Paris Baguette and I are not friends. In Australia I’m quite health conscious about bread and prefer grainy bread or wholemeal bread. It’s so different in Korea where bread is usually a sweet dessert thing. I love sweet foods; I just prefer them to be cakes, cookies or chocolate. I want my bread to be savoury.
Other times I’ve been in Korea and have gone into Paris Baguette and in amongst all the sickly sweet stuff I’ve seen garlic bread. That must be savoury right? Wrong. It’s sweet too. Such a disappointment.
Paris Baguette is everywhere though. Even the small town next to Mr Gwon’s hometown has one and there are definitely ones in Jinju. We walked past one a few times in Jinju yesterday and my memories of the garlic bread came back.
This was filmed before we came to Korea. We are taking advantage of fast Korean internet speeds and uploaded as much stuff as we can. So let’s take a break from all the Korean stuff and