Jeonju and Korean Culture

Hello! I'm taking a break from writing a paper right now (I promise I'll get right back to it after this!). Today is my sick day so I'm wrapped up in pyjamas and a blanket eating lots of chocolate. Loads of people seem to have come down with a cold recently, and despite drinking a huge amount of orange juice I've managed to get sick too!

A couple of weeks ago we had a trip to Jeonju, a city famous for food (bibimbap in particular), a national museum and the traditional Hanok village. The day we went was gorgeously sunny and the city was full of flowers.

Our first stop was to the National Jeonju museum, it was full of old relics from the area, including books, paintings, swords and miniature models of what the area looked like in the past.

Outside the museum

One of the books inside the museum

Such a nice day!

After the museum we found a restaurant and sampled some of the famous bibimbap (which I forgot to take a picture of!) which was delicious. With our tummies full we headed to the Hanok village and had a guided tour of the area. After the tour we got to explore the traditional houses by ourselves, there were loads and loads of storage areas. Once we found a building that was actually used as a house instead of a storage room we sat down and relaxed, soaking up the ambiance like the lazy students we are.

Pretending to be a Queen!

Jessica, Tommy and Bianca in the traditional village

Even the storage buildings look pretty!

Although it was a relatively short trip it was really enjoyable, the weather was fantastic, the food was delicious and the traditional village was really relaxing to wander around.

The week after we had a Korean culture assembly. A group of volunteers came to the university to teach us about Korean culture, we were shown how to do a big bow (and I was one of the people who went up on stage to try it out!), we were given traditional Korean snacks to eat and we were shown a few short videos about the origin of the Korean writing system, Hyundai and famous Korean artifacts.

After this we got to dress up in Hanbok (Korean traditional clothes), this was definitely the most fun part, and we took loads of photos!

Me and my roomie Eun Hee

Roomies! Soo Min, Eun Hee and me!

I want to keep this outfit!

All the pretty ITS students! (Can you spot me?)

Hopefully I'll recover soon and finish off my homework so I can focus on going on more trips around Korea! I've definitely got a few things in mind for the rest of the semester, I can't believe I've only got two months left in Korea! It's flown by!