Crash course in Gwangju

I made it to Gwangju on Tuesday, after only a grueling straight 30 hours of travel!

I managed to bring only a single suitcase and a backpack for the year, partly to live life minimally and make it easier to haul all my stuff around as a petite person. Actually, scratch that first reason-- I'm living in a wonderland of shiny, cute things that steal all my won. Damn you, Etude House. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Take my won!!

R. drove me to JFK at 3:30am, after I spent all night desperately pulling things out of my suitcase to get it down to the magic 49 pounds. I slept right through the flight to San Francisco, even though the seats were made out of an interesting high-tech concrete material, spent the next 12 hours studying Hangul flashcards and not getting the proper immigration forms because they assumed I was Korean (surprise!) and finally got to Incheon, where I sprinted onto the next bus to Gwangju as it was leaving the station. My first taste of Korea's "bali bali" (faster faster!) culture.

The remains of the welcome snacks pyramid.

Dani met me at the Gwangju bus terminal. I think we slo-mo hugged, but that might have been my brain melting. She brought me back to her apartment and showed me the epic Korean ramyun and snacks pyramid she built to welcome me. I'll be staying with her for a few days before my work orientation begins, so she was thoughtful to provide some back-up food in case I wasn't up to figuring out how to navigate the restaurants here yet. We caught up a bit and she took me to a pajeon restaurant, where I ate the most delicious fried pancake of my life.

There is a channel devoted to live gaming. Oh Korea!

The view from Dani's apartment

The tour went just like this scene.

The next morning, I magically woke up completely alert at 7am. Is this what it feels like to be a morning person? Dani came back from work early and we ended up walking all around her neighborhood and Shinae, the downtown area, for hours. Dani fed me a steady stream of fascinating details on life in Korea and how not to get completely lost and screwed over when I inevitably have to navigate the streets on my own. 

Picture highlights from the day!

Steamed mandu (dumplings)!

Public exercise machines, mostly used by older folks.

A lone Buddhist temple in a sea of neon crosses in Sangmu.

Overlooking Gwangju from the top of a Buddhist pavilion.

A subway station in Gwangju. So spacious and clean! Just like New York! Har har.

A magnetic token ticket. You tap it at the turnstile to enter and drop it into a slot when you exit.

Loud blaring melody to announce when the train arrives. The inside was squeaky clean and enormous. All stops were announced in 4 languages. New York, take note!

Hot ginseng drink that reminds me of my mom's herbal soups, aka homesickness in a bottle.

Why not? FASHION BUSINESS!

Street cart with assorted dried... everything. A vat of boiled silkworms in the top left.

G-Dragon! Can you introduce me to TOP?

Even the kids here are better dressed than me.

GALBI! NONOMONOMONOM.

Bibimbop! So delicious, it burns!

Riding on a bus in Gwangju. I managed an action shot, aren't you proud of me?

Since we shamelessly bought bags of beauty products from the legions of cosmetics stores downtown, we had some girly bonding time at night over nail polish and paper face masks. Mine was an "anti-trouble" mask, which is the face-saving term for pimples. Face-saving, get it? Wooo, East Asian Studies jokes...

Batman's "anti-trouble" mask

Next up on the blog, a discussion of "culture complex" and the story of how a pair of chopsticks blew my mind.