wedding in jeonju

so, the eventful april continued this past weekend. adding to birthdays, remembrance ceremonies, the descent of yellow hell from china, and other piddling munches on the rind of life was a friend's wedding and my and seung-hee's one-year wedding anniversary--which happened to fall on the same day. additionally, we had to road-trip it from here in the northeast to jeonju, a city in north jeolla province--which is in the southwest part of the country. though phillip panty-waisted it by deciding that he'd had too much to drink on thursday night (and we were leaving on saturday morning), carlos stepped up to the plate and joined my wife and me on our merry jaunt to the southwest of korea, where, allegedly (and i say this as kindly as possible), there is the best cuisine in korea.

so, the three of us hopped on a bus saturday morning for the four(plus)-hour journey each way in hopes of seeing our good friend pieter marry myoung-sun, his fiancee, of seeing my mate chris (and na-ri, his woman), of meeting their friends, of eating good food, seeing the thriving expat community, sampling jeonju's bars, and generally rucking up some fun in another part of korea, especially in carlos's case, since he, in four years of being in korea, had only been to, like, three cities.

little did we know that none of our preplanning thoughts and ideas of how we hoped things'd go would be absolutely wrong.

as it turned out, about the only thing that went according to plan was hanging out with chris and na-ri and the wedding itself. everything else was not as it was supposed to be: i was unimpressed with jeolla province's claim of having the best food (especially kimchee) in the county--granted, though, we only really ate on meal there...; there was near-universal jeonju ostracisation of the gangneung contingent (well, of the gangneung males, anyway); carlos traveled all that way with seung-hee and me only to do exactly what phillip did back in gangneung: miss the wedding; and we missed out on doing some things we wanted to do for various reasons.

anyway, congratulations to myoung-sun and pieter on their nuptials. the ceremony was outstanding, especially the setting, which was in the courtyard of an old, historic confucian school set adjacent to a preserved village where development is disallowed. it was a quiet, beautiful place to have an outdoor wedding and, thankfully, the weather cooperated for the first time all month and everything on sunday for the wedding went as smoothly as all things covered in baby oil do in a porn flick.

all in all, a fun weekend with some good (and perhaps not-so-good) stories. catch some of the pics below for an visual idea of a sensory-filled (and, for some, sensory-dulling) weekend...

carlos, when he was still actually intending to be at the wedding

the seam in my jeans, just for the hell of it

a ubiquitous dave photo: of beer in a pub with no flash and strange shutter/aperture settings...

a one-armed carlos prepares for his monday classes...

with the groom-to-be before he took offense to my mocking of south african rugby and futbol

a club called jukebox, the scene of carlos's reckless attempt to ingratiate himself into jeonju...

as a new day dawned, chris clasps his head in disbelief at some drivel...

as the night grew old, na-ri feels the effects of the gangneung invasion...

a more lively, colourful rendition of why we went to jeonju...

the courtyard of the confucian school

the historical village adjacent to the wedding site

a beautifully-painted replica of a traditional-style gate

jeonju's east gate from days of yore

the sun setting on the jeolla province mountains

a black-and-white of a typical sunday on a crowded korean freeway