Julie in Korea: Weekend in Daegu and Gyeongju

As I’m sitting here in my bed (since I have no table or chairs!) I have my fan and music on in an attempt to drown out the sound of dogs barking outside my window. Back at home this noise wouldn’t bother me so much, but knowing that these are dogs barking outside of a restaurant around the corner from my apartment that will serve them for dinner sickens me. I’ve done a lot of persuasive speeches against animal testing and I know there are a lot of animals treated poorly in America as well so I’m not trying to point any fingers. I’m not closed-minded and I understand that some Koreans eat dog meat without any thought of this being inhumane. Koreans breed dogs for more than one purpose, but I only know dogs as pets so it’s not my cup of tea…at all. On a more pleasant note I enjoy hearing the roosters outside my window early in the morning and afternoon. J

Last weekend Katie and I met Debbie in Daegu on Saturday for a day of shopping. I had my first meal at Paris Baguette and it was delicious! We shared some Pot Bing Su which is a delicious dessert with shaved ice, condensed milk, beans that are sweetened, fruit, and ice cream. We then made our way out to Gyeongju for the Gyeongsan Regional Meet Up that Tom and I planned (we are the Regional Representatives). We first started out at some restaurant where we ordered two large dishes to share that they cooked right in front of us. One dish was duck and some other meats and the other dish was Samgyupsal which is pork fat. We then met up with some other people at Grazie's for their unlimited pizza and drinks for 15,000 KRW. Not a bad deal! We ended the night going to Boss Nightclub. Gyeongju has quite the night life and it's very different than the city that I live in. Gyeongju has a lot of history and even has the Shilla Millenium Park (see link below).
http://www.smpark.co.kr/eng/

A book that will teach you "Ehglish" that I saw in Daegu.

Delicious Pot Bing Su from Paris Baguette.

A few of us outside of the restaurant for our Regional dinner.

This is the duck, sausage, and meat variety dish before being cooked.

At Grazie's.

Katie and I outside of the club.

Sunday we went to the Hallyu Dream Concert, which was free since we are foreigners. There were a lot of interesting traditional stands set up outside before the concert started that we were able to check out. I got some neat pottery and Lauren and I tried on some traditional Korean clothing. The concert itself was amazing! We had great seats and despite it getting pretty cold as the night went on we were able to stay warm by dancing around. Interestingly (maybe not so much of a surprise), concert goers here are not nearly as loud as in America. Everybody stayed in their seats and if they sang along to the music it was fairly quiet. I enjoyed seeing 2PM, Super Junior, Beast, Kara, 2NE1, FT Island, T-ara, Miss A. and Secret. The concert was 4 hours long and we were very tired and cold when we went back to Sarah's for the night. We left early the next morning (Monday) and all took trains back to our cities to teach that afternoon! I showed my older students some pictures from the concert and engaged them in English conversations. They were very eager to see the pictures that I had! See below for information on the concert.

http://english.visitkoreayear.com/english/infor/infor_01_08_01.asp