A day trip, and then some...

Well, as my last post had covered, I had a fabulous night of debauchery in Gwangju. So it was only necessary to do a bit of cultural exploration this Holiday weekend that didn't involve massive amounts of Soju, and that I did. After a lovely late dinner with my friend Sara on Friday night, which involved yet another delicious Korean dish, I ran into Holli and mutually decided that a day trip was on our agenda for Saturday. First, I should add that the lovely Korean dinner was slightly interrupted by the fact that basically ALL Korean places make me sit flat on the floor and I swear I'm genetically incapable of fulfilling this standard. I don't know if it's the fact that I'm a giant in many senses of the word, or that I'm purely not used to this custom, but my legs go numb after about 15 minutes. I HATE IT. But, seeing as though I'm set here for at least a year I try my best to get used to it and hope that soon my legs will enjoy being crossed for long periods of time.

Back to the main point; I went on a day trip. Luckily I have made friends with people like Holli who are ambitious and, well, not lazy like me, so I can have a reason to leave my apartment. But after a day of laying around hung over on Friday I was fairly ambitious and ready to explore the great unknown of Korea. According to Holli and the website we looked at, Naju was a "village" full of great history. So, we headed down to the bus station and found our one way ticket to Naju for a mere 3,000 Won (like 3 bucks) and set off. Once again, I get pleasure in the small things living here, like being able to find a ticket (which is even written in English) and ordering it, and getting on the right bus. However, I did not get pleasure in the ass backwards crazy driving that ensued. Both of us felt on the edge of puking by the time we got off the bus. In addition, I'm lucky I've picked up on reading Hangul (the Korean writing sysetem) already because I have a good feeling that we wouldn't have gotten off on the right spot. Naju did not look like our picturesque internet vision we had seen hours before. Instead, it looked like some homely city that I personally was not gung-ho about visiting. But, I saw the sign, it said Naju, and Holli even made me confirm with the bus driver that yes, we were in Naju, and so we got off. Then, assuming that Holli had had some kind of plan I asked her where we were off to. The response, was great, she said something along the lines of a "A fortress, but I don't know where it is". Luckily I was just happy to be active and out of my apartment so we literally skipped along the side of a river singing "We're going on a dayyyyy trip" hoping to find something/someone that could make this trip at least a little bit interesting. I did however find a duck and some cool stairs and a weird plaque thing along this river. Observe:

So maybe like 6 minutes into our skipping along the river singing "I'm on a day triiiiip" we seriously ran into the fortress she had researched! We also found the longest word ever invented in the explanation.

In summary, the rest of our trip involved aimlessly walking around and somehow running into a bunch of other awesome places, a cultural center, and a TERRIBLE restaurant where we ate Spam and Hot Dog Ramen and then immediately puked (Holli) and shat (Molly). Speaking of which, Fliss had informed us that we are now called Holy Moly which makes sense because with her British accent it pretty much sounds like that. So here's a glimpse of the other lovely sights we saw along our many hour walk through Naju:

That above was actually a well, but I kinda like the picture it ended up being.

This below is the ceiling of those crazy fortress things we saw.

Okay, as usual I get lazy at the end of my posts, so I will put a few videos up of the Fortress and some other random place we went. I apologize ahead of time for my terrible skills in video taking. I take after my father, who is well known for a shaky fast moving video. I will try to practice going slow! Also, I went back to the Ethnic Cafe because its awesome and took a video of the entrance. I love that place and I love their fruit Soju. Other than that, teaching is awesome. I have 10 kids in my class. I work with 5 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon. The morning kids barely speak English so we just play and the afternoon kids just kinda giggle at me while I butcher Korean words. So far it's a pretty sweet gig. And, just to make clear, Naju was lovely, just not what I expected. I'm glad I'm in Gwangju because seriously seconds after I got off the bus a little Korean man pointed directly at my face in awe. I don't blame him though, I am a 5'10'' woman wearing a bright green jacket and dalmation print gloves. Okay, bed time. Here's the videos!

Fortress:

Random Place:

The Ethnic Cafe: