Gimhae

This Saturday I took a trip to go check out another city,  Gimhae! It is very close to the city I live in, so it's a good place to go for an afternoon, or just for dinner if you wanted to. Some of the other foreign teachers that I work with wanted to go today so they invited Laura and I along. Gimhae is a smaller town than Changwon, which means it is much smaller than Daegu, the city I visited last week. It was interesting to see the differences, because each city has a unique feel.

Paparazzi Liz!!

Temple

Tomb

We got there via a 30 minute bus ride from the Nam Sam bus terminal. Laura and I went with a fellow foreign teacher and her boyfriend (the one who kind of looks like Edward from "Twilight"!) and we met the other people there later. Once in Gimhae, we walked around the town while we waited for the others to arrive. I took pictures of everything, and tried to "accidentally" get the Edward-lookalike in some of my pics so that I could show all of you who may be interested :)  But they're really nice. They took us to see a temple area that had been restored. It had very intricate architecture on every roof shingle. Right near that was a tomb of an emperor that was even more intricate, but I couldn't go inside because the area was just closing. Apparently there are several museums, tombs and significant graveyards like that here, so I will have to come back sometime to get more pictures!

Main street

Gimhae market

Hanbok, the traditional Korean dresses

The city streets were more rustic and traditional compared to Changwon or Daegu. The main street had several mainstream Korean clothes shops and shoe stores, and then the back streets had more traditional hole-in-the-wall shops that sold odds and ends. Next to each of those were ajimas (older Korean women) selling clams or garlic. Down one of these streets, just off the main street, was their town market. It reminded me of Pike Place market, but it was much smaller, had weirder stuff, and no flying fish. Oh wait! Ok, no people throwing fish, but there were these buckets of live fish at one booth, and while I was taking pictures of them a catfish suddenly jumped out of the bucket and onto the floor!

At the Uzbekistan restaurant

Yum, free Uzbekistan cake!

They liked us so much they wanted a pic!

For some reason, a lot of foreigners live in Gimhae. Not Americans or Canadians, but Thai, Moroccans, Filipinos, Uzbekistanians, Indians, etc. As a result, there are a lot of ethnic restaurants here. So this will be a good little place to escape to if I ever want to eat a lil somethin somethin that's not Korean :)  Tonight we ate Uzbekistanian food...yummy lamb and potatoes! There was a big party next to us that really liked us, so they ended up giving us half of their cake, which was so delicious! Yay free cake! After that we took a bus back to Changwon, and chilled at a bar there. That was fun because the foreign teachers were talking about all of their experiences teaching and exploring Korea. It was also kind of bittersweet, because they all have been here at least 6 months already, and will be leaving in about 6 more. By that time, I will be the one showing the newbies around....right now that's hard to believe that could ever be!