충주 with family

As the last time the whole family will be off from work, we took at trip to 청주.

Koreans have a small country to navigate and small weekends to enjoy their time off work. We encountered traffic coming out of the city, but the drive is nothing more than traversing Florida.

The trip focused around the regional foods not available in 서울 as much as the destinations itself.

We stopped at a tidy little complex with some Korean folk games which we had fun for ten minutes. But a short walk around revealed that the this location well-known for ceramics has passed its haydays and almost every store was shuttered.

Checked in at Kensington Resort. By the lack of amenities and desolate town nearby, there's a sense that 청주's booming tourist days have passed. 

The highlight of the trip was a visit to this famous butch shop where we choose our choices of meat, cross the parking lot to a restaurant to cook and feast. 

Charcoal fire is enough to infuse the meats with flavor, no need for seasoning or marinade.

나은 purchased the dinner with money earned from her first paycheck

Choice Meat

Post-dinner 노래방. Music is imbedded in both Korean and American culture,  but only Koreans take singing out loud regularly as part of theirs.

We came home for snacks and high stakes jenja. There's something to gamifying a game with rewards and penalties that intensifies the otherwise simple tasks. Losers had to go downstairs to buy ice cream. Even that was enough to put everyone on edge and make my hands sweat. I hope it's not an indication of me in a hospital setting.

동호 lost and 나은 as collateral damage had to buy the ice cream.

It's a slight shame that I can never post pictures of sauna or the related activites, but what's life without privacy? We went to a spring water bathhouse where the water is "enriched" with iron. As we are in the bath, bubbles do form all around our skin interestingly. I'm catching myself trying to figure out what chemicals could be in the water. 

We made one last stop to the 청주 dam. Huge infrastructure and as far as I could understand, this particular dam was not for hydroelectric power, but rather for water purification for consumption and regulation of the output of the river.