A few days before everybody headed back home we went to Andong(안동) village. This village is very nice since one can directly experience rural and long ago Korea. To the left is my uncle with a tractor called kyoungungi (경운기) these things are great, can see them a lot in the rural areas and once and awhile you can see them in the city when the farmers drive them instead of their cars. The picture to the right is not a house but it is a gate, which surrounds the house. There is rooms in it and they were usually used as a place to raise livestock, storage, or if the homeowner was wealthy it was used as servant quarters. Once inside one of these gates, there is open area where one's daily life takes place. Cooking, washing clothes, gardening, drying out herbs,bark,roots, etc.. for medicine (picture to the right).

The interesting thng about this folk village is that it still is a functional village. What this means is people still live here. Other folk villages throughout the country are just buildings, no people except for visitors and employees. Because of this situation at Andong many of the families living here have turned their houses into businesses to earn some extra money. So one house might sell straw shoes (짚신), while another may sell rice wine and food. So overall its not a bad deal, but they (the people of Andong) do have rules, regarding preservation, so the village will retains its folk village status, so no there will not be a starbucks coming soon.

Since we were on an island we decided to eat some fish. In Japan they have sushi and in Korea they have a hway(회) which is sushi minus the rice, wasabi, and soy sauce. So what you have is just a piece of flesh. Now if you look at this picture you might begin to wonder hey where is the rest of the fish, what do they do with it? They take everything, gills, guts, head, etc.. and make a type of stew out of it called mauntang (매운탕). This stew is rather spicy, and sometimes too spicy, the picture too the left is the stew with no peppers added to it so it is quit easy to eat, but if it isn't spicy it the fishy taste is quite strong so its up to you.

For the honeymoon we went to an island south of Korea. I wanted to go back packing through China but the wife wanted nothing to do with that. So here we are. We had a rental car which was a good idea until I backed into a small boulder. No dents but it did put a nice scratch on the car. When we took it back there was no problems, I guess they saw worse. As for the island it was beautiful. Went to a few waterfalls, some caves, cliffs, and some really nice views. Had a really nice time would like to go back again if time permits.

Well I finally made it to our wedding day. If you look to the left there is Minhee and her mother. Her mother is wearing a hanbok(한복), traditional korean dress. On this day my mother, uncle bob, aunt sue, and about 40 friends came from my side, but since Minhee's father is a servant of the korean government about 750 people came, they wanted to invite more but it was hard enough to find a place that could accomadate to that. The wedding itself lasted about 20 minutes. If one should ever have a wedding in Korea it would be wise to take all handphones as people come in. Here I am with Minhee. Boy she is lucky to be married to such a handsome guy as myself. The hardest part of the whole wedding I think was picking out the tux. And after all the effort and time I put into it, the wedding planner decided it was best to go with her choice than mine. Probally was for the better since she does it for a living and this is my first. The picture to the left is of Minhee with her cousins and her oldest brother. The picture above is of Minhee with her two brothers. Her younger brother is to the left and her older brother is to her right. Here we are after the wedding. We had a cake and got to cut it with a huge sword. I don't know what ever happened to that cake sine it disappeared after it was cut. The 'great mystery' of the day was who was going to catch the bouquet. Wasn't that hard to guess who was going to catch it since there was only one person. I guess that is the norm. Had to do the classic of picking up the bride. For a few weeks she was joking by saying she was going to gain as much weight as she could. She could have gained 20 kilos and there still wouldn't have been a problem. We had a western style wedding but also had a little korean element to it. After the western style wdding was finished we proceded to Paebaek (폐백 ) which is the payment of respect to the each side and when the parents give advice to their son or daughter. The picture to the left is when my mom got to throw some nuts at Minhee. For every nut that we caught in Minhee's dress we will have a child. If that is the case I will be very busy.