I've decided to punish all of you with a slide show :-)

It's been forever, there's really no point in apologizing for it. . .but I made a slide show of. . .basically everything that has happened since the last blog.

The slide show covers Anriette's birthday, my green belt, our purple and blue belt tests, Cheusok, dinner parties, and tons of other things.

The updates, in short, are that the past several months have been really amazing.  Albert is going home soon (NOOOOOO!)  Rob is also leaving :-( but Lindie is moving back to Mugeo, so that will be pretty awesome.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'm going home for Christmas in exactly a month!

Of course, there's a lot more than that. . .but that is the VERY short story.

Here are some great pics of some really awesome times in Korea :-)

The songs are Starlight, by Muse, Don't Stop Believin', by Journey (both of which we make habits of singing almost every time we go to a singing room. . .which is up to about 436 times at this point) and Russian Unicorn by Bad Lip Reading, which isn't exactly a song but is still awesome.

Sorry guys.

Summer Vacation Pt 2: Day 2-3 Yeosu 여수

Sunday-Monday


We got up (completely not) early in our little hotel in Jeonju and took a taxi to the train station.  We were thinking about spending a little more time there in the old village because we really didn't see as much as we wanted to, but we decided to go ahead and get to the next place, which, thankfully, we could get to by train (the only way to travel.)

The taxi gave us our last little tour of the city (including the hidden and expansive hotel district) and we went in to buy our tickets.

We were still just a little sleepy on the train ride to Yeosu.  I think it took about an hour or so to get there, more or less, but we napped on and off in the sunshine.  Yeosu is connected to the rest of the peninsula of Korea by a little strip of land, but is otherwise an island (not really, but it feels like it) and it has a lot of little islands off of it's coast.  We weren't completely sure what we wanted to do here, but Albert and Anriette had a basic plan.

We got off of the train and immediately started looking lost (the best way to get around) found a map or two after a while and realized instantly that we needed some food, and fast.

There were four basic stages of existence for us while we were on vacation:  very hungry, very tired, very hot, or waiting for a bus/taxi/train/etc.  All of these life stages were, of course, very happy stages, but also with the other things factored in.  This particular stage was very hungry, so we walked over the bus stop to grab some sort of bus.

I'm not really sure why we chose this approach, more than once, to get around.  I'm sure we will use it again, because, more often than not, we have good luck, but this was not really one of those times.  We had this innate sense that we should be going in the opposite direction of where the bus chose to go and very soon (after passing precious little interesting or usable things in town) the bus pulled into it's end-of-the-line depot and we were just farther down the mountain than we intended to be.  So, we started walking back up to where we came from and decided that maybe a taxi would be a better plan.

Yeosu is where they are planning on having the 2012 World Expo, so there were plenty of promotional signs and everything for that (I wonder if we'll still be there then. . .?)  They are working on completely transforming the city and it looks like it's really going to be something by the time it gets started.

We finally found a cab and asked him to take us to the police station because that was near something that we wanted to see and we thought maybe there would be some restaurants there.  Of course he was a little puzzled by this and eventually we just showed him the map and he took us to the actual site we wanted to see.

We got out of the cab (it was a mission to find one, let me tell you!) at the site of the biggest one story wooden building in Korea, looked at it for a second and then realized that if we didn't eat something really soon we were going to eat each other, or perhaps the cab driver, so we decided to come back after feeding.

We found a place that looked a lot like the old downtown part of Ulsan which was very encouraging because the old downtown in Ulsan has basically nothing but stationary stores, clothing shops and restaurants.  We walked and walked and walked and walked and found not a one, not a single one!  We were really starting to look rather delicious to each other and each of us were trying to figure out the pros and cons of choosing who to devour when around the corner, completely hidden away, but still shining like an angel of fried goodness stood a Lotteria (which is kind of like McDonald's.)  So we rushed inside, ordered some food, and ate it with gusto.

