A rainy day in Jeonju

It's been months since I left Daegu and moved to Jeonju and I am really happy here. I love Jeonju, it's such a nice city and it is so much more similar to my hometown than Daegu. I don't really miss Daegu that much, I definitely don't miss the school dormitory! But I DO miss coin norebang (karaoke) around our university, I miss the subway... but mostly I miss my friends. :( But last Friday, a friend of mine from Daegu finally decided to visit me in Jeonju. :)

It was her first time in Jeonju, so I wanted to show her around a bit. Unfortunately the weather was terrible... it was pouring... I was afraid she might even cancel the whole trip because of all the rain, but she arrived anyway ^^ Actually her bus arrived 20 minutes early, so she had to wait for me at the station for a while. And when I finally arrived there, we realized we were not at the same terminal lol Luckily the two terminals are only a couple minutes walk away from each other. :)

My friend already did the research online and she had three things on the list that she wanted to see/do in Daegu: 1.See Hanok village 2.See youth mall 3.Have a bracelet made

So we took a city bus and went straight to Hanok Village. It is definitely the nicest place in Jeonju and a MUST SEE if you travel there. Even in the rain it's not too bad, but I still wish it hadn't rained, because we had to skip the palace tour because of that. It would just be no fun walking around there in the rain.

But even with all the rain, my friend seemed pretty excited - about the street food at least :D She was just walking around the streets of Hanok village and trying all the different types of food like: "wow, what's this, let's try it... oh, this looks yummy, let's try it..." lol Well thanks to her, I got to try out some new street food too. The first thing we tried was shrimp mandu (dumpling). I wonder why my boyfriend and I never noticed it before. It was DELICIOUS! In fact, it was so yummy that we actually came back later that day to eat some more :) The next thing was a kind of octopus on a stick. I am not a big fan of octopus or squid, so I decided to skip that one. I did take a bite just to try it and it really wasn't bad for an octopus, it was rather good.

Then we tried hotteok, which is usually translated as a Korean pancake, I guess. I've had it many times before, but this one was a bit different. It was larger and flatter and it tested amazing! It's also quite cheap too, only 1500won (1,5$) for the regular one with honey. If you want one with cream cheese or ice-cream it costs a bit more, between 1500 and 3000won. The place where they sell it looks nice too, there's this huge oven and you can sit and watch the guy make them and bake them for you. The only bad thing is, you have to wait a while. But it's worth it!

After that we looked for a place where they make leather bracelets with your name on it. And thanks to naver maps app and my excellent sense of orientation ;) it wasn't hard to find. It costs 10.000won (about 10$). You choose the text, color and size and the woman makes it for you. It doesn't take long. I didn't buy one, because I thought it would be better to get it together with my boyfriend and make it a couple bracelet if we decided to :) My friend chose a red one and it looked really nice. We just both agreed that she could have done the last syllable of the Korean name a bit nicer, but oh well :)

After that I was freezing cold. I know it's November already, but Jeonju has still been quite warm lately with almost 20 degrees during the day. But suddenly last Friday it got cold. And I would probably be ok if my feet weren't soaking wet. Walking around with wet feet is unbelievably uncomfortable... I was trying to have fun and not annoy my friend too much about my discomfort, but at some point I just couldn't take it anymore. So we walked to the city center, which is almost right next to Hanok village, and I bought some socks at Daiso (a cheap store all over Korea and Japan where you can get pretty much everything for 1000~5000won). Then we took a rest at Ann's house (the cafe that I'd written about before). But since I was wearing stockings, changing the socks wouldn't have helped much - stupid me. So we stopped at the shopping mall nearby where I bought some leggings and finally got rid of the wet stockings in the bathroom. Man, I felt so much better after that.

 

With the new energy I was able to walk to the market :) It wasn't that far away. In the market, my friend wanted to find this Youth mall she heard about from a friend or read about on the internet. It is quite small, so it is a bit hard to find, but we managed. It's a small place on a second floor with several different shops and restaurants. There was a shop with postcards (a thing that is sometimes really hard to find in Korea...) and there were people sitting outside writing them. But the best shop was this candy shop with candies that Koreans used to eat a long time ago and some I recognized too - candies that we also ate in Europe when I was a kid. And in front of the store there was an old video game that we just had to try. It was Bubble Bobble. I can't believe I even remember the name. We used to play this game on PC a long long time ago :)

We skipped lunch 'cause we were kind of full from all the street food we ate. So we just walked back to Hanok village to buy some ChocoPie - a snack you just HAVE to buy in Jeonju, it's really famous. And then we took a bus to our place here in Jeonju. Finally we were able to warm up a bit while we waited for my boyfriend to get back from work. Then we all went to eat dinner. My friend wanted to try this yummy food she saw on tv and my boyfriend knew about it, so he took us there. And omg, it was amazing. It was hot pot rice and my friend chose the mushroom version while my boyfriend and I went for the beef :) We all agreed it was delicious, but I was the first one to finish and I think the only one that actually ate EVERYTHING. :) I definitely want to eat that again sometime.

And after dinner we went to norebang for two hours. It was really fun. My friend and I used to go to norebang together all the time in Daegu. Then we went home to watch superstarK - a music competition that my boyfriend and I watch every Friday. We also wanted to play a board game together, but we were all too tired - my boyfriend from working all day, my friend from having to wake up at 5am that day and me from walking around with cold and wet feet.

It would have been so much better in sunny weather. I wanted her to see the zoo and this beautiful park near the university, but it has to be good weather for that. Well, at least she has a reason to visit again soon :) It was a great day for me anyway, despite the weather and all, and I hope my friend made some nice memories too. ^^