The Blogging Buddha: Photos from Jeonju, South Korea

Last Tuesday I flew to the mainland to visit my friend Sara. Sara was my roommate at orientation, and I've been meaning to visit her all year. She lives in Jeonju, South Korea, which is a little further out of the way (about 4 hours by bus, southwest of Seoul). Last week we had a holiday on Wednesday (Memorial Day) and I didn't have classes on Thursday or Friday due to a retreat for my 2nd grade students, so I took the 40 minute flight to Gunsan (a single gate airport) on Tuesday night. We met some of her co-teachers for beer at a bar and later ended up eating honey crepes and drinking sangria. Jeonju is known mostly for its food, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. I ate some of the best food that I've had in Korea, including the following: Bee bim bap (a famous rice dish with vegetables, egg, and a spicy red bean sauce), spicy bean sprout soup, a vegetarian buffet, Japanese soba noodles in a soy sauce with onions, and Takalbi (spicy chicken cooked on a skillet at your table). It was a great week; I visited Sara's school, met her hometsay family (including her hilarious homestay grandmother), saw the traditional sights in Jeonju and met up with two of our other friends, Rohit and Kiehl (they lived in the room next door to us at orientation). It was a great little reunion and a good chance to see each other one last time before this year barrels to a close.

Rohit and Kiehl playing the traditional game that closely resembles horseshoes. We practically had to wrestle with small children to get a turn playing these "traditional games."

There was a field of lotus which will blossom in about a month and really look incredible.

Rohit will head to Penn to get his MBA next year; he recently started a blog to help inform his peers about being fiscally responsible in their daily lives.

Sara and Kiehl, taking a rest, enjoying the shade.

Before Rohit and Kiehl arrived on Saturday, Sara and I did some sight-seeing on our own...

We went to the calligraphy museum, and I accidentally went down to the basement (thinking that there was more to be discovered). I stumbled upon these nice older women who immediately told me to sit down and have some watermelon, green tea, and rice cake. You don't argue with a Korean woman when she tells you to sit down and eat, so I did. It turned out that they were there for a calligraphy class. Sara and I conversed with them in our limited Korean and snapped this photo before saying goodbye.

This is a picture of the incredible vegetarian buffet. Everything was made from vegetables, including the "ham."

Sara's homestay family lent us one of their cars (it's very unusual for a Korean family to have more than one car, but her family is not exactly typical.) We enjoyed a day of freedom, driving around town and outside of the city to see a temple.

We visited Maisan temple, which was created by a single monk and consists of rocks stacked on top of one another. They have held up against wind, snow and rain, sort of a miracle.