After eating we started looking around for some Tylenol.  There are two serious problems about having a headache in Korea.  The first one is that, back home you can buy about a million extra strength Tylenol (or excedrine, or aspirin, or ibuprofen, or blah blah blah) for a couple of bucks from anywhere that sells anything at all.  In Korea, you must ask for it at a pharmacy, it's still a couple of bucks but you can only get Tylenol and you can only get ten.  The second problem is that back home, like I said, you can get it from anywhere that sells anything at any time.  In Korea, pharmacies are not open on the weekend (at least, they weren't for a long time) and are CERTAINLY never open on Sundays.  But we had headaches and we had them bad.  And would you believe it, we found a pharmacy and it really looked like it was open, so we ran across the street to see and it was!  So we each bought a box for the road had a little celebration.

We went back to the biggest wooden one-story building in Korea and looked around for a while.  It was pretty cool.  It had a beautiful view of the ocean.

But there's more pictures of that in the slideshow :-)  We tried to find a way to get to the bridge that you see in the background, because there were some other things over there that we wanted to see.  There was randomly a LOT of traffic on the bridge, so cabs didn't want to go there, but we found one to take us pretty close and then we just got out and walked across the bridge.  It was a little gloomy outside, but that was alright because it kept us from getting too, too hot, and we were, remember, carrying everything in the world with us at the time.

While we were on the bridge, Anriette and I looked down into the water while Albert was taking pictures.  We saw a little fishing boat coming our way getting ready to go under the bridge.  He was a long way down but we could see a man hanging out of the door, so I waved to him just for fun, not thinking he would see me.  But he did and he waved back, so we laughed and waved some more.  Then he put both arms over his head and touched the top of his head to make a heart with his arms, a pretty common gesture over here, but funny every time, so we laughed a lot and then went on our way.

On the other end of the bridge they had a harbor, and in the harbor they had a lot of little tour and mini cruise ships.  Among these boats were a couple of replica old turtle war ships that were pretty cool, so instead of just waiting for some bus to show up and take us somewhere, we ran down to explore the boats a  little more closely.

Turned out, this was one you could actually tour, so we paid our dollar and we got on the boat.  It was set up with a bunch of creepy mannequins.  The top deck was set up like they were in the middle of battle.  In the bottom deck they were in the process of eating, sleeping, playing games, making food, and dying (randomly enough.)  We were there for a while and eventually got a little too creeped out and went back to the fresh air.

There was a little island nearby that Albert wanted to go to that had a lovely little beach for camping.  We eventually made it there after walking around a lot, getting on and off of different buses, and finally got to the little island with the little beach and it was really lovely.  :-)

There were tents set up all over so we decided that it would be a good night for camping-we were carrying around the tent and poles and everything. We picked a spot, bought a couple of mats to put on the roots and rocks and everything, and set up our tent.  It was a neat place, it had a really cool vibe, people camping and singing and cooking and playing soccer, shooting off fireworks etc.  The strangest thing happened, we got hungry AGAIN!  There were a couple of restaurants in this little part of the island, and we went to all of them but all of them either didn't really sell food as much as they sold the materials for you to make it yourself, or they were out of everything except what would make our hair catch on fire.  We walked around for a while, wondering how fantastic it was to be able to walk around and feel completely safe, even though we were so out of our element.  On the other side of a rather huge tent village there was a little diner in the middle of a field (reminded me of something you would see in like a 1920's town in a town a highway bi-passed, one of those "Last Chance" diners. . .so obviously, I was very curious about it.)  We had tried everywhere else so we settled on this place finally, chose something off of the menu and sat on the plastic lawn furniture outside and waited to see what we were going to get.

Here's a video!

It was fried chicken.  Awesome  :-)

We went down to the water for a little bit, then walked around some more and finally went to bed.  The ground was really, really bad, and Albert and I didn't sleep the whole night.  Anriette is a wonder, man, she can sleep like a little kid after a field day no matter where she is.  So, Albert and I are getting cranky and then, suddenly, it starts to rain.  So, we grab our shoes and everything and put them inside the already pretty cramped tent, and got even more cranky.  Then it started to leak and flood.  So, we got up and ran off to the bathroom.  It was around 5am, so it was time to get ready to leave anyway, right?  We changed clothes, packed up all of our now wet stuff and went off to the one bus stop on the whole mountain.

