I am in this weird space where I can go the entire weekend without speaking to a single person, yet I am always surrounded by people. You would think that I would be lonely and crave human contact but its actually the exact opposite. I crave some time where I am not surrounded by a single other person, what I crave is solitude. I also crave fresh air in the country. When I was a freshman in high school my family drove to Washington D.C. and my dad kept getting more and more anxious as first the trees were taken from him, then the corn fields, and finally the semis hauling the corn leaving nothing but city and highways. We made fun of him the entire time, who wouldn't love visiting and living in Boston or D.C.? I finally understand what he was feeling. On Saturday I walked for two hours in one direction along the river and was still surrounded by huge apartment complexes. But finally on Sunday not only did I brave the buses and metro by myself for the first time I finally found some solitude and nature.
This week I visited the Korean Folk Village which is located in Suwon. I told my coworkers I would go on Saturday but chickened out. I then talked to my parents on Sunday and told them that I would be going, which meant that I actually had to do it. The first step was taking a bus from my apartment to the nearest train station of Jukjeon and that is where all of my fears came true. I got on the wrong bus, 15 not 15-1(crazy I know), and I actually ended up two train stations further away from my destination. Luckily I pushed on, made it to the correct train station (Sangaal) then onto the correct bus (37), and even got off at the correct stop(the last stop on the bus is actually the village) bringing me right to the gate of the village.
I arrived around 10:00 which was an ok time to arrive, arriving even earlier would have been better(the village opens at 8:00). I stayed until around 3:00 and by that time there were hoards of families and groups. The village is actually quite large and is made up of different houses, trade shops, and other compounds from different periods through history. There are also different performances of a traditional wedding, trick horseback riding, and tightrope walking.
People appeared to be writing something on scraps of paper and tying them to this pile of rocks.
As you will see throughout this post when I am left without anyone to make comments to about what I am seeing I just take pictures of it and actually write it out here.
First example of weird things I take pictures of. This was in a display of farming tools apparently they got tired of labeling things.
I have never heard of an ashery, anyone else?
When I am walking around the city I take photos with my phone, today I decided to bring out my fancy camera. It is a huge clunky thing but actually takes really nice photos.
Most buildings did not stand alone. A private home would have been surrounded by a wall like this one. The home would consist of a big building and some outbuildings.
These huge pots were everywhere. I am assuming they are used to ferment beans to make bean paste and to make kimchi.
It doesn't matter what country or continent you are on. Models in museums are always creepy.
Here is one of those performances that I was talking about. This one included guys hitting plastic flowers out of a girls hand with whips and guys riding horses with swords and performing fancy acrobatic moves.
I have absolutely no idea what this guy was doing.
This compound was supposed to be a local governor's office including fancy hats for soldiers and torture tools in the courtyard.
And there was a jail which made me a little bit happy.
Oh my god these jail mannequins kill me.
And then I was blissfully alone... for about 10 minutes. It was an amazing 10 minutes.
I sat on a bench off of this trail for those 10 minutes. The sound of people was drowned out by the sound of cicadas, there was a nice breeze, and I was finally able to breathe freely.
Then people came and I was back to taking pictures of random things. Why in the world would you need a foot cleaning place?
It was then time to attend a traditional wedding. In Korea it is a tradition for the parents to give the couple carved ducks.
I don't speak Korean and have no idea what they were saying, but I am pretty sure this guys whole job was to fluff the grooms coat.
Careful this place is very slidy! Just in case you slide into the tiny pond there is a flotation device ready to save you.
When I originally took this picture the caption was going to be: this bridge is terrifying, no way am I going to ever walk across it. But because I have stupidly taken on this new motto of doing one thing every day that scares me, I crossed the bridge. There was a group of Korean teenagers in front of me and the took selfies the entire time going across the bridge. I glimpsed my face in one of the pictures, it was not pretty.
I then ate lunch and was pretty proud of myself for figuring out the complicated lunch system and ordering but then the lady asked me if I wanted a fork. After lunch I gave up on the nice camera and just used my phone.
I absoultely hate people in costumes so these weird animals were doubly creepy.
One of the items on the menu for lunch was acorn jelly. I was not brave enough to try it. Just in case you would ever feel the need here is an easy 5 step recipe to make your own.
In my home town there is a museum similar to this. While I was walking around I kept thinking that a lot of the displays could have been found in either place. It doesnt matter that I am halfway around the world people still are basically the same.
One of the beautiful things of not speaking or reading Korean is that you dont know that the signs saying do not enter say do not enter. So you can walk right around them and find places like this to hide. Then when you get yelled at you say you didnt know. It is actually a great system.
These dogs are Jindos. The Jindo breed is native to an island off the East Coast of Korea and are loosely related to Huskies.
Throughout the village they randomly had animals like a donkey and these two pigs.
I loved seeing all the flowers. Again I always took the greenery around me for granted from my mom's flowers in our yard to the gardens around the University in Wisconsin.
This house was a traditonal house built on Jeju Island. Jeju is an island off the southern coast of Korea. The tourism slogan for Jeju is the Korean Hawaii. It is so weird to think of Korea having a tropical island right off the coast.
Apparently if you fall asleep on New Years you will have white eyebrows, what?!
I love these historical villages and have been to similar things in the US, Sweden, and now in Korea. As I said before I am always blown away with how similar the stuff is. These are rice taffy molds. I am pretty sure I have seen these exact molds to make candy in Sweden.
Part of the village was a museum filled with weird model villages. This one had a motarized swing, which wasnt the weirdest part. The weirdest part was the giant plastic bugs that were all over this model.
Just in case you wanted to know about conflicts over water.
In korea the houses are traditionally heated with under floor heating called Ondol. You can see in this picture where the fire would be. Then people would sleep on the floor on mats. Today this kind of system is still used, minus the fire, many of my students still sleep on the floor.
After wandering around I noticed that there were a lot of trees like this one with some sort of fruit on it. As I have yet to see an oak tree, I believe these might be the acorns that the jelly is made from.
Come on really a mannequin in a boat in the middle of the river?
So then they had a cultures of the world museum and this is where my thought just went really weird. Also I think I need to make a book of pictures of bad mannequins.
All I could think of with this is A Bug's Life. Come on you totally see it too.
All over the park there were old grandmas and grandpas selling this rice taffy. So I decided to buy some to try it. It was disgusting, but hey new experiences right?
This weekend I am hoping to go back to Suwon to walk along the fortress walls. I also booked a hotel for the following weekend. The next weekend is the Korean holiday of Chuseok, basically Thanksgiving, so I am going to go and stay in a mountain town and do some hiking.
