Sunday, October 25, 2009

Uirimji, Redux

Today we spent the morning relaxing and watching TV.  Later, we met up with the teachers at Uirimji.  We didn't meet them for lunch because we find troubling people with our vegetarianism to be actually troubling in Korea.  So, we ate Mr. Pizza (the easiest dining out option for us, since we can point to a menu).  They messed up our order a bit though and originally thought we ordered two pizzas.  Thankfully, we caught that on the bill before they managed to make the two pizzas.  When our pizza did come they had accidentally given us corn instead of potatoes.  We didn't mind, figuring as long as there's no meat we're lucky.



Pizza with "spicy chili," corn, and black olives.  Mr. Pizza is pretty stingy with the olives, however, and this slice had none.  We always ask for salt because the pizza can be pretty lifeless without it.  The spicy chilis helped quite a bit, though.


While we were trying to get a taxi (something that is always a problem for us when we're trying to be somewhere at a certain time), we saw a wedding party.



It's a bit hard to see, but there are people in the trunk of that car.  I learned from Matt (who attended a Korean wedding in Jecheon recently) that it's tradition in this city for the groom to dress in spandex and chase the bride as she sits in the open trunk of a moving car.  I imagine these people were preparing for that.  Later, at Uirimji, we saw a group of men toss a groom into the reservoir and hurl big rocks at him.  It was pretty interesting.


When we got to Uirimji, our first intention was to rent duck boats, but they were pretty busy, so we hit up the little archery range instead.





Ian found out that he rather likes archery.





Peter is a bad ass at both photography and archery.  I hear Kate's a good shot with an arrow, too.  I didn't see much of Jeff's shooting, but I know he made some hits.





I, on the other hand, am terrible at archery.  I think I'm a bit afraid of the bow.


After playing around with archery, we managed to rent a couple of boats.  They're four person paddle boats.  I've never been in a paddle boat so large.  Turns out, they're a bit more difficult to get moving.





The scenery was quite nice.  The leaves are turning on the hills.





Us enjoying the back before we switched to peddle in the front.





We had a good time of colliding with the other boat whenever possible.


After boating, we all sat around with coffee and chatted for a bit.





I got a picture of Ian on one of the little animal rides, though we didn't actually put any money in it.  He just pushed it with his feet.


While the last couple pictures aren't exactly Engrish, they are still amusing in a linguistic and cultural way.





I recently learned that Taekwondo has a world federation and it's initials (by which it is known) are WTF.  Meaning that the Korea branch is WTF Korea.





We found this among the many other caps a street vendor was selling.  I suppose it's less strange that it says American Indian (though you won't find "Caucasian" or "Mexican American" written across too many hats), but that this exists in homogeneous Korea (let alone Jecheon) boggles my mind.


We're back to school tomorrow, so it's bedtime in the old folks' home.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

2 comments:

  1. They hurl large rocks at the groom? WTH? I'd love to hear the story behind the custom, if you ever learn it. Does this mean we get to arrange a belated stoning of Ian when you both come home? Do we stone him before or after he chases you in the trunk of the car? I can't wait to see him in spandex? Oh, this makes me chuckle. :)

    Sounds like a fun day. Thanks for visiting with the grandmas via Skype. They enjoyed it.

    Love to ya both, XOXXX

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  2. It was nice getting to talk with them. And there will be no belated stoning of Ian, I'm already living here, I don't need to take part in any crazy customs that may involve death too.

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