Day Six

We got a late start. Meaning we woke up at around 10. This is not unusual for us, but we were planning to wake up early so we could make it out to Suwon for the folk village. The folk village is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a recreation of a Korean folk town. You feel like you're walking around on the set of one of those Korean period piece dramas. In fact, they seem to film a lot of those dramas there because they would often have signs where scenes from the more famous ones were filmed. In addition to that, you can eat good food, shop at a traditional market, see traditional weddings, do crafts, etc. It's a fun place. I think there's even an amusement park. James really wanted to go to that, but we just yelled at him.

Anyway, we got ready at whatever the opposite of lightening speed is. We had some problems with catching the correct bus to the subway station and it was around noon by the time we made to some subway station. The rest of the ride out to Suwon was relatively painless, though, and we got to Suwon at around 2. We had to wait about thirty minutes for the shuttle that took us from the Suwon station to the Folk Village. That took another thirty minutes.

We got to the folk village and got our tickets JUST in time for the farmer's dance performance. This is good as it is definitely one of the highlights of one of the whole folk village experience.










Okay, so I've got some really cool videos from the farmer's dance performance, but I'm going to post them later because they're not working for some reason. I'll post later and get them out. If you want a fun video for now, watch the video at the end of the post.

They even let us take pictures with them after the show.





There was a teeter totter near the show. Because we could not figure out how to do it at all, it brought our family a LOT of entertainment. It was fun watching Mia and Umma bicker about how to properly do it and then watch Halmony try to own everyone at it. There was some big acrobatics show going on nearby, but we only briefly watched it because we were more interested in the teeter totter. Pretty much had to drag everyone away from it.

We found some other traditional game to play with instead.



And then put on traditional clothing to beat our brother. This actually might have been the highlight of our trip so far.











I'm sure someone somewhere finds this incredibly offensive.

There was also this little area where they would make you bamboo water guns. We didn't notice this happening because Mia was too busy taking photographs of some fierce donkey she found. It's a pity, though. Bamboo water guns. You really cannot get more legit than that.

It was around this area that we met up with Atchi, his son, and Little Halmony. It's probably a good thing this didn't happen five minutes before because we probably would have embarassed Halmony with our historical reenactments.



We made our way out to the food court, where we had some really good beendedok, salad, and rice wine. The rice wine was so good.





After we ate, we hung around the little traditional market for a while and did some pseudo shopping. I got some stuff, but we mostly looked around. Umma also got one of those hair chopsticks because the lady at the market taught her how to do it. I don't think Umma's ever going to figure out how to put it up like that again.







We also saw the tail end of the traditional wedding reenactment on the way out. Following a long-standing family tradition, we crashed the wedding.



Halmony, Atchi, Mia and James decided to go through the Haunted House. I'm not a big fan of haunted houses and Frommer's suggested skipping it, so I opted out of it. Kind of chilled out until they came back out. It was nice sitting around to escape the heat anyway. After they came out, James Umma Mia and I walked up this area where I guess they film a lot of dramas. They had clothes to dress up in over there. However, the hanbok there was slightly smaller than something I could fit in, so we had a panic when I got stuck in it. That was fun. More fun, however, was dressing James up like a eunach.



After that, we walked around a little more. We watched some traditional paper making. Crossed over a bridge to look at the other side of the folk village. There, we found a scholar's house, which was actually kind of legit and contained a lot of kimchi pots. There were also dolharabams (which are big rock sculptures that symbolize Jeju island).





We crossed back over on a scary stone bridge. Stone bridges don't seem like they should be scary, but if you combine my clumsiness with a lot of slippery and wet rocks bad things can happen (that fortunately never did).

For a while, we tried out luck again at the teeter totter with Atchi. The only mature one of the group was the baby.







We made our way out of the folk village, making sure to stop at every other shop on the way out. Good times. All in all, it was a fun trip to the folk village. I'm sad that we didn't drag Gianni and Andrew here when we were here two years ago.



We all loaded into Atchi's car and drove out to the restaurant. We met up with the rest of their family there and had a very, very large meal. There was a lot of meat and this cool rice that came in a leaf. We were so full afterwards. It was so good. The duck was probably the best. It was the second time I had duck and actually the first time Umma and Mia had it. We were all very happy. It was also nice to see everyone again.





Not full enough for us to stop by for ice cream on the way back to Seoul when Atchi drove us back. I passed out because of food coma and because it was so hot. Went to sleep shortly after we got back, which was like around 10. it was a good day over all.



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Instead of our usual Daily Angst James, we're going to have our heartbreaking daily puppy picture. We miss you Brucie!