Aug 282019
 

After leaving the mural village, we spent the rest of the afternoon being nebby (Pittsburghese for nosey, yo) in Jeonju. HERE ARE SOME MORE PICTURES and then we can move on to the next day.

I loved this classic-looking store!

Gray skies & sunflowers.

The Daeseongjeon Shrine was under construction but we were still able to explore it.

Korea is chockful of these beautiful, historical shrines. My favorite parts of them is the underneath of the roof — there is a name for that, I think!? There’s always the coolest designs painted in bright reds, greens, and blues.

Being presh + Henry’s finger that I forgot to crop out. He’s such a great photog.

Nearby, there was some summer festival going on with a huge blown-up pool. Some of the locals tried to coax Chooch into swimming but he shyly said no — people in Jeonju were SO NICE.

There were several caricature places around, but I was drawn to this girl’s little studio.

She was so cute!

It’s tradition now for Chooch to get a caricature in Korea, I guess. I love this one and it also marked the first time ever that I got to say “daebak” in Korea. The artist loved that I said that and gave me a thumbs up, haha.

We went back to the choco pie bakery to get a box of them. There was no way I was leaving without more!

I loved that there were places of tranquility all around.

LOLOLOL so Henry kept wandering off and by the time we would realize, he’d be on the other side of the street and the only reason we would even realize is because he was the keeper of the wifi and if he strayed too far, we’d lose our connection. Chooch was constantly trying to play Pokemon Go so he’d usually be the first to notice.

Anyway, Henry was like straight up Peeping Tom’ing all the food vendors from afar and I was like, “OMG he looks like Michael Myers! He’s so creepy!” so then Chooch and I kept humming the Halloween theme and Henry was like WHY R U DOING THAT when we caught up to him but then we were laughing too hard by then to talk.

So one of the times he roamed away from us was to splurge on a BEER but not just any BEER, it was BEER with HONEY drizzled on top.

And he immediately got it all over his stupid beard.

Then we lost him again and when Chooch asked where he went, I said, “I dunno. Probably off looking for Laurie Strode” so then we lost it all over again.

Ugh Jeonju made us so slaphappy.

Random butts!

I am constantly craving bingsu so we stopped in 1723 Cafe for a fix.

It was really pretty inside, like a peaceful escape! I chose a secluded table though because Chooch and I were getting super hyper at this point and there was group of super cool looking high school boys in their uniforms sitting by the counter and I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of them, so we sent Henry up to order by himself.

FUCK you guys, I think this may have been the best bingsu I had on this trip. It was black sesame, red bean, walnuts, injeolmi (sweet soy powder, which is one of the BEST bingsu ingredients), and pumpkin. It was fucking divine and I regret so hard that I chose to share this with Henry. I could have easily inhaled that whole thing on my own.

Chooch got this refreshing parfait.

This is going to be futile to try and put into words, but while we were here, Henry finally cracked and started fighting back after we mocked him mercilessly for the 83749827498245th time that day.

“OK! Every time I say something, you have to say it twice three four times!” and shit motherfucker goddamn you guys, the way he said it was SO STUPIDLY FUNNY that we cracked the FUCK up all over again and Chooch went the extra mile by spitting his water into his hand.

The way he said “twice three four times” though!!! It was like “twice three-FOUR” times, like he couldn’t decide how many times and just kept moving the number up in a weird stutter, and we latched on to this SO HARD. Ir’s been a month and we still say it to him every chance we get and he is just like IT WASN’T THAT FUNNY.

Au contraire!

Then we had to quickly leave before we caused any more of a scene, but it wouldn’t be a Korea Vacation if we didn’t cause one every day.

We also spent some time tooling around this Cathedral which I already posted about because I like to jump around and stay unorganized.

We had to be back at the train station in time for our train back to Seoul, which was around 7PM, so we quickly shopped for some moju, which is a traditional Jeonju liquor with medicinal properties. It tastes like cinnamon, actually, and is super refreshing. Chooch and I also put money in some weird traditional capsule machine to get what I thought was going to be some astrological toy, like a year of the whatever animal thing, but ended up being our horoscopes in Korean, so that was 1000 won…not very well spent. Except that I was excited because I was at least able to figure out which machine we each had to use for our birth year. It was the most complicated, rudimentary capsule machine I’ve ever used.

Took a taxi back to the station and the guy was listening to Western soft rock which was interesting and he was also an aggressively efficient driver who saved us time from sitting in taxi traffic and extra fare by pointing to the train station from across a courtyard and basically kicking us out of his car.

I was excited to sit next to some Korean soldiers in the waiting area but then asshole Henry made me get up for no reason and I lost my seat. PRO TIP: a surefire way to make locals like you in Korea is to move over so that they have room to sit. Every time I did this small act of courtesy, the thankful response I got was startling. When we were sitting outside in the air-conditioned sitting area, I squeezed over closer to Chooch and motioned for an older woman to sit down next to me and she was happy about it. I am forever wanting to be liked in Korea (I’m so pathetic) and this is a really good way!

I was actually pretty sad to leave! Like I mentioned before, Jeonju is a pretty popular domestic tourist area, but it doesn’t seem like it’s a place that foreigners really travel to. If you ever go to South Korea, pencil this onto your itinerary! Obviously, there are a lot of other things to do while in Jeonju, not just the hanok village, so I think it’s going to be on our agenda when we go back to Korea.

On the train ride back, Henry was in an entirely different car and Chooch and I were also separated. He sat next to a young guy who watched kdramas on his phone and I sat next to a young girl who slept the whole time and I definitely nodded off here and there too but the ride back was ROUGH so I kept waking up in a jolt thinking that we were derailing. I’m not kidding, it was pretty scary.

It was after 11 by the time we got back to Hongdae and I don’t think any of us had trouble falling asleep, and I’m pretty sure it was also the first time I slept straight through the night until a reasonable hour the next morning! Jeonju was exhausting.

Say it don't spray it.

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