Korea Fun: Jinju

The reason we traveled to Korea was to be there for my brother and Sora's wedding. Although the majority of our trip was in Seoul, we spent a night in Jinju, where the wedding took place. Jinju is about 4 hours (by a funny yellow bus) south east of Seoul and is where Sora's family lives.

Sora's parents have a bed and breakfast near a lake and gave us a very warm welcome with days worth of food when we arrived. There is a bit of a language barrier between the two families. And by a bit, I mean, none of us speak Korean and none of them speak English. But we all speak the language of food and alcohol so I guess it evens out. The drink of choice was called makgeolli, and it is a sweet, Korean rice wine. I'll be honest, many of the food items were unidentifiable by my untrained eye (is it fish, is it a noodle), so I sort of stuck to the bowl of almonds and my makgeolli.

We all loaded back on our yellow bus and went to a big Korean BBQ restaurant for dinner. The beer and soju (rice liquor either consumed by shot or poured into your beer) were flowing and everyone had a great time. My dad was pouring shots for Sora's dad. Sora's brother in law was pouring shots for my brother. You know what, everyone was pouring shots for everyone.

We had a great time getting to know her family and couldn't wait for the wedding the next day.

Our bus and most of the guys that were on it. 

Sora's nephew Yeou Jin and his sister Ji Woo (not pictured) were on the bus with us. Such cute little kids. Already learning English. 

Plentiful food and drink. Drinks are always served from oldest to youngest person. 

Sora's parents' house. 

Big Korean BBQ dinner. I can't express enough how much I loved the salty, grilled BBQ. 

Outside our room at the Asia Lakeside Hotel