Pyeongchang TaLK Culture Trip

Cheongbuk POE Culture Trip
Gangwon-do Province, Korea.
July 1-2, 2013


Man I've got it rough... I got paid to take a vacation that was all inclusive. What? Yeah, that's right - I paid for nothing on this trip and got paid while doing it! I also missed Monday and Tuesday at school, my two longest days!! Awesome! (Although I was kind of happy to go back to school and see my kids after having 5 days off. - weird I know :)

All of us TaLK Scholars (the people in my program) from the Cheongbuk Province got together and went on a little vaca out to the city of Pyeongchang, which you've maybe heard of because that's where the 2018 Winter Olympics will be held!! (I plan to come back for that). 

Kimchi (김치) making.

We got the chance to make some KIMCHI! 
-- yes, the rotten, spicy cabbage stuff that I have grown to love (I'm now even a bit of a kimchi snob! I know what's good and bad.) 

Step 1. Soak the cabbage heads in salt water for a long time (12 hours ish). -- this had already been done.

Step 2. Chop up the radish (these are the big white things, Korea has massive radish that are green and white-ish on the outside) and the onions and mix them into the spicy red sauce mixture. 

Step 3. Wring out the cabbage.

Step 4. Rub the spicy red sauce (that we dumped the radish and onion into) into the cabbage, picking up and separating the leaves and rubbing it into each l!

The teacher lady did about half of ours for us. She would just push
us out of the way and do it! You'll never make an
ajumma (old woman) happy.

Step 5. Make it pretty! (Or let the lady teaching us do it, who basically did everything for us -- we must have looked super helpless, oh wait - yeah we were!) 

me, one of the big dogs at the office of education, james, zach, kim and the lady who taught us (and did ours!)

Then, lunch time!! And we got to eat our kimchi. It hadn't fermented, so it was fresh and it had a zing to it that's for sure. I usually like it when it's a little older - not so fresh, but it wasn't too bad, for our first time! 

Photo by: Sarah.

After lunch we got to make Dduk (떡) - Rice cakes. 



Step 1. Mix the rice flour powder stuff with water (but not too much water, we learned the hard way). 

Step 2. Get your hands dirty and mix it up and knead it.

Step 3. Take a small amount, roll it in a ball, then flatten it out and fill it with the sugary substance and a sweet potato if you wish.

Step 4. Get creative and make it into something as you close it up (around the goodness) and place it in the pan to be steamed.

Step 5. Steam it for 30 minutes, take it out and dip it in some oil (or have a Korean lady come do it all for you - like what we did).

Step 6. EAT IT! The green was for sure better, and I guess it's 'healthier' but everything in the country is 'healthy', so who really knows! 

Hanboks (한복) wearing.

And last but not least, to round out our Korean experience, we got to put on traditional Korean dresses called Hanboks (한복). They weren't super flattering and of course it was pretty tight, but it was a fun and neat experience to wear what little Korean ladies used to wear back in the day and still wear on their wedding days (or other special occasions!) 

{More hanbok photos and portraits on my kristen kay photography facebook page. -- be sure to click the 'like' button (at the top of the page) so you'll know when I update my blog and upload more awesome photos from my adventures in Korean!}

To the Resort.

Where we had dinner and then just hung out and chilled, catching up and doing a whole lot of nothing.

I spent a good part of the night in an Arcade with a few of my close friends... and let me just say I forgot how hilarious and funny my British friend James is. Seriously he had me dying the whole night. My throat hurt the next day from all the laughing and talking and some screaming maybe! I would also like to add that I won.. at basketball, like I really dominated that game and I won at racing and we tied 1 and 1 on air hokey! (photo by: Sarah).

Blue Canyon Water Park.

The next day we went to Blue Canyon Water Park, which was right across from the resort we stayed in! It was rainy (it's monsoon season), but what did we care, it's a water park! We literally ran, (no running says lifeguard Kristen) so we walked very quickly, all around the park like little kids.

We slide down slides, ones where you were on a tube and ones were you weren't. Funniest thing was fitting 3 grown waygook men and me in a 4 person (korean person) tube and watching the small Korean woman try to push us to get us over the little ledge. Hilarious, we thought we were going to die about half of the time down the slide. However, we figured if we made it out alive - then EVERYONE who ever goes down that slide should be just fine!

We hung out on the 'lazy river'. We were forced to put on life jackets to go on this 'lazy river'. So, we did. We put on our safety gear and headed in... which quickly turned into an eventful - not so lazy river ride. (Maybe it was good we had those life jackets). So, either the tubes are 2 times smaller in Korea, or we are 2 times bigger than we used to be because it was rather impossible to get on those stupid things and the place where we entered the 'lazy river' was basically a wave pool. Watching us all try to jump, squeeze, finagle into those things must have been hilarious for the Korean lifeguards watching us! I was dying with laughter as half of us were upside down, butts still in the tube, legs sprawled... we were just a mess. But eventually, a good 10 minutes later we were all on the proper way and then the linking, bumper cars and tipping started happening. Such children we all are....

After our brains were full of water and we were a bit cold, we headed back in for some naked time in the jimjilbong/spa area of the locker room. Don't worry it's separate (male/female). So my friend and I walk in, see everyone else still in their swimming suits, think ok - I guess we will stay clothed as well. However, when we went to get into the warm pools, someone said, oh yeah, you have to be naked to get in those. Ok, no problem, I guess we'll get naked. We stripped and got in. We were the only ones naked for a bit, but we didn't care. We sat in another warm pool that had jets, where you lay down and get a full back/body massage! It was glorious, if Korea has only taught me one thing it's that being naked in a public bath house is just awesome. So free and liberating and it fits right in with my new 'hippie' lifestyle. I also went into the sauna where I felt like I was going to die, but again, it's 'good for me'. So, I sat there for as long as I could physically stand. Leaving that was like walking into my air conditioned apartment after being at school all day with 100% humidity and NO A/C air movement of any kind :/. It's the worst! 

We headed back to Cheongju in the afternoon, where I spent the next couple of days fighting a cold (probably from having too much fun!) This trip was amazing! It was well planned and the company was great :) We were told we weren't going to go on one this semester (our province is the poorest and has no money) but I guess they found some, somewhere and I'm so thankful!

What better way to finish this post than with a pic of me and a cat... this silly guy just lovedddddd my feet. I was rather confused as to why.. butttttt maybe it's all the coconut oil (here's my hippie post about my love for coconut oil!!) -- photo by Sarah.