chungju legends no2

So I've only met him once, but I'm going to have to go with the owner of the Seongmaru art museum. First, because he decided to open the first private gallery in Chungju by himself, make admission free, and also provide trails and a garden for people to enjoy outside the museum. Seriously, I couldn't think of a better way to retire and hope to one day accomplish something similar myself.

And second, just because he's an awesome person. When I, some random foreigner, showed up he immediately opened the museum doors, switched on the lights and turned on the music and then after went through a lengthy process of making iced coffee and sat and had a drink with me. I actually hate coffee, but after all the effort he put into using the right amount of ice, hot water and coffee mix with copious amounts of mixing, I would've felt rude not drinking it. The entire museum visit/experience definitely made my day.

bits of places

 Chungju Dam water museum. I for some reason always thought that they left the buildings when they created Chungju lake by flooding a village. As I learned, they actually spent three years and a whole lot of money moving buildings and artifacts.

 Inside the water museum. One of the few museums I've been to in the last while that was using air conditioning and already had the lights on, they must get a decent amount of visitors.

 Martial Arts Museum. I've been to Tangeumdae park more times than I can remember, but this was my first visit to the museum. Three floors of info and an observation deck looking out on the park, it's a pretty big building and admission is free.

 Goesan Gochu centre, with the gochu man on top. I've seen his likeness spread out all over Chungbuk.

 Bridge exiting Chungminsa shrine, Chungbuk monument no12, dedicated to two generals from the late 1500s who were both posthumously made prime ministers.

The shrine, behind it was a tomb and around the shrine were some trails along the river. If it hadn't been sweltering out and I didn't already have a sun burn on the go, I would've spent more time here as it was a really beautiful area.

성마루 seongmaru art museum 미술관

I didn't really think there was much art in Chungju, and that's basically true. But I did find a gallery, west of Chungju National University in a little village area...

 It was surrounded by fields, farms and mountains, so not the easiest place to find or get to.

 When I arrived, I wasn't sure if it was open or not, apparently it's only open from 10am-2pm but I didn't know which days. The lights were out, but like most places I've visited around Chungju that are out in the middle of nowhere, they tend to only keep things on when guests are there. Pretty quickly a man came out of the house right next to the gallery, pushed open the doors, turned on the lights and start playing some easy listening music. It was kinda awesome and what I've come to expect from my travels around the outside of Chungju.

 My favourite artwork in the gallery.

 There were three exhibition rooms and this little place up some stairs in the back. The best art seemed to be here. I was pretty impressed by the place, it was on a whole lot better than the Chungju International Art Exhibition was. 

 A lot of care went into building this place professionally, inside and out. I'm guessing the man that came and opened the place for me was the owner, who established this gallery after retiring from his teaching career. Pretty amazing.

 Some sculptures outside the gallery. There was a pond, trails and gardens right in front and to the side of the museum.

 The entrance to the museum, pretty impressive building. There's even a parking lot to the side. I keep coming across awesome little places hidden away, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I've definitely been experiencing a whole new Korea since moving to farming country.

chungju apple museum

The big difference between my summer students and regular semester students, is that my summer students tend to be from Chungju, while regular semester students are mainly from everywhere but here. This has resulted in me getting a lot more info about places around Chungju, when I had thought I'd already covered everything. The apple museum is one of those things.

 It's a bit outside of Chungju, like pretty much everything worth seeing around here, so it's not the easiest to get to if you have to rely on buses. Definitely not walkable. And since it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, (and I guess not really apple season) it wasn't busy at all.

 Apple fountains and an apple statue in the background (there are quite a few of these scattered around Chungju).

 Some dioramas (complete necessity of all Korean museums) of the apple picking process.

 There was also a peach section upstairs. And when I said before that it wasn't busy, I meant that no one was there, in fact the lady looked shocked when I walked in and then turned on the lights and scrambled around the museum turning things on. I don't think they expect any visitors, ever, outside of maybe field trips from schools and during apple harvesting time.

 The peach ripening process, I'm guessing, because everything was entirely in Korean, and the only English was for titles of sections. It was still neat to wander around and check things out though.