And we sat there.  And sat there.  And sat there.  It was raining and we were a little cranky and we waited and waited.

Maybe 45 minutes later or something there was still no bus but miraculously a taxi showed up!  So, we literally jumped in front of it, threw all our stuff it, and headed back off to the main land to find a motel or somewhere to let all of our stuff dry.

I made my friends ask the cab driver to take us to Lotte Mart before falling asleep in the back seat because I'm really stupid sometimes and on this particular occasion I had forgotten to take all of the movies off of my camera memory card so after about 20 or so pictures my first day it was full.  On my camera  I can't access the movies to delete them, so I needed a new memory card.  I looked everywhere for one, but I knew that they would have one at LotteMart and we had seen one the day before so we headed there.  LotteMart is like Walmart, except for one very important difference: it's not 24 hours.  It opens at 10 or something obscene like that, and it was still VERY early.  So, we got out of the cab into the pouring rain (with no umbrellas, because we are really smart like that) and marched down the sidewalk in search of a.) a hotel b.) a convenience store or c.) something to eat.

We walked up the street from LotteMart, our already wet stuff getting even wetter, and after a little while found the massive hotel district of this part of the island.  Awesome.  So, we sloshed into the lobby of the first hotel to try to find a room.
Last time I talked about the first kind of common hotel/motel where it belongs to someone who basically just lives there behind the counter and you just wake them up in order to get or give your key.  There's another kind of very common hotel, we learned that morning, the hotel that is literally abandoned in the morning/early afternoon, where you just leave your key in the window and there isn't a soul ANYWHERE to be found, no matter how many times you ring the bell.  I don't know exactly how many hotels we went to before we found some signs of life but I know it was at least five or six.  We also stopped at a convenience store to get some umbrellas and snacks.  Finally we found one, and they thought we were really crazy asking for a hotel at 8am but they didn't know the night that we had.  It was a nice room, too, VIP room, very clean, big, and dry and even had a computer with internet access.  So, we took showers, laid out or hung up all of our wet stuff and fell asleep for a few hours.

It was still raining when we woke up but I still dragged my friends back to Lotte Mart (which was within rainy walking distance) to get a memory card and some lunch.  Lotte Mart always has a big food court, so we knew we could find something that would appeal to us.  So, off we went.
LotteMart always, also, has a pharmacy (always, except for this one and poor Anriette was coming down with a cold) and as we looked everywhere for it we found something a little random:

Just a random bird sitting outside of a little shop inside of LotteMart. ..

We found a memory card, we found hats and little bags, and everything that we needed, so it was time to eat.  And eat we did.

Chinese food, Korean style.

So, reloaded up with supplies, we went back to the hotel to figure out what to do (thanks to Mr. Complimentary Internet!) and had high hopes for the rest of the rainy Monday.

Here's a video:

Even with all of our high hopes, and all of the interesting things to see there is Yeosu, we had a REALLY difficult time getting motivated thanks to the rain and the lack of sleep, and of course the movie channel and extra blankets.  We watched a popular Korean comedy/variety show for a while trying to figure out what we should do and ended up trying to figure out what we should do until it was time to go find some dinner.  It's amazing how many times in a day one can get hungry!

Anriette living it up in Yeosu.

It was still raining, but it was dark now.  We set out through the hotel district to find something that looked rather familiar.  One important fact to know about Yeosu is that there were no foreigners there, probably there hadn't been any foreigners there for years and years, because the looks that we got whenever we stepped foot anywhere wasn't just the normal "hey, look at those strange looking people!" they were more like "what in the name of all that is sacred are those things?"  which, to be honest, gets to you after a little while.  We walked around for a while looking for a sam geb sal place (slices of pork that you grill yourself) and we found a friendly looking one, we just had no idea how friendly they would be. . .

When we walked in they immediately gave us towels to dry off with and seated us, apologizing for not being able to speak English.  We ordered some food.

It was a husband and wife team that owned the restaurant and they were both as cute as could be.  They brought us a lot of free stuff and, even though we ordered it, he was positive that we didn't know how to cook or eat it so he did everything for us including putting it into our mouths.  :-)  Very cute couple.

