Sunday, December 09, 2007

Korea Days 9-10: Let's Eat and Go Shopping

Yesterday we went to church in the morning which was an interesting experience. I could recognize some of the motions that they were going through, but I had no idea what they were saying. I did recognize The First Noel when it was sung and I sang along in English, but aside from the occasional Christo or Jesu (no s on the end of that), that was about all I understood. After church, we ate lunch with the group. I have discovered that I really like raddish kimchee. I'm not too keen on cabbage kimchee, but the raddish stuff isn't as spicy and has more flavor to it I think. Maybe if the cabbage kimchee didn't scald my mouth so much, I might be able to find some flavor there too. I'm sure I'll get used to the hyper spiciness.

After lunch we had to help out with the English class play. It's called Shim Cheong's Devotion and is based on a Korean folk myth about this girl who gave up everything for her father. DF's co-teacher is manning the play, so we had to go and help out some. All I can say is that I would never want her to be my director in a play. She was hard on those kids! You can tell that the play wasn't much fun for them all. Different culture though. After the play, we went to the hanbok store to look around and price the traditional Korean dress. All I can say is wow. It's really expensive. Since they didn't have any in stock that would obviously fit my 5'11" frame without hitting my knees, I didn't get to try any on. I'm hoping that maybe when we go to Busan or Seoul, there will be some touristy knock-off hanboks or something that would be a little cheaper. For me, it would cost about 375-400 bucks US for one. I know that they're really special and all, but I just wanted one to say I had some clothing from Korea. I'll pay 35-40 for it, but no way will I shell out that much unless I intend to get married in it or something :oP

We went to dinner that night with DF's co-teacher to celebrate her birthday. It was Korean BBQ again, so I was happy with that. They all had pork and I had beef. Here's some Korean BBQ for you:
Nothing like uncooked pork :oP That was the co-teacher's daughter and mother-in-law. Her husband was my chef for the evening.
And of course, DF and I enjoyed the meal!

We even unintentionally matched for the evening :oP

Today I decided that I wanted to head down to downtown Naju to do some shopping while DF was at work. I hopped on the bus and headed down there.

The bus stop where you get off for downtown Naju is in front of the South Gate. The South Gate is a historic site in Naju. There are four gates, one for each direction, but the South Gate is the most famous and from what I can tell, the largest of the four. I've only driven past one other gate so far, so if I go past them again, I'll be sure to take some pictures of those as well. It's really pretty, and they built the road around it for downtown. They made it a round-about there, so that's pretty cool.

I mainly hit Main Street today (don't know if it's called that, but for simplicity's sake, it'll be called that) to do some trinket shopping.

Main Street is full of all kinds of stores. My favorite so far is the French Baguette. Yep, it's a bread store. I decided to grab some bread for lunch and they have wonderful croissants. It tasted good to have some sweet bread after two days of solid kimchee and rice :oP I picked up a few trinket things and some Korean Christmas cards too. I even found a Korean dinosaur jigsaw puzzle, so I had to pick that up for me :oP On my way back to the bus stop, I walked past a fish mart and saw this cartoon on the window.

Yeah, I'd be scared too if a worm was trying to eat me from the hook. I'd also be scared if I were a fish in that market :oP

Knit on...

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