So here we are at the end of another weekend.
This'll be a quick post, I promise, but it does have some neat pictures, so you'll want to read on!
On Saturday, we went to
The Cheongju International Craft Biennal 2005 to see what all the fuss was about, and to snoop around for nifty Xmas presents. All in all, it was an amazing place, and we're going again sometime soon after we get our first paycheque (WHICH IS TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!). So many neat things to see, and so many cool things priced very very low (by North American standards).
There were two main sections that we went through. The first was the international craft trade show section thingy. This featured various countries displaying and selling various folk crafts and curios, and was thoroughly impressive. The second was slightly less impressive (only slightly) and featured craftsmen (inclusive term here, men and women represented) from all over Korea.
The first really interesting thing that we saw wasn't part of the show at all, but was a peculiar little creature we found zipping around a bunch of flowers that lined the footbridge, over the main road, leading to the festival. It was a really bizarre thing that kinda looked like a really convincing cross between a tiny hummingbird and a huge moth. Not including its straw/snout appendage thing (what are those called, anyway?), the thing was about two inches long. I hereby dub it the hummingmoth:
Either way it was very cool.
So one of the first things we see as we walk into the main plaza after buying our tickets to the festival (which only cost us 8,000 won each), was a pagoda housing an absolutely enormous bell:
The bell was rung using a huge log chained to the ceiling, which was at this particular time also chained firmly to the floor, immediately squishing any ideas of *someone's* to maybe have a go at ringing the biggest bell ever. I won't mention any names, but I'm sure you can figure out who I'm talking about. It may not be the biggest bell ever, either, but it was easily 15 feet high, which is pretty big for a bell, so quit your nitpicking.
Anyway, I'm not sure what country it was, but the first room we went to in the international display building had several incredibly detailed wood carved cabinet-type things. They were purely ornamental, as there was too much carving to allow for any actual storage space, but looked completely unassuming from the outside. When opened, they looked like this:
They also had a number of dining room sets made out of teak that looked very cool, and some other wood and ceramic crafts that were almost as impressive. Mom, we bought your Christmas present at this booth, but we're not risking shipping, so you'll have to wait until the end of January to get it.
Another room in the building contained one of the most extravagant/impressive things I've ever seen. Observe:
Yes folks, it's a queen size bed made entirely out of jade, with hand-carved head and footboards. Yours for only $30,000. I'm not joking about either of those statements. It was, in a word, unbelievable, so I won't hold it against you if you think that I'm somehow making this up.
So we saw a bunch of other really cool stuff (including an incredibly impressive female drum/dance troupe - ask me and I'll send you the video, pictures are useless) and then proceeded to our school's parent-teacher night, where we were introduced, and then spent the remainder of the event standing around being ignored by the Korean parents who were reportedly able to speak English, just entirely unwilling to do so.
After that all the teachers went out for an awesome dinner, on the director's tab, so that made it all worth it.
In the realm of getting stuff cheap over here, I've found a guy selling a 3-year-old 50cc scooter for about 500,000 won, and a place where I can get an enormous breaded pork cutlet with all the trimmings for about 3500won. Additionally, I found out that we can get a full, 160-channel satellite service package for 20,000 won/month. About 10-15 of the channels are in English. The jury's still definitely out on the scooter and on the satellite, I just think it's cool that you can get stuff for so little money here.
Anyway, that's it for this post. That wasn't so bad, was it?
Next weekend we're hoping to take off and check out another part of Korea, so hopefully there'll be interesting stories to share by next week, and if anything else exciting happens, we'll let you know. bye.