After our taxi arrived (on Friday, Mr. Shin told me we had to take a cab all the way out there because it was too complicated for a foreigner to take the buses there! Yikes.) we began walking around, sizing up the situation. We stumbled upon a tent that was selling a bunch of typical Korean household items - I picked up quite a few gifts to take home with me... and a straw hat akin to those many of my students wore on Sports Day. I'm so Korean now :)
Next was the highlight of the festival. We saw a tent that was giving out samples of tomato flavored makgeolli (Korean rice wine). Of course Diane and I partook in the free sample, while a cameraman filmed (right up in our faces!) our reactions to the drink. It tasted so so good - sweet instead of V8-like with a little alcohol zip. We inquired about buying some and were told 5,000 won (a little less than $5.00) was the cost for a huge jug of the stuff. We thought that was pretty cheap, so we told them we wanted to buy some. The woman took my bag of household item purchases and told me I could have it back when I was done. I thought that was weird since we were just planning to buy a jug of the wine, but they obviously had other plans for us: instead of buying tomato makgeolli, we were going to make our own. No big deal.
We began by donning plastic food service gloves and squeezing and crushing several tomatoes into a plastic jug. Then, we added a butt-ton of rice, some yeast and some weird particles called gomja that looked like petrified rabbit poo. (I later found out that those weird particles are the wet moldy bits of feed at the bottom of the feed sack - perfect for making makgeolli, though it sounds disgusting.) That all got washed through a strainer with some water. Then, we took turns reaching into the jug and mixing it all together. Next, the woman helping us gave me directions for finishing the process. (When we got home, I had to turn the lid one quarter turn to let the gasses form and do their work. Then, in one week, I need to add one liter of water and eight grams of sugar. Then, a week after that, it's good to go - just add sugar to taste and strain off the mold and jank before we drink it - sounds tasty, eh?) The whole time, there were cameramen filming our every move, reaction and squeeze of a tomato. Diane and I are curious to see if we end up on Korean t.v. again - just like when we were in Jeju!
The festival also boasted such eccentricities as an inflatable water slide that led to a pool filled with tomatoes and water. Fully clothed children plunged into the tomato filled pool one after another, screaming with delight. It looked like a good time, but I can only imagine how disgusting that smelled at the end of the day with the sun beating down on it all day long. EWWWW.
Then, after a wild goose chase to get a taxi back to Gwangju (we got help from a shady looking dude (only because he had facial hair, which is a rarity in Korea) that spoke English and led us to a man wearing a vest that said "Best Driver" who waited with us until the taxi he called showed up - he was a peach.) and took a short rest in the air conditioning, we made our way to Bundang, which is a more upscale satellite city about an half an hour or 45 minute bus ride away. We got a Jamba Juice smoothie, walked around the tree-lined neighborhoods and ate dinner at Butterfingers - a really good upscale diner that serves bomb American-style breakfast food (I had the most delicious cream cheese and mozzarella pancakes - YUM.) We were all pretty tired by this point, so Diane, Desiree and I parted from Faith (who lives in Bundang with her Korean husband Mark) for the bus ride home.
On the way to Bundang, a middle school girl had struck up a conversation with Faith. She and her friend were on their way to watch a horror movie. They were really cute and spoke English really well. On our way home, about 10 minutes into the bus ride, who boarded the bus and sat right next to us but the very same girls! Crazy. Diane talked to the girl that sat next to her all the way home, talking K-Pop mostly. At one point, the girl and I bonded over our mutual affinities for ear piercings (she beat my seven piercings with eight) and jewelry making. She was absolutely adorable. Feeling pretty energized from this interaction, none of us felt tired once we got off the bus so we decided to take Desiree for her first noraebong (Korean karaoke) experience. Two hours, several classic songs (think Baby Got Back, Fallin', Baby (just for you, Jill!), Wannabe, Footloose, What's Love Got to Do With It, Circle of Life and Mambo No. 5, just to name a few) and laughably awesome dance moves later, we danced our way home by the river. What a fantastic day.
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| The whole gang - Desiree, Faith, Diane and me |
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