Speaking of summer dresses, after the wedding Adri and I walked around Hwangsung park in some of our summer dresses because it was over 20 degrees out! The Koreans were all still dressed in winter attire. This includes sneakers, hiking pants, and jackets. Many women also protected themselves from the evil sunlight by wearing face/neck masks and giant visors. Adri and I stood out more than usual as we seemed dressed for completely different seasons. I was sweating, so I really don't know how they were dealing with their outfits.
Anyways, as we walked by two middle aged women we noticed them staring. As we are now used to this, we didn't think much of it. However, they soon picked up the courage to come talk to us. Sadly, their English was limited to "hi." They were happily chatting away in Korean though, and pointed to my bare shoulders and seemed to be miming something along the lines of "you should protect your skin." I mimed that I was hot, and then pointed to the sun and stroked my arm saying "It's ok, I want a tan!" they sort of understood because they laughed and no longer were concerned. They continued chatting to us despite our attempts to show that we had no idea what they were saying. They were not deterred. They kept chatting and then start making motions of a woman's figure. While we thought they were telling us we had nice figures, we couldn't express that we sort of understood. So, in order to really get their point across, one suddenly grabbed onto my butt and gave it a nice squeeze while complimenting it. By this point we were laughing so hard we could barely muster a "thank you" before leaving.
I continued to enjoy the hot weather by later heading downtown to the tombs. It was really beautiful, and I got in for free due to being a Gyeongju resident! Hurray! These are tombs of Shilla Royalty. We even got to go "inside" one where we could see replicas of the actual tomb, and some artifacts from tombs. It was neat.
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Today was not quite as hot, but just as beautiful. There is a "5 day market" in my neighbourhood that is open every 5 days. Because this is a super random time to be open, along with a sunset closing time and the horrible coldness of winter, it's been a very long time since I have gone. Because today happened to be a Sunday, and warm, I finally went back. I bought a whole bunch of delicious veggies and some strawberries that smell and taste like heaven. Though not my first time, I took a whole bunch of photos to show you guys ! The best part was when we bought our strawberries, the vendor excitedly said "Welcome to Korea!!" and gave us some free tangerines.
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| Bondeggi .. silkworm larva. Ew. |
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| Dried fish, shrimp, krill, etc. |
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| Here are some local plants. I had a hard time in winter when it was only this stuff cause I have no idea how to cook with most of it. |
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| Pig feet!! |
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| Kimchi kimchi |
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| All kinds of sides. I eat this kind of food at school all the time. Sadly, I have no idea what any of it is called and will probably never eat it outside of Korea. |
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| Candy |
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| These are the best mushroom I've ever had (the brown ones). Because it's spring, tons of recognizable produce is now available again! |
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| You can smell them from so far. They taste amazing!! |
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| Dried persimmons covered in powder.. |
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| Not only are Korean children naturally adorable, they are dressed in outfits like this ALL THE TIME. |
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| This is acorn nut jelly. The first time I had it, I was convinced it was pure animal fat. Now I can't eat it, even though I know it's not! |
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| The sprouts in here were so fresh they were actually still growing! I find sprouts go rotten super fast so I never buy them, but they're a very tasty staple in Korean food. |
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| This old lady, known here as an ajuma, was shucking garlic gloves. The pile at her feet is garlic skin. It looked absolutely awful. |
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| Seaweed really is quite popular here. Pregnant and breastfeeding women eat seaweed soup a lot due to health benifits that ancient Koreans somehow figured out. On birthdays, people also eat seaweed soup as it was their "first meal" through their mothers! |
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