Jeollanamdo Day 2

We woke up bright and early. First activity, breakfast. We had bagels! YUM.

gotta have enough cream cheese for like 50 people

Hyori was our mascot for the trip. She was so well
behaved!

our hanok

Then we had time to explore the folk village.

fresh, organic raspberries

They had some Korean games out

arguing about how aerodynamic the
sticks are

Ga Hyeon got one!

goofing around

raspberry models

On the fortress walls

'Next, we headed out to the Boseong green tea fields

excited to see fresh water

The restaurant had a green tea menu!

Green Tea Jajangmyeon

Green Tea Donkasu (pork cutlet). It tasted like a regular
one with some matcha powder on it 

Happy to spend lots of time with this lovely lady

For our next experience, we headed to a green tea plantation to take part in a green tea making experience. First, we had to pick the green tea.

"I moved all the way to Korea to do manual
labor!"

This is what you look for when you're picking
green tea. Two leaves and a stem

Group shot after we picked a bunch of tea

Lauren's too cool for green tea. Just kidding,
she forgot her glasses on the bus and
her sunglasses are perscription

ready to not get burned drying green tea

That bowl is like 300 degrees C

you have to turn it, pat it and turn it again quickly so it
doesn't burn

pat pat pat

An ahjumma showing us how to dry the
tea

Apparently they do this process like 8 times to make the tea suuuuuper refined. SO MUCH WORK!

We all fell in love with the animals on the plantation.

Then we got to drink some classy tea! This is the good stuff. 

He explained how to drink the tea. There's a
special process

After a great, informative experience (seriously, I will appreciate all of my green tea so much more now!) we headed to a BAMBOO FOREST!!! I've never touched actual, natural growing bamboo before!!

it's a banda pandas!

sultry

it's so smooth!!

Trying to make a heart

success! They're so cute

China strictly controls the world's panda supply, so Korea only has fake ones.

Next, we stopped at a tree lined road. 

Ok, that might not sound super impressive, but considering Korea's history, it's quite a feat. You all remember that Korea is an active war zone, right? The Korean War never actually ended. Pre war, Korea as a whole was very poor, and so when the war started, South Korea didn't have a ton of resources. All they have are mountains and trees. So, basically, they used most of the trees as fuel and for supplies. Consider that a good 80% of the country got decimated in the war as well, making South Korea a barren, rubble filled almost wasteland. But, with the help of many countries around the world, and thanks to a 'never give up, we can do this' attitude by a people who wanted to overcome their hardship, Korea started to rebuild. 

Around the early 70s, tree planting initiatives were started so that Korea would become green again. This resulted in this lovely, picturesque road:

we were quite the spectacle as we attempted a group jumping
picture

It was a relaxing, beautiful end to the traveling of the day. We headed to Jeonju and checked in to the hostel, and then headed out to dinner.

Jeonju is famous for bibimbap, but I have already tried it and also don't really know enough about bibimbap to judge how much better it actually is. 

We opted for Gamjatang instead. It's a
semi spicy pork bone soup

Lauren looooooves her 감자탕

We hung out with the group for a bit and then headed back to our hostel, which had pretty (tho not thick) floor mats and blankets. 

Nooooot the most restful sleep I've ever had (my body just isn't used to sleeping on hard wood floors with only a thin mat to lie on), but it was still a pretty decent night's sleep. We had a looooong but awesome second day!

Third day coming soon!

If you remember the phenomenon that was Gangnam Style, PSY is back with another interesting satire of Korean life, this time featuring Snoop Dog.

This song is essentially making fun of Korean drinking culture. It also includes cameos by G Dragon (from Big Bang, honestly if you don't know that by now, we cannot be friends) and CL from 2NE1. I think it's a crazy video, and it's mostly in English, which is odd for a Kpop song. Enjoy.