Chuncheon

For the past 2 days, I was in Chuncheon, which is a city outside Seoul...takes about 1.5 hours to reach using the KTX train from Seoul. My aunt and uncle took me around on their typical "guest tour". We explored the local dam, did a little hiking, historic sight-seeing, wild berry eating...lots of fun! As usual, the first thing that I noticed when I got to Chuncheon was the air!! So fresh and clean. Although, I feel like I'm almost getting used to the sewage smell on the streets of Seoul...but then again, I haven't been in Seoul for most of the past week, so maybe I just think I'm getting used to it. There are also a lot of farms, but that's always a refreshing sight after you've been in a big city. Also,...it was raining when I got there! (There is a saying in Korea that the dragon "용띠" of the zodiac sign brings rain everywhere it goes...so my relatives have jokingly been calling me the dragon, because the weather forecast calls for sunny skies...until I get there and it's pouring.)

Food: Apparently, there are two things that you have to eat when you're visiting Chuncheon, and that's makguksu and dakgalbi. Makguksu (막국수) is a cold soup with buckwheat noodles and Dakgalbi (닭갈비) which is essentially chicken korean BBQ. According to my uncle, people will travel to Chuncheon from Seoul just to eat these two things, because you can't find better quality anywhere else. For me, it's the best I've ever tasted!...since that was the first time I had either of those dishes...that could be a lie though. Even though I eat a lot of Korean meals at home, the same meals here don't taste the same, so I'm never sure if I've tasted something before or not.

Makguksu

Chicken Galbi

Travel: The places that I visited in Chuncheon were the Soyang-gang Dam, Nami Island, the historic home of Kim Yoong Jung, KN University (KNU), and the MBC studio.

I'll just talk about Nami Island, since the rest of the places are best described through photos. To get to Nami Island, you have to take a ferry from Chuncheon. The Island is famous for it's great scenery of course, but became especially famous when the K-drama hit "Winter Sonata" was filmed there. When the drama first came out, there were apparently a lot of Japanese and Chinese fan girls that would flock to the island, but it's been awhile since the drama was released, so there weren't too many people there when I went (I also went on a Monday). I always like traveling to places at off-peak hours/days. Otherwise, there's just too many people and you don't get to really experience everything. The only downside to exploring on off-peak days is that some programs only run on weekends, but that's fine with me. On Nami island, there's a diverse variety of trees and animals...it was actually very strange. There were lots of bunnies and...ostriches. I spent most of the day walking around Nami island...eating wild berries, exploring the strange exotic animals that clearly do not belong there, and getting my food stolen by a squirrel.

Evil beggar squirrel eating my food.

Ostrich...?

Bunnies

Oh! I'll say one other thing. When I went to the historic home of Kim Yoong Jung (I think that's right), there was a filming crew there...but alas, it wasn't for a drama...they were only filming a 10 minute talk show. But still, it was interesting to see! They made me leave because my face showed up in the background, but it's all good.

Film crew

Statue of Kim Yoong Jung, I believe

KNU campus

Soyang-gang Dam

Outside MBC studios