My Chuseok Vacation in Gwangju and Ansan

I can't believe it's October! At least I said goodbye to September with a bang. As you know, Chuseok was this weekend so I've been off school for five whole days. Here's what happened.

Saturday: Around 1 in the afternoon, I left my house and found my way to the Suwon bus terminal and  bought a bus ticket to Gwangju. I pretty quickly realized that heading south from Seoul on a holiday weekend was not my greatest idea. My three-hour bus ride ended up being a six-hour bus extravaganza that involved getting lost and watching a Korean dating show in which the couple dressed in full-body character suits and jumped on a trampoline. Things got weird around the four-hour mark...

By the time I made it to Gwanju, caught a bus downtown, and found my friends, it was nearly 9 p.m. and a quite appropriate time to drown my travel hardships. I proceeded to do just that. Between the four of us, the hotel room was pretty cheap and I slept like a drunk baby who'd been traveling for 8 hours.

Sunday: After downing some soup for breakfast, we headed for the Gwangju Biennale (which I learned is an Italian word for something that happens every two years). The Biennale turned out to be a five-gallery exhibition of art including paintings, sculpture, video, multi-media, and various forms of interactive art. I could've easily spent all day there. A lot of my photos didn't turn out, but here's two exhibits I particularly liked. There were more than a dozen photos in the building exhibit and the hanging pictures from the Indian women's protests were huge. Both were interesting and humbling.

After the Biennale, we were pretty beat, so we grabbed this delicious concoction -- pizza in a cone -- and took a rest.

Behold, a cone of dough filled with pizza toppings. So. Much. Good.

Later, we decided to see a movie. English movie choices here are pretty limited, so we saw "Ted" with Mark Wahlberg. I think I would've liked this movie had I seen it in America, but for some reason, seeing it in a theatre filled with people who don't get the references or the type of humor wasn't the best atmosphere. I found myself feeling ashamed (especially with the drug, sexual, and racial elements) and wanting to let all the Koreans know this isn't really what America is like. Although I'm sure most of them know it's highly exaggerated, I also know we form a lot of misconceptions based on movies and media in general. I was pretty uncomfortable in actuality. But I did still laugh a good deal. Let's be real: Seth MacFarlane is a comedic genius. And he's hosting the Oscars next year! It will definitely be interesting...


Monday: We woke up early (vacation-early, not working day-early) in order to visit a tourist site we honestly didn't know much about. We knew there were protests in Gwangju a long time ago and this was a cemetery/memorial honoring those protests. It turned out to be one of the most moving and inspiring things I have experienced. It deserves and warrants a good deal of explanation, so I will write about the cemetery in a separate post.

Afterwards, we all jumped on separate buses and headed for home. Well, sort of. For me, the closest bus terminals are in Ansan and Suwon, and I usually go through Suwon because it's larger. This time, I decided to go through Ansan and have dinner with my friend since she was leaving to visit the U.S. the following day. We had Korean barbecue, which is hands down my favorite dining option here. Oh my goodness. Here's how it works. First of all, there's a pit in the middle of the table and a smoke sucker thing that hangs down from the ceiling.

Then, someone comes and fills the pit with coals and fire and brings sides like soup and kimchi.

Next, they bring a grill cover thing and whatever meat you pick. You slap it on there and sweat for awhile. It can get quite hot, so cold beer is essential at this point.

It usually comes with onions and garlic grilling (just to the right of the meat) and you can throw whatever you like on there as well. Grilled kimchi is the bomb dot com.

At this restaurant, they also fill part of the grill with an egg mixture (the yellow semi-circle), which turned out to be delicious.

You can wrap the meat, sauce, and veggies in a leaf and eat it as one flavor-filled bite or pick and choose as you wish. But no matter how you eat it, it will be delicious. And it will be gone.

After getting our fill of barbecue, we went to a blues bar my friend had visited with her boyfriend. As soon as we walked in the door, everyone reached out to us. The owner, an older man with an extensive record collection, and two older female bartenders called us over when we were looking for a table and pointed us to two seats at the bar. Business seemed a bit slow, but a table behind us was working on their second bottle of Jose Cuervo and the women insisted on telling my friend and I how beautiful we were on many occasions.

The owner and bartenders spoke English very well and (of course) asked about my boyfriend status. We ended up talking about boys and how relationships are different across cultures for awhile, and the older woman insisted that we should "fly" and not be too attached to a man. This is practically blasphemy in Korea. I have never heard anyone here espouse independence. I knew I was going to like this place.

There was only one live band because of the holiday, and soon the younger crowd was replaced by a group of middle-aged friends who turned the bar into a spectacular dance party. They were particularly impressed by my friend's Gangnam Style dance and were some of the nicest people I have ever met. I had a genuinely good time talking and dancing with them. Another friend met up with us and around midnight, we decided to call it a night since it would be an early morning. Then, we decided that was a dumb idea and went to a club-hof instead.

Hof is a Korean bar, and a club-hof is a bar that turns into a dance club every 15 minutes or so for a brief dance party before returning to comfy couches and anju (Korean drinking snacks). Again, we stood out like a sore thumb, and many people approached us or just stared from afar. When the dance parties would start, it seemed like most of the people knew choreographed dances for each song, but as the night drew on, it became more of a free-for-all situation. Most of the songs were hip hop hits we used to hear at clubs in college, and we definitely whipped out some sweet moves.

Around 5 a.m., we realized it was around 5 a.m. and my friend was in serious danger of missing her early-morning appointment. A nice Korean gentleman who had learned a lot of English swear words at some point walked us to the subway station and I proceeded home, at last.

As my hangover and my Chuseok vacation comes to an end, I'm looking forward to seeing my kids again and reveling in the joy of a two-day work week. But don't worry, you guys can rub it in when you have days off for Thanksgiving, and I'm brooding at work.