The Last Type 40 in the Universe: October 2011

Hello again everyone! I have recently celebrated my two month mark of living in Korea. Even though it's only two months, things have become "normal" pretty quickly, all things considered. Some days my puppy and my family seem like a lifetime ago!

But it's hard not to miss a face like that!

Okay, okay...maybe it's a face only a mother can love!

The kids are still the same at my job, my morning classes make me want to bash my head against the wall, while the evening classes with the older kids make me slightly less suicidal. I can do the paperwork more quickly now so it's much easier to just leave work at the door and come home and relax.

As I may have mentioned before, Korea opens late and closes early, so there isn't much you can do around town at 8:30 at night, so I usually just come home and ruin the lives of my Sims or watch movies and TV. Which means by the weekend I'm pretty anxious to do something, but I have yet to go somewhere since Jinju!

The weekend after Jinju I just wasn't in the mood to travel. The next weekend it rained. This past weekend I got slapped with my second sinus infection in as many months and it rained! And this coming weekend is forecasting rain again! Of course there's nothing that outright prohibits travel during rain but it's certainly not as fun to be carrying around an umbrella all day and trying to take pictures, and even then your pictures don't come out well anyway.

We'll just have to see where the weekend takes me!

Hello again!

This weekend was our last vacation day before the Lunar New Year, and so for my first solo trip in Korea I decided to go someplace a little further away. I decided on Jinju, which is in South Gyeongsang province. My goal before I leave is to visit a city in every province in Korea!

Jinju's location in Korea:
View Larger Map

As you can tell from the map, there's very little in between Jeonju and Jinju. It was a three and a half hour bus ride, and while the scenery was beautiful (mountains! everywhere!), the places we stopped were old towns where the "terminal" was little more than a stop at a gas station or even the side of the road. It reminded me of Jefferson Lines back home that way.

Anyway, I arrived in Jinju on Saturday for the first day of the festival. I was very hungry at this point so the first order of business was to eat food! The festival was just setting up as far as food goes, but it wasn't too long before I found someone was open. I have absolutely no idea what this is, but it was delicious!

I continued a lazy journey along the Nam River, where the lanterns were already set up and came to the Jinju Fortress. Admission was free because of the festival. I walked along the whole thing, and it was massive! I didn't expect it to be that big but I spent a good four hours just walking around and exploring the lanterns and the beautiful park inside. The weather was gorgeous. It started out as a cloudy day but the sun came out and it was about 65 degrees!

Oops, looks like I cut off part of the main entrance.

Defenders of Jinju!

The pavilion inside the fortress.

A view of the city.

The west entrance to the fortress.

The festival commemorates a siege of Jinju in 1592/93. It honors the 70,000 who died in the siege. And, of course, the lanterns are beautiful especially at night on the river. A camera just doesn't quite capture it!

After wandering the fortress for most of the afternoon, I decided to find a place to stay the night before the evening festivities began. As I feared most of the places were sold out. I ended up finding a love motel--and yes it's exactly what you think it is--that was way overpriced. It was probably because the owner knew she was one of the last people with rooms and hey, I was white so I can afford the extra 15,000 won (/rant). But her business strategy was sound, because I was desperate after going to five or six places already. Room key in hand, I went out again for the evening ceremony.

Everything looked amazing lit up at night! This was my first time taking pictures at night with my new camera, and I still have to play around with the settings, but they turned out fairly well.
Here are some of my favorite lanterns, during the day and night.