즐거운 추석되세요! Happy Chuseok!

Posted by Halfbloodpixie September 28, 2015

즐거운 추석되세요! Happy Chuseok!

Hi!

I've been a little busy, hence the late post. Right now it's Chuseok! Korean Thanksgiving. It's a day where people gather with their families, give thanks to their relatives and dead relatives, and eat a ton of food! Of course, my family are all the way back in England (Hello Mum, Sis!). I'm spending Chuseok with David and friends. My friend from 8 years ago is in Korea! She's studying in Seoul, but has travelled by bus to Gangneung for Chuseok. We're basically doing all the touristy things, visiting the beach...eating.

I'll start with the beginning of the week. After our day with Domino, David and I decided to go for some random food. We've been past a certain restaurant a few times while walking around our neighbourhood. It's well hidden out of the way. The restaurant was filled with people so it must have been good right?

This was the banchan we got with our meal. I love how every restaurant is different. I could totally write a blog on only banchan! The pink fuzzy thing is a rambutan. It's similar to lychees. They taste better I think!

We had duck. I'll be honest, I've had better duck! But it was a nice experience. The thing which made the meal was the banchan. We had quite a lot of duck for three people!

A table full of food! I am pulling that face because there was a little baby over on the next table. He was pretty cute.

The next night after work David and I had some more barbecue. We went to another random restaurant and it was great. The server was such a nice boy. He spoke English to us, and asked about the English Footy League and told us about the places he went to when he was 8 years old.

This is dwaeji galbi. So the meat is attached to the rib still.

Some sort of cold seaweed soup.

Various banchan. Sweetcorn, bean sprouts..etc

Another night, the night we were supposed to go to the tents, we decided to change restaurants and go to a place which sells makhang.

Makchang is the large intestine of a pig. It's very good. It has a chewy, fatty texture.

Mini odeng. It's similar to the Japanese kamaboko. It's a processed seafood stick basically.

Steamed egg. I used to love this when I was a kid!

A soup, full of radish.

Another night we went for dak galbi. So veggies and chicken.

It look amazing! And the smells coming from the tables near us was awesome.

It's a mixture of chicken, rice cake, cabbage, potato and cheese. Delicious.

At the end, we added rice to make bokkeumbap.

Okay, so now onto Chuseok! David and i get the weekend off, plus the Monday and the Tuesday! On our last day, the Avalon staff played a game. I honestly had no idea what was happening. There were different teams. The drivers, Korean teachers, receptionists, Our boss and the foreigners...apparently we won. I don't know what we won hahaha! But it was fun.

There was a piece of paper, with a maze on it. There were four different things you could win/lose. Someone from your group chooses a route to follow.

This was my Chuseok present from Avalon! Shampoo and shower gel! David got a Tefl pot! Big enough to make soup. Yummy!

Okay, so my friend came on the Friday night. On the Friday night we went out. Our version of out is sitting at a 7/11 convenience store chatting and drinking makgeolli. I don't drink but still enjoy it. However, the night did end pretty bad. I've never witnessed anyone act a certain way (David wants to make it clear, I am not talking about him! :])

The next day we went exploring Gangneung. David was super hungover though. We walked slowly to the beach. Spent a good time there. We didn't do much. Drank some iced tea, watched the world go by.

The beaches here are beautiful. I decided to take a selfie using the selfie mode my camera has :]! Want a hug?

Along the beach you see many little stores with people drying squid. Dried squid is so common over here. I've not tried one yet but, I am sure I will at some point.

There were some pretty wildlife along the way too. This squirrel was so fat! The ones we have seen previously have been skinny wee things, but this one must have eaten too many acorns.

Korea has many bugs and insects. Along every tree, lampost, corner, window...there are spiders. The most common here are Nephila clavata. Common name: Joro spider in Japan but called Shaman spider (mudang) in Korea. Their webs are very strong! If it's big enough, it can catch small birds, dragonflies! I hate spiders, but these are actually quite fascinating. They build a part of their web every day. They can make it bigger if there is no damage, or focus their time on rebuilding any damaged areas.

We took my friend to her first Korean BBQ. We could have chosen a better spot. We went to one of the newer restaurants near our apartment.

Again we had the dwae galbi. I think it's a favourite of ours.

There was only one pork rib, which was strange.

Various banchan from this restaurant! Self serve, so you can get more without asking the waiter if you wanted.

On Chuseok! The Sunday, we took a taxi ride to Unification Park (Tongil) in Aninjin-ri, Gangneung. It was a spontaneous visit. We weren't going to go as we weren't sure about taxis but we risked it and went. I'm so glad we did!!! It's 3000won per person to go and it's pretty worth it.

The park consisted of a HUGE war ship.We spent a good hour and a half exploring this ship. It was an amazing day out.

There was also a submarine. The submarine was pretty neat. This is the actual submarine that the North Koreans used to spy on the South Koreans. It crashed into the coast of Gangneung, right next to where this submarine is now located . There was a huge man hunt and shootings as the South tried to capture the 25 N. Korean soldiers.

Unification park is there to promote the unification of N and S Korea! You can still see the hole at the bottom of the submarine!

Jack...I love you. I love you too Rose! :]!

Pretending to be a captain :]!

Inside the submarine. It was so small you needed a hard hat! I love my asian pose!

One of my favourite pictures of myself.

We spent a good three hours at the park. We had lunch from the 7/11 that was there. It was pretty relaxed. No one telling you what to do, or where to go. We didn't go up to see the airplanes because it was getting slightly chilly. We asked the man to call us a taxi and he did. It was pretty easy surprisingly. I'm so glad we went!

That night we went out for food. We wanted to walk to downtown and find something to eat along with Nash. We didn't know what we wanted. Most places were shut anyway. No one disagreed with the place I chose, or at least if they did disagree, they never said anything.

We went for a random restaurant inside the complex. It was a nakji restaurant, so only served octopus dishes. I have no idea what we ordered but it came out like this. Rice cakes, mushrooms, octopus, prawns, pork!