Weekend excursion~ (long post)

So, this past weekend we took a three-day excursion through the countryside of South Korea.
We left Friday morning, and headed for Jeonju.

That's a snack I bought at a rest stop along the way. It's fried dough balls and chicken (covered in a sweet sauce) on a stick. The rest stops in Korea are crazy, they have several food vendors, a convenience store or two, ice cream, and tons of people all the time!

Here's a pic of a stadium we passed just heading into Jeonju. Apparently it's one of many World Cup stadiums built in Korea that, sadly, doesn't get much use any more :\

Here's the restaurant we ate lunch at in Jeonju. It served us some excellent bibimbap (below). It's one of the dishes that the region specializes in~

After lunch, we went to visit a traditional-style hanok village in Jeonju. It was full of traditional and original Korean homes and buildings. When we first arrived we went to learn about traditional Korean mask dances. I didn't get any pictures, but it was so much fun. We learned a dance then some students could volunteer to dance for the whole group wearing traditional garb and masks. I was not brave enough to volunteer for such a thing, but I had fun learning the dance and watching the others perform X)

Here are some random pics from our rainy tour around the hanok village:

At the village, we did kinda stumble upon a set for a Korean drama, which I will post about separately once I'm done here~

For the night, we stayed in a traditional inn in Jeonju. I had one room-mate for the night. It was so cozy and cute and lovely! Here's what the place looked like :)

That evening, we visited a local historical spot with some original and re-made shrines and buildings. We also walked through an old Christian Catholic church. Afterwards, we were let loose. I went with some girls to a local restaurant which only served one dish, a spicy bean sprout soup, which the region also specializes with.

As we walked there, a crazy man spoke broken English to one of the girls. He kept asking "USA?" and eventually tried to grab her. She kinda just ignored him, then he ran after our group and grabbed our leader (adult, a Korean) and she said something to him to get him to go away :l it was intense, haha.

 That's what we ate. We were told to eat the egg (and egg mixed with mashed up seaweed) first to help with the taste. The soup was spicy x___x

Roof dog we saw on the way back...it just stared at us, no matter how much we sweet-talked him.

We had free time to kill after supper. A few of us just wandered around the town in the traditional part, not far from our inn. It was such a cute town! I wanna go back T_____T

These little stone balls were all over. They just looked like...stone balls in the daytime, but once it got dark, they all lit up, up and down the streets. So cool.

After dark, we got some rice wine and snacks, and watched drama re-runs in one of the bigger inn rooms. Boys over Flowers was playing that night XD

The moju was very cinnamon-tasting.

The next morning, the inn served us a typical Korean breakfast. It was pretty much a bunch of side-dishes. Four of us split the food at the table. Fish was the main part. Everything was delicious, of course.

The view from my breakfast seat. Another rainy day, but it was still gorgeous~

We headed to Namwon, the city of love.

We headed to a tofu restaurant for lunch.

I'm not much of a tofu-person, the texture freaks me out, but lunch was pleasantly yummy anyway.

We were supposed to hike after lunch, but the weather ruined our plans. So we toured a museum instead, checked into our (Western-style) hotel, and then went to a Buddhist temple.

We had a nice view from our room, btw~

It was another night of sleeping on the floor, but I really don't mind. In fact, I love sleeping on the floor. Granted, both nights I was uncomfortable and didn't sleep well, but that was NOT just because I had to sleep on the floor >___>

I had to include this photo because the baby is so damn cute X3

Okay, so this was the first of two temples that we visited during the excursion. Both had a little station like this, with lots of blank tiles. The tiles (for 10,000 won) you can write any message or prayer on them and then they will be used the next time the temple builds a building. At the second temple we went to the next day, Andrea and I shared a tile and each wrote something (but I didn't get a picture of it x__x). She wished for peace, I believe. I asked for happiness. It's such a neat idea.

The views on the mountain are amazing.

People can make little rock piles on their climb up. It's cute.

We ate supper at the temple. We were told to not talk at all once we entered the cafeteria. Also, we were instructed to eat everything we put on our trays; there was no option of wasting food. 

So I didn't get much. And I (unsuccessfully) tried to avoid spicy foods.

And afterwards, we had to take our own trays outside and wash them ourselves in the sinks.

I'm not Buddhist, but it was still really neat to observe the monks praying.

We snacked again once we returned to the hotel. I got butter cookies (too crumbly for my liking) and chocolate with banana-flavoured chocolate on top.

The hotel was awesome. There was a convenience store in the basement, full of snacks, food to cook, drinks, and other non-food items. There was also a norae bang/karaoke rooms which seemed to be quite popular. On the main level there was a coffee shop, banquet hall, restaurant, vending machines, bar, spa/sauna, and I'm sure a bunch of other things we never saw.

Morning:

They served Western-style food and Asian-style food for breakfast. 

HOWEVER, the coffee was soooooooooo amazing. It already had a hazelnut flavour to it, and the milk there was so sweet. HEAVENLY.

After breakfast, we left Namwon and went to a tea center. 

They taught us tea manners and etiquette. Tea is really not my thing, unless it has milk and a ton of sugar....which our tea there lacked.

 When we were done, we went downstairs and helped roast some tea leaves. It was so hot! I don't know how they can be there all day long working with that stuff! We had to put on two pairs of gloves for each hand, and arm coverings so we didn't burn ourselves.

Oh yeah. And this pony-tailed man. I fell in love with him *.*

Tsk, so cute! XD

Drying our leaves..

Again, the views there were amazing.

The last rest stop we visited before Seoul was much the same as the first. It was laid out exactly like the other one, tons of vendors and lots of people everywhere! I got fried dough balls (again x__x) and a banana milk!

On the bus ride back we watched The King and the Clown. I love that movie. The guy in it is so gorgeous ;___; and the story itself is so beautiful. I highly recommend it.