 Near the end of the museum they had some plasticized dishes showing various apple dishes. Most of them just seemed to be traditional Korean food with some apples thrown in.

And at the very end was an apple store with all kinds of apple products, like apple guksu/noodles, wine, vinegar, candy, vitamins, jewellry... Totally worth the visit, but I think it'll be best to return once apple season is in full swing.

수안보 suanbo zoo 동물원

As someone that loves animals, zoos aren't exactly the best places to visit. Especially in Korea where the standards of living that animals are subjected to is a lot lower than what I think they should be. But at the same time, I'm generally curious about visiting these places for a variety of reasons. It's usually a depressing visit, and this one wasn't any different, but I don't think it's always a good idea to shy away from or ignore the worst in an attempt to live in a perfect little bubble.

Anyway, some of the images that follow are of taxidermy animals, of live animals (in the zoo) with ailments and just plain old animals in cages. So if you'd rather not see that kind of thing, this would be a good time to go elsewhere. 

Suanbo is a smaller area, so this is a very small zoo and doesn't appear to have a whole lot of care, money or effort put into it that you would see in a big city. So even by Korean standards, it's bad.

 Before I found the zoo, I walked past two halls that looked closed because the lights were out, but were actually open and showed taxidermy animals in one and birds in the other. They also had bears, a tiger, deer, warthogs, but I thought it was pretty interesting that they included guinea pigs because you can buy them at Emart or Lotte(Korean Walmart), the market...

 And some squirrels looking a bit crazed. In the 2 1/2 years I've been in Korea I've seen a squirrel once, so it made more sense seeing these here than the guinea pigs did.

 A little bit farther up the hill was the actual zoo area. One of the first sick animals that I saw, a deer. It looked like it had gnawed its bum raw and had a mouth infection. And the stench coming from the area was overpowering.

 But not as bad as this. The saddest part was seeing this silver fox, with its mouth mutilated and it looked like it was missing teeth... Maybe from an infection?

 In total there were ten, maybe less cages/types of animals. About three of those types were dogs.

 Monkey wondering if I was going to offer it food.

 A Manchurian black bear sounding like it wasn't appreciating the summer heat.
Animals I didn't post pictures of were some dogs (including a raccoon dog) and birds (chickens and turkeys) and that was it for the zoo.

It's located on a hill, so there's also a hiking trail you can take if you keep heading up past the zoo. And you could also check out the driving range if you're into golf, or a few other things. The entire area looks pretty deserted though, as I didn't see anyone else while I was there and it is prime summer tourism season.

chungju legends

One of the things about living in a smaller city is that you get to notice regulars around the city, people you see often or that just stand out. And when people stand out to me, I generally like to draw them. So I've decided to start documenting the people I see in Chungju on a regular basis, or as I like to think of them: the Chungju Legends.

Chungju Legend #1: Pink Scooter with Training Wheels Guy

 I usually see him driving around southern Chungju, always going slower than the rest of traffic, maybe because he's just a cautious guy. Sometimes he'll be giving his wife/girlfriend/casual acquaintance a ride, but most often when I see him, he's puttering along alone. Oftentimes he'll park his scooter and hang out with all his ajeossi friends, usually in front of Emart. Many times I've seen him holding up traffic, which would warrant non-stop honking in Canada, but here, no one seems to mind. He's an older guy, and always around, so maybe he's retired and this is how he likes to spend his time.

eggplant parmesan

I was going to combine this post with my trip to the Suanbo zoo, but after looking at the zoo pictures decided it'd be much better if they were separate. Onto delicious foreign, vegetarian food. I just described it as foreign, I've been in Korea for too long.

 It's whats for dinner: eggplant parmesan, couscous and salad.

The finished product. I was in an eggplant mood, but I guess I've got an Italian theme going right now, so I decided to make eggplant parmesan. I thinly sliced two eggplants, dipped the slices in egg and then cornmeal and baked for a few minutes each side in my toaster oven. After they were finished, I spread some tomato sauce in the bottom of a pan and then layered the eggplant slices with red onion, black olives, basil (that I grew myself) cheese and more tomato sauce. Then put it in the toaster oven and baked for 20 minutes. Super easy.

