7/26/2011 (late) Jeonju City and the Hanok Village

Ok, so it's actually 08/06/2011 10:39 when I'm starting to write this post, but nevermind... :P I have been writing about the more recent days, but still am back-logged with these massive, sight-seeing posts.

Breakfast at the Park's... Kiwis!

My room... Note the wallpaper. Lol...

My host family mom's gift to me... Some soaps from Korea and India, and also some awesome mosquito-repellent stickers, which would prove quite handy later.

Goodbye picture... I think we all wished we could have stayed a little longer.

My host family parents.

Other host family moms... They all seemed to be good friends. They called me 'handsome.'

Raia, MeriKim and their little friend... She was also an adoptee. She was really cute, and very bold and kept bothering those two... Haha...

Taking the bus to our next destination... Jeonju!

At the bus stop, I got two Vita C drinks. They each feature one of the SNSD girls...

First thing we did when we got to Jeonju's Hanok Village was... eat! Jeonju is known for having the best food in Korea. Strangely though, we went to an Italian place. But, the food was realllllly tasty. My stomach was still a little weak, though. :(

That's Mina on the far left, one of our guides/translators. Then that is Dr. Lee, Pastor Park and... the rest of our translators are hiding. :P

Walking to our next spot in the Hanok Village. This place is a Korean culture center, with lots of experts at traditional Korean things. Lots of parents send their kids here to learn traditional culture, and there were Chinese students here, too. We were getting culture lessons from the best.

76-11? :P There are a lot of mainstream shops around the outskirts of the village.

Looking around our first stop...

We got fitted for Hanboks.

Tying those things is freakin' complicated.

She said I was too skinny! I didn't think I'd ever get called too skinny in Korea.....

That hat-thing was apparently a symbol of rank. This makes Nick pretty high up there.

Note socks. :P

I got a crazier hat. This one apparently makes me higher ranking than Nick.

Do we look Korean? (Ehhhhhhhhhh...)

Our culture expert. She is teaching us how to bow properly.

It's a little more complicated than it looks. There is an order to everything. Which leg goes down first, how the feet are crossed, which leg you come up on, which hand goes on your knee.

The others were cheating. :P Haha...

How to greet your father...

Means something like, 'father, please be seated.'

 Now, learning how to sit. Those mats are your 'face'... Don't step on them!

Sitting properly...

Now, the girls' turn.

Time to learn to pour tea!

Remove the cover with two hands, fold a certain way, use two hands to place it to the side, use two hands to grab the kettle...

Pour water in the pouring bowl up to the spout, let it sit for a little (warming the bowl), put kettle back (using two hands), pour (using two hands) the water into the teapot.

Cover the teapot (with two hands)... Let the pot sit and warm. Then pour water from a high position into each teacup (using two hands) and let each cup warm.

Then pour each cup (using two hands) into the wash bowl. Everything is done with two hands. :P Then tea is placed in the teapot, water is poured from the kettle to the pouring bowl, then from the pouring bowl into the teapot (from a high position - 'listen for the sound'). Let the tea steep, then pour a little bit into each teacup, going up and down the row, until each teacup is full. This way, the tea gets mixed and the tea has the same strength between the cups.

The eldest drinks first. During the first cup, not a word can be spoken until the second cup is poured. You can not place your cup down until the eldest finishes his cup.

Now, our turn...

The cross-legged position is the 'be comfortable' position... Nick H was having a hard time. :P

Next up...

I had like, a super-killer headache. Between the car ride and some heat exhaustion, I kinda wanted to fall over. But, despite how rigid all this traditional stuff was, the tea pouring was kind of relaxing.

Cover, bow.

Maybe I should have taken off my glasses. :P

Next... time to make injulmi! Start with sticky rice... And beat it with a hammer.

I forget his name... But, he was one of our translators. I'm not sure anyone got his name, actually. He was a funny guy. Typical student. :P

 This picture makes me laugh...

The rice starts to turn into a goop.

Soybean powder.

The rice just gets coated...

Then cut and coated again.

Of course, mine had to be square and packaged neatly. :P

A lot of people complained about that hotel there... It doesn't quite fit in. :P

There were little water-ditches running all over.

Time for dinner!

Our room... Those would be just the beginnings of the pan-chans that we'd get.

Skate, pork, salty shrimp, kimchi... You stack them all together and eat in one bite. Tastes really good... If you eat them all together. Eating them separate... Not so good. :P

Spicy raw beef.

Not sure the name of this soup, but it was PUNGENT. Super-strong smell, and it had a weird, almost minty after taste. Really interesting.

Unfortunately, my appetite was still weak, but I still tried a little of everything. It was really an experience. Some things were super-tasty, others had some strange tastes. But, there were a lot of delicacies here, for sure.

'Dessert'... Burnt rice and cinnamon punch drinks.

Then it was time to go home to our host families. This group was the total opposite of our Daegu group as far as demeanor goes. Everybody was a doctorate, professor and pretty quiet/gentle in nature. I felt pretty under-accomplished being around them. I had a hard time explaining that I didn't graduate and am not planning on it, so I just left it at what I studied in school. :P My host family was Dr. Lee and his wife... Very nice people, and also pretty well off. They have two sons, one of which studied and moved out and is getting a master's now, the other is serving his time in the Korean military police. So, Mrs. Lee picked up a dog, which was actually really well behaved.

Time for fruits... See those little tangerine-looking things? They're like Mandarin oranges, except they're Korean, and they only grow on Jeju Island. They're also out-of-season. So, if you haven't guessed, they're freakin' expensive. And they're really tasty... Very sweet, and the peel just comes off. They're seedless, to boot.

My room... It had it's own air conditioner with remote. Sooooooooooo nice. The whole apt was pretty ballin'.... I wanted to take a picture of the bathroom, but never quite got the chance. It was pretty nice, with stainless steel and frosted glass all over. The shower was one-piece with the rest of the bathroom. Pretty sweet. We didn't go anywhere or do anything that night... And I was REALLY thankful we didn't. I was still exhausted from Daegu, and still recovering from whatever it was that was draining me earlier. Also, popped an Ex-lax. Koreans eat mostly vegetables, as opposed to meat or carbs, so I think my body was still getting used to that. The Ex-lax I bought was the most gentle-looking one I could find (I was still pretty scared to take it), but it did its job and my appetite and energy came back. Sorry...

ANYWAYS........

All in all... For the day, it seemed mostly novel in learning all this traditional stuff... It seemed old and foreign. But, once again, all the modern Korea we see and walk around in today was all developed in the past 50 years. Korea was poor. Koreans weren't allowed to be Korean during Japanese occupation. It was illegal to even speak Korean. The stuff we learned today wasn't ancient... It's stuff that our parents and grandparents knew. This is my culture... This is where I came from. My personal history came from here... These seemingly foreign bits of culture are what I had lost when I was flown over to the US as an infant. I am not a white person with an Asian fetish, trying to learn some different culture to be 'different' for the sake of being different, or because I do not fit in the mainstream. I am not learning this because I just want to explore the world and learn for the sake of my own diversity. This is MY culture being restored to me. This is MY history.

...And now I can say I've had the best Korean food in the world. Nyah!