Scary Halloween Meats

Here I am, clearly enjoying a delicious beer in an ice cold mug, with no idea of what nightmarish visions are in store for me tonight...
WARNING! Scroll down at your own risk, vegetarians!

Actually we saw these pig heads on a table down the street shortly after our beer & snack. Mindy snapped this picture as a warning to all pigs: this Halloween, watch out for ritual Satanic decapitations.

This scary salad is popular here, it features shredded cabbage topped with a squirt of mayonaisse & catsup, and that's pretty much it.

Many restaurants feature a helpful picture menu, so you can point at a photo while you mispronounce words, and order something that you aren't quite sure of. While we ate, I struggled with the Korean menu & the phrase book & figured out that these spicy skewers were beef kidney.
Cold beer & hot kidneys, happy Halloween!

around the neighborhood

A nearby restaurant
These girls are on rollerblades. They saw me taking pictures and stopped to say hello. They are in front of a music school.

happy animal signs

There are cute cartoon animals everywhere, they give you the thumbs up and would like you to come inside & feast on their meats.

octopus balls

These friendly folks were making "Japanese-style" taco (octopus) balls & selling them out of this little van. Small gooey dough balls with spices & octopus, cooked in a waffle iron-type mold & covered in a couple of sauces, including mustard. Delicious!

political commentary

This anti-FTA banner featured metal insects & spider and was hung on a building in the main square of Chungjangro during the festival.
This great portrait of our fearless leader was on a banner several stories tall on a building behind the main stage at the festival.
Click on the photos for a large version.

Gwangju Chungjangro Festival

This is a pot of cooking silkworm larvae. For the past few days there has been a big festival in the downtown neighborhood Chungjangro, where the Democracy Bell is displayed and the busy shopping district is located. Streets are closed off and stages are set up, and vendors of all kinds of food and crafts are jammed onto the crowded sidewalks. We spent most of the day there yesterday, but sadly didn't bring the camera, so I don't have any pictures of the cute children's traditional Korean musical ensembles or the little kid's English school version of Wizard of Oz, or the hip hop dance groups, or the dual-accordian & saxophone band. Today it was raining, and seemed less crowded. We passed on the larvae & ate some fried squash & potato, and a tiny roll of noodles wrapped in seaweed, then batter fried. Some cold drinks, and we walked around for a few hours.
This puppet show featured a snake trying to eat some frogs. It was more annoying than entertaining.

An exciting Taekwondo exhibition! Lots of board breaking & high kicking, and I took a bunch of really blurry photos. These guys were just too fast. They had loud rocking music playing, and interspersed with the mock fighting & stunt kicking (kicking a rose out of one guy's mouth, human pyramid climb & kick) were choreographed stage numbers with tuff dance moves as well as martial arts.

This band was very good; two drummers, a guy playing a reeded wooden flute with metal horn end, and a bandleader who sang, clapped, danced, and played the hand held gong. Very nice sound from the flute/horn and big drums, with the smaller drum & gong propelling the whole song along.

Democracy Bell

This giant bell is on display at May 18 square, the site of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising of 1980. The bell commemorates that date, as well as the earlier Independence Movement of 1929.

Gwangju Uprising Wikipedia entry

Home Plus bunnies

There is a big pen outside the entrance to Home Plus with rabbits & ducks, and also some other birds.

Bu Bu Dog

We see this sign on our bus rides to the downtown area. It's a pet store. We have seen a few fat chihuahuas around Gwangju.

Seafood

There are a lot of tanks full of live sea creatures in front of restaurants & shops. You can eat them. Mindy has sympathy for the tiny octopus, but I will eat them. These guys look like they would enjoy chewing on me.

Gwangju city scene

Here's a view from the pedestrian overpass on the way to the Home Plus store, which is sort of like a super Kmart. It's a short walk from our place, we end up there several times a week. You can't see it in this photo.

our street.

This is the street that we live on. Our apartment is on the far right, second floor.

stone men

These sculptures are sitting out on the sidewalk in an artisan district in the downtown Gwangju area.

Cute

It is popular here to dye your small dog's ears & tail bright colors, like pink or green.

First experimental post.

This is the entrance to a popular bar in our neighborhood. Noisy drunks wander out in the wee hours, visible from our window.