After we finished eating they invited us to come back a couple of hours later to stay at their house for the night.  We told them we already had a hotel but they still invited us.  We decided to think about it and ended up going to a nori bang instead.

Funny story about the nori bang.  Of course, they had no idea that we go to one of these like every twenty minutes, but the first one we went into we asked them (in Korean) for a room to sing in and she just flat out said "no."  There wasn't a person in the place but she did not feel like having three crazy foreigners in her singing rooms, apparently.  Very unexpected.  So, we walked up the street a little more and found another one.  We walked in and asked again.  She looked at us like we actually had tentacles coming out of our ears and neon pink skin.  She asked us if we wanted a room, so we said yes, and she stared at us as if any minute we might explode.  She led us to a room and gave us an introduction to the ins and outs of the singing room, we told her we knew how to do it, but it was sweet of her to help us out.  She still stood by the door for a while until she heard the singing start then came in later to give us some water and check to make sure we knew how to do everything.

Fun.

Here's a video that showcases two very important things: Albert's singing ability and Anriette's creative mockery.  Oh, also that we spend too much time in places like this.  :-)

She made up an interpretive dance for the entire song.  Fantastic.  My friends are so wonderfully strange.

After staying in the singing room for a couple of hours we went back to the hotel to get some sleep hoping that we could get a semi-early start on the next day in Namhae.


Okay, and I am going to cheat a little bit and start on the 4th day because it just makes sense to do that, or something.  The next morning we got up and we got a taxi to take us to the ferry terminal.  We were all so geekishly excited to take a ferry (especially since it meant we didn't have to take a bus!) and we got to the terminal, bought our tickets, and walked around that part of town for a while until our ferry was scheduled to leave.

Still, remember, there are no foreigners there, nor have there been for a while.  This is the place that is going to have the 2012 World Expo, apparently, so they are going to get their fill of foreigners soon enough, but as it was then, we were more than an oddity.  If we sat down or stood in one place long enough we would draw a crowd.  Sometimes people would try to talk to us, but mostly they would just stand in front of us and stare. . .like we couldn't see them or something. . .Anyway, whenever anyone tried to talk to us it was mostly old men and they talked mostly to Anriette and I asking things like "How old are you?" or "Are you married" to which we came up with various responses with Albert and I being married and Anriette was our daughter, and then vice versa, and then we would just leave the area.  It was pretty around there, as we walked, and it was finally not raining!

Anriette and I taking a picture.

Albert taking a picture of Anriette and I taking a picture.

Picture of Albert after taking a picture of us taking a picture. :-)

Then we got on the ferry, chose our seats, and got ready for our journey across the sea.  And here's Anriette to tell you all about it.

We landed safely in Namhae after about 30 or 40 minutes, but that's a story for another day.  In the meantime, here's the slide show with all the silly pictures of our adventures in Yeosu:



Yeosu:  Hot Summer by f(x) and Sorry Sorry by Super Junior (best song ever ^^)

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!  :-)

Summer Vacation Pt 1 of. . .4? Jeonju 전주

I know, I know, I know I tell you lies.  It's been more than a week since I blogged last.  It's been more than a week since summer vacation. . .a couple of weeks, actually I guess.  BUT  I have a really good reason or two!

The first reason is that we were gone for five whole days.
The second reason is that there were three of us each with a camera going 24 hours a day.
The third reason is that we came home with more than 1,500 photos and videos.
Awesome.  But a lot to go through and organize.

So, I thought this time, instead of just uploading a thousand or so of the best ones, I would make slide shows, that way I could show you all the scenery, the good stuff, and the silly stuff without making you scroll through pages and pages of. . .screen?

In addition to showing you more photos and videos than ever before (aren't you excited!?) the slide shows will be accompanied by the very best of the K-Pop summer charts (some of which we know well enough to sing in nori-bangs, and by some I mean the choruses of one. . .and the English.) 


So, let's get started, shall we?

