Just wanted to write a brief update. A few friends and I decided to spend the weekend in 전주시: Jeonju (food capitol) to do some winter shopping and Thanksgiving dinner together. Let's recap a little here. Last week, I got food poisoning after eating sashimi and oysters in 강원도: Gangwon-do. It was terrible. I had to take one day off of work even though I didn't want to burden my team of co-teachers with covering my classes. Anyways, this experience sort of ruined Korean food the rest of the week for me; maybe even a little now still. Hence I was craving western food, so my friends and I took up a recommendation to eat at Mad Hungry, which was pretty decent. Later on that night, we shopped around Gaeksa, a big shopping area in Jeonju.
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| Gaeksa Shopping |
Some of us were craving coffee, and we stumbled upon Cafe Mango Six, where I tried their affogato over milk soft-served ice cream...highly recommended for sweet-toothed, coffee-loving peeps.
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| Affogato: Hot espresso over ice cream |
Two of my friends, Kelsey and Kaci, parted from us to catch their last bus home. So, that left our little trio: Job (my dongsaeng - little brother), Riza, and me. Job lives in 부안군: Buan and his last bus already left Jeonju, so we agreed to venture around and find an accommodation for the night. We attempted to book a traditional guesthouse at Hanok Village, but all rooms were booked. ***Do not wing last minute booking for guesthouse in Hanok Village - duly noted. The lady offered us the last room available, which was 100,000W. We looked at one another hesitantly, our eyes agreeing that the price was out of our range. And plus, we weren't mentally prepared to experience a full-on traditional Korean guesthouse yet. So we left Hanok Village around 11 PM, walking aimlessly, joking about how we might be homeless for the night. For some reason, this was thrilling and exciting to us, not knowing where the night was taking us. Strangely, we were also comforted by this refreshing sense of adventure and challenge to make it work. So many of our experiences in Korea were already weird and unexpected that this curveball was somewhat normal and fun. To rejoice, we started to sing and dance to Drake's Hotline Bling in the middle of the street. We were really hyper.
Our trio brainstormed possible solutions: chill at 24 hour cafe or sleep at 찜질방: jimjilbang, which is Korean spa, and these places usually have rooms to stay overnight in for as low as 10,000W. That - or stay at a love motel/hotel, which is pretty much a hook-up service where people book rooms to perform what The Weeknd always beautifully sings about. Foreigners also see this as good option for finding fast overnight abode. We consented to try the love hotel option. We taxied to 완산구: Wansan-gu and searched for a love hotel; they are usually the buildings with flashing lights or crazy themes in dark areas.
Behold...TIME (love) Hotel.
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| Mirrors everywhere.. |
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| [NOT MY PICTURE] But this is a typical love hotel room. |
Our room was pretty nice! TIME provided goody bags: Q-tips, hair ties, facial masks, toothbrushes, razors, and condoms -- that's what confirmed that this was an actual love motel. Mirrors were everywhere and the curtains had peek-a-boo cuts. Oh, dear. We stayed up watching Pinocchio (my favorite Korean drama) and pillow-talking about our learning experiences in Korea. It is so nice having genuine friends who I could be foolish around and also relate to deeply. We're all so content with our decisions to teach in Korea, even though we're currently going through some challenges. We definitely have our preferences and would manually change some teaching or living situations if we could, but we understand that God's plan for us is bigger than our expectations and He's developing character in us in ways that we would never fathom. Recognizing this, a fighter's spirit -- His courage -- is born in me and fuels me to keep going, pushing, hustling. Character is truly gold -- it is "...the poverty that brings true wealth." {Henry David Thoreau}
And His character -- that is beyond gold, invaluable, vast, all-encompassing... everything. I appreciated this moment together with my friends.
Eventually we grew sleepy, and I fluffed my pillow a little bit. TIME surprised me with some bed-sheet stains under my pillow...gross! I later found some other stains on the bath robe I used too; yuck! It was a big deal for 30 seconds and I verbally hash-tagged this experience #Korea. Moving on, now. Let's archive this moment away.
Job left us around 7:30 AM to attend church service; so that left Riza and me. For lunch, I was very adamant about getting pho in Jeonju because I excessively miss my Vietnamese food. The broth was decent, and the noodles tasted a bit off. Either way, I was satisfied with pho because it was cold outside and I had warm soup belly.
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| Pho Mien |
Ok -- this drink below was seriously amazing. After some shopping, Riza and I were tired from carrying our heavy loads around. So we encountered dal.komm cafe, and decided to try it because of the cool decor. After perusing the menu, the Honey Cube drink looked the most interesting to me. Honey ice cubes in fresh milk. I customized my drink by asking for coffee in it as well and the result was heavenly. Think honey-shaved iced topped on fresh milk with a shot of espresso in it. I will definitely be frequenting this place for this beverage again!
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| Iced Honey Cube Coffee |
//m
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