I left my apartment and walked to the Olleh KT bank by my house and got some cash for the day. (They prefer it here if you have cash for small purchases instead of just using your debit card, because no one wants to be charged that extra fee from having to scan a Visa for 1,000W.)
I then walked over to Paris Baguettes and bought a water and 2 pre-packaged (but baked fresh that morning) blueberry muffins.
Next, I hailed a cab, got in, and said "Gwangju Yok" which means Gwangju Train Station. (It's a bit weird to me that the word for 'Train Station' is one syllable, but the words for 'hello' 'repeat' and 'thanks' are all super long, five syllable words.) I feel it appropriate to note at this time that my cab driver was a woman, as that was the first female cab driver I have had in my two months in Korea.
About five minutes and 3,000W later, I arrived at the train station.
It was my third time on the train, and I was a pro. I walked up to the counter and said 'Seodaejeon' which is the train station in Daejeon that has more trains coming into it. (I'm not sure why, but almost all of the trains come into this station, at least from Gwangju. Maybe because Daejeon is a central city in South Korea, the other train station is for trains to and from the northern South Korean cities? I'm not sure.) I got the slow train this time, which is only a half hour longer than the KTX (the high-speed rail, which is NOT high speed from Gwangju to Daejeon yet) and boarded the train, which was again waiting there as it was the train's home terminal location.
I took a few pictures on the train this time, as it was daylight and I could see out of the windows.
You can see the mountains and rice fields in the photo. It was overcast and rainy that day, but it was still beautiful. I am quite fascinated by the mountains as they are still quite new to me. I have a very interesting photo to show you in an upcoming post, and the mountains appear blue. I thought this was only for art class watercolors, but it appears that green mountains can appear blue in real life, too.
I arrived in Daejeon around 12:30pm and waited at the station for Maggie's train to get there. She came in about 1pm and we walked over and took the subway to the area of the Snow Flower Festival. Amy joined us on the subway about half way to our destination.
When we got to our destination stop, we waited inside for Bomi, Maggie's Korean co-teacher (whose sister lives in Daejeon), and Emily and Steven and two of their friends who were also going to the festival.
Once we were all together, we headed off.
About five minutes later, we made it to the festival area. It was very interesting, and even though it was raining, we had a great time.
At first, we just looked around and walked past a few stalls on the outskirts of the fair. One stall was selling fresh pineapple for one chun (1,000W = about a dollar) and we all got one. It was extremely delicious - very sweet and juicy. Another stall was giving away free kim, which is just the dried seaweed that you make kimbop from (basically a really dry sushi). We all got our own little package. I don't like it, but it's cool to have as a souvenir.
We walked a little farther and came upon more stalls, many having to do with arts and crafts. In one stall, you could make your own beaded bracelet from beads that change color with heat, almost like mood rigs, but beads and pastel colors. Another stall sold oriental fans that you could paint. And there were many, many booths of artists who would draw a caricature or nice portrait of you. They were very beautiful and only about 30-40,000 won. I really like them and wanted one, but I didn't want to hold up the group while I posed for 20 minutes for a cool drawing of myself. Maybe another time. I think next time there is a festival in Gwangju, I am going to take myself there and check out all the different artsy things to do because I really like that stuff and don't have any art supplies in my apartment yet to create anything at home. Maybe I'll get myself something like that for my birthday next month. We'll see.
We kept checking out the various stalls and came to this cool gazebo where there was a team of bee bop dancers breaking it down for the audience. Their moves were awesome and I got some short video, but it didn't turn out because it was too shaky, having held my little pink point and shoot Canon camera above the crowd to try and get some video.
Later on, we happened upon some food stalls and everything smelled delicious. I got a burrito-type thing with glazed, roasted Turkish chicken, made by a couple of guys from Turkey! It had lettuce and some other vegetables in it, and it was very tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo because I was too busy eating and holding my umbrella while trying to stay dry in the rain. While eating, we walked by some other food stalls full of tanks holding all kinds of fish and sea creatures, and even by some stalls with dead sea creatures just laying out on tin foil for you to choose what you wanted and have it cooked for you. That was pretty cool, even though some of the things looked pretty disgusting and I couldn't figure out what they were.
After that, we found another bee-bop competition under a large tent and went over to watch for a while. I snapped some photos of that, too. Check them out!
At one point, we came across this awesome foot spa.
It is a naturally occurring hot spring, and apparently they are all around Daejeon. They have been preserved and made to look welcoming and appealing so people will come and enjoy the hot water on their feet and stay a while. We were all wearing shoes that took too much effort to take off and put back on in the rain, so I'll have to try it again next time. But it looked so cool. And it was so hot that people were emerging with bright red legs after having only been in for a few minutes.
On the other side of the hot spring was a beautiful tree and flower lined sidewalk that we all dubbed the 'Enchanting Sidewalk' because it made all of us look even more beautiful in the pictures we took there.
After we left the festival, Bomi, Maggie, Amy and I walked to get some dinner in another part of Daejeon. We wanted some makgeolli (rice wine) so we went to this restaurant where we ordered strawberry makgeolli and kimchi pancake. We also got this greenbean-esque pancake, and as a main dish, we ordered some ham that turned out to be just like honey glazed ham at home. It was very delicious, and we might just go there for Christmas dinner to have something just like home!
During dinner, we kept noticing this cool looking bar across the street, and also on the second floor, just like our restaurant. It seemed to have a boat in it, so after dinner, we decided to go over there and check it out. It DID have a boat in it! Right in the middle! It was so cool, so we had to sit in the boat. We got a few drinks and some bar-type food, and had a good time there before going to a noreabang for a little while to sing our hearts out to some awesome American music.
After the noreabang, it was time to head back to the train station so I could catch the last train back to Gwangju at 12:05am. I had a great day. :)
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