This was the idea (we spent weeks on these ideas. . .) we were going to ride trains for our summer vacation and see what we could find.  See, what happened was, we're supposed to have five week days off for summer vacation and five week days off for winter vacation.  We didn't get our five days off in winter, so it should not have been a shock when they jipped us on our summer vacation as well.  We did get it extended to three days from only two, but only Anriette, Albert and I had the same days off (which was good that we had them off, but left out Rob and Lindie, unfortunately.)
So, to make the best of our shortened vacation we thought a proper gyspy journey would be awesome.
There was only one rule in the weeks leading up to our departure: no plans.
BUT, it's a little hard to really do that, honestly, so Albert and Anriette came up with a basic framwork plan (which was awesome) and we were going to go to the west coast and see what was there, hitting five destinations in five days.  We bought giant maps and sat dreaming about what we would find.

Then, the big day arrived.  The Friday night before we were set to leave was not only a seasonal work dinner for all of us but it was also Mac's going away party, so we were all out pretty late that night.  But we made a plan to leave early, so that's what we did.  To the bus terminal first thing to catch the 9 o'clock bus to Jeonju, home, we heard, of a very old fashioned village and famous bi bim bap.

And that's what we did.  We met each other at 8:30, really only a few hours after we went to bed, beady eyed and yawning and grabbed a bus that took us to the bus terminal.  We stood in line looking a little confused, like foreigners do, a Hot Six (like Red Bull. . .) in each hand.  But all the 9 o'clock tickets were sold out and the next bus wasn't leaving until 11:30 SO we called the whole thing off and went back to bed.
No.
We went outside and bummed around Samsan for an hour and half waiting for our bus to get ready.
Then, finally, we were off.

Here's the show!    Go Away-2NE1

SATURDAY: JEONJU

We arrived in Jeonju about four hours later and walked squinting out into the sun and into a taxi.   Our first stop was a very old church that Albert found on the internet.  So, we went there and took pictures.  Here's Anriette to tell you all about it!

We got to the castle and started looking around.  It was probably a million degrees (half a million degrees C.) but it was really beautiful, the whole city.  It was very old fashioned and had a very relaxed and family feel to it.  We entered the gate to the castle and started instantly snapping photos.  Here's Albert to tell you more!

After we walked around the church grounds a little bit we decided that we needed to feed.  There was a service going on inside the church at the time so we couldn't go in and take pictures, so we walked across the street to get some of the famous bi bim bap that everyone told us we had to try.

Bi Bim Bap is a bowl of. . .stuff.  Really.  Everytime your order it, it's different.  But it's always rice with bean sprouts, sometimes little fish, or mushroom slices (I think. . .) or different veggies, some hot sauce (or not) basically any kind of thing can end up in bi bim bap, then you mix it all together and sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it's not.  We ordered traditional Jeonju bi bim bap and also a raw beef version (never thought I would be ordering this stuff, but it's actually not bad, if you just think that you're eating really, really, really rare steak. . .) And it was pretty tasty.  Like the kimchi, however, bi bim bap, at least to me, was a lot spicier than back home in Ulsan.  But that's one of the cool things about Korea, every province has their own versions and recepies for things, from kimchi and bi bim bap to soju and Makkoli. . .but more on that later.

After finishing our lunch we walked back across the street to take pictures of the inside of the church.  It was really beautiful, everything was.  Then we walked to the rotary, which was also supposed to have something cool, according to the internet, and it has, I think, the enterance to a gate from long, long ago.  It was also very cool.  Then we walked through a huge market place and looked at all the hanbok and random live fish/eels/things in shells, and silk worm larvae they had to sell.

This is the part where I should tell you that even though we tried, we really, really, really tried to pack as lightly as possible, we still all ended up with huge, heavy backpacks, and we also had a tent with poles in tow, and it was very hot, like I think I mentioned, so we decided we needed to find a hotel and unload some of our stuff before we headed out to see the main parts of the village.  And that's exactly what we did.

A little about hotels in Korea for a moment, if you don't mind.

