Gonkorrhea: Happy Chuseok!

first off, our apologies for the sporadic updates! we recently moved into a new two-room apartment, a nice step up from our former studio (although sadly lacking its delightfully tacky neon green cabinets). unfortunately, while we doubled our living space, we have been forced to temporarily relinquish some of the finer things in life, namely internet access and hot water. so it's been a week full of reddit/fashion blog withdrawals and showers accompanied by bloodcurdling screams/resentful yelps. first world problems, eh?

on the bright side, we also had a four-day weekend in honor of the korean holiday chuseok (choo-suck), which is a harvest festival similar to american thanksgiving. everyone streams out of the larger cities and heads for grandma's house, where the kimchi is always perfectly fermented. this mass exodus means that traveling during chuseok is something akin to purgatory--i.e. endless waiting. as a result, we decided to stay close to home.

day 1: gwangju, a mere one-hour bus ride away (5,400 won each way)

gwangju is a city of just under 1.5 million people, so it offers a few more attractions than our beloved mokpo. gwangju is supposed to have excellent kimchi, and they host a festival every october to celebrate this claim--we will report back when the time comes! during this visit, we decided to check out the design biennale, an event hosted every two years. we wandered for several hours before happening upon the biennale hall. along the way we discovered golden rabbits coffee, a veritable cache of "engrish."

a stanza from the coffee cantata: by j.s. bach (haha...just googled this...apparently it exists)
ah, how sweet coffee tastes! lovelier than a thousand kisses, smoother than muscatel wine. coffee, coffee, i must have it, and should anyone wish to give me a treat, ah! just pour me some coffee!

the theme of the 2011 biennale is "design is design is not design," a tongue-twister to say the least. it features everything from computer code to a comme des garcons-influenced fort of sorts.