And a shot of pseudo Italian food being cooked:

 Garlic bread and mini pizzas, cooked in a big frying pan. My favourite part of this picture is that everyone has a different weapon of choice; spatula, glove and chopsticks. I think chopsticks would win in this kitchen war.

Nothing like a bunch of food to make you feel like taking a nap.

 

italian food

I love Italian food, but in Korea it has always been something that I make at home and never, ever go out to a restaurant for. I'm sure there are good Italian restaurants in Seoul, and maybe a couple other big cities. But from my experience, it's usually expensive and could always be made better at home. And every single time I've gone for Italian food I've been left wishing we had gone somewhere else. At least most of the time, they have been work/social dinners/lunches so I didn't pay for it, but still.

Usually when people are picking someplace to eat, and they're including me as a vegetarian or other vegetarians, they tend to lean towards Italian food. I'm guessing because 1. it's foreign food and I'm a foreigner and 2. some dishes are vegetarian friendly. So yeah, their hearts are generally in the right place, but the food often isn't.

After living in Chungju for 5 months, I just had my first trip to a Korean/Italian restaurant. Oh wait, second, I went to one of those with my school, which was another awkward school event, so I'll just pretend this was the first time...

The restaurant was actually a nice, cozy little place with a great atmosphere. What I really appreciated was the lone canvas:

It didn't have a title, but if I was titling it, I would call it Zebra bum.

It reminded me of one of my favourite episodes of a cartoon I really like called Bob's Burgers. His sister in law visits during art week to display her artwork in his restaurant, and her new series of work is of animals' anuses. Which naturally make everyone want to stop eating there, but he can't say anything because she's family. Fantastic.

They also had some pretty unique, three pronged, fun shaped forks. And a nonsensical motto "tie with pastafe."

I ordered mushroom, tomato spaghetti, to the left is white deokbokki (rice blobs with cheese instead of pepper sauce), at the top shrimp spaghetti and to the right, pickles. It's completely and utterly essential for pickles to be served as a side with Italian food. It was the same Italian food experience I've always had in Korea... but on the bright side, at least without any school function weirdness!

A shot from behind the waterfalls. There's a little Korean gazebo (I have no idea what else to call it) on top of the ridge looking onto the waterfall, which also doubles as a fantastic make out spot for older Koreans as I learned on my trip.

Rice paddies, fields and mountains. This is pretty much all that surrounds Chungju. And it's all looking extra lush thanks to all the rain.

And the futuristic/70s style Sky repair centre. Which I now know exists because I drop my phone on a regular basis. This is why I shouldn't have nice things.

pranking a coworker

Is always a great way to end the week.

And as I learned, is easier than I expected and a roll of plastic wrap goes a long way. My art education definitely helped out here.

It has been raining all week (not yet today) and will rain all weekend. Hello monsoon season, nice of you to drop by.
Which has resulted in what used to be this:

 Turning into this:

 I'm not complaining, I love the rain. And this means I can go swimming in the valley now. As previously everyone told me that I couldn't go swimming anywhere (other than a pool), I had to wait for it to rain. Now is finally that time.

 The weekly boribap (like bibimbap but with some barley mixed in with the rice) shot at the market. I think it's the best option to go with as a group, especially when you have varying dietary needs (vegetarians, allergies to fish, picky eaters, etc). You can just put whatever you want in your bowl and omit what you don't. Total vegetarian dream food.

And something that I've taken up since starting my uni job, toast. I never went to one of these places until Chungju. And to be honest I'm not a huge fan of toast because of a recurring stress dream that I had as a child. Yeah, seriously. Which I once described to one of my classes and they all laughed at me :/

So anyway, it's just a sandwich, but all the shops go by some variation of the name toast. This is sweet potato pizza (egg, pickles, cheese, tomato sauce, sweet potatoes and cinnamon). It sounds kinda gross, but is actually pretty good, and I think it's because of the cinnamon. It reminds me a little of french toast.