There are really lovely, enormous, very-much-like-back-home hotels all over Korea, of course, but like their Western counterparts, they are outrageously expensive for three road weary and (let's be honest) not terribly picky travelers.  Larger towns in Korea are also usually absolutely infested by colorful/neon/overly ornate or needlessly over-decorated "Love Motels" or "World Inns" depending on who you ask (they changed the name to World Inns, apparently, when the Olympics were here last. . .but we all know the truth.)  The really amazing thing about these inns is that they cost about $30 a night.  But UNLIKE $30 hotels back home, these are actually usually very clean and bright and perfectly safe, so they are perfect for dropping off stuff and catching a few hours of sleep in the middle of long days of adventuring.  It's good that they're here, they're a constant that you can depend on in every single little town, so accommodations are literally the last thing we ever think about when we make a trip.  In many towns we've been to, there's like a motel district, just a part of the town there is a whole empire of only hotels and convenience stores, so it's always easy to find a free room at a good price.

Now, I tell you all this to say that Jeonju is a big city.  But, as we walked around we noticed the very strange lack of motels.  Across the bridge we saw one, only one, so we walked to it.  This one was of the variety where the woman who owns the place also lives there, so we walked in, got a room, dropped off our stuff and then went exploring again.  (I think we were the only people there the whole time, but I'm not sure.)

Near the hotel there was a covered-deck like thing, that are pretty common finds in cities in Korea, and people just take off their shoes and hang out on them, but this one was huge, and was apparently built way back when, over the river, at the spot where two parts of the river met and swirled, which really fascinated the leader at the time.  The river doesn't swirl here these days, that we could see, but we still stared at it for a while.  :-)

The town was beyond charming.  Everything was perfectly manicured, there were cobble stone streets everywhere and little streams built along the sidewalks which were filled with small children.  We stopped at a small shop that had a lot of really nice knick knack souvenirs along with several varieties of fans (for which Jeonju is famous) so we all bought a couple of things and kept walking.

It was a beautiful day, and without all of our gear, we were ready for anything.  But first, we needed some ice cream.  We took pictures, noticed that an outdoor concert was going to start in a while, bought some ice cream, and ate it in a BEAUTIFUL gazebo right next to the beautiful stream and tree lined cobble stone street.

We walked around for a while longer, and then the concert started, it was a traditional dress, traditional instrument concert and we listened for a while and we are all incredibly surprised when they started playing the Mission Impossible theme song. . .here's a vid!

We walked around for a while longer, taking in the sites and then decided to head back to the hotel, or at least to head that way.  Out of no where we were suddenly nabbed right off the street by a wild-eyed restaurant owner who led us over to a table outside of his place proclaiming that it was free Makkoli for foreigners night!  So, what choice did we have?  He was quite insistent.  There were a couple of tables with huge bowls for Makkoli in the middle and smaller drinking bowls all around in front of a collection of Koreans and slightly confused looking foreigners.  So, we started drinking and talking and making friends.  We learned several things that night, one of them being how they make Makkoli and (perhaps their more famous liquor) soju.  Makkoli is a rice wine that is made by mixing rice and yeast and some other things in a jar for about 10 years.  The mixture separates into a clear liquid on top that becomes Saki and the thicker mixture at the bottom becomes the rice wine, Makkoli.  There are variations of the Makkoli, soju, and kimchi (and maybe Bi Bim Bap) recipes from province to province in Korea.  Jeonju is supposed to be famous for it's Makkoli and Bi Bim Bap. . .and we tried both.  The Bi Bim Bap was nice but we all agreed that we liked Ulsan's version of Makkoli better. . .Jeonju's Makkoli tasted a little yeasty to us, but hey, it was free, and we made some new friends so that was cool.  He wouldn't let us leave for a long time, I want to say that we were there for at least three hours, but finally we managed to get away and go look for some food or at least pretend like it was time to go to bed.

We walked around a little more on the way back to the hotel, then Albert went to sleep, but Anriette and I were restless and walked around a little more.

What's fascinating about Korea, something that continues to fascinate us, is how amazingly safe it is.  We are always able to totally enjoy ourselves everywhere we go because it is so amazingly safe.  But before it got too late we went back to the hotel to enjoy some fantastic late night Korean programming.

The plan for the next day was a little place called Yeosu, so after we wound down enough to actually get some sleep, we were ready for the next stage of our adventure. . .which is coming soon.  I promise!!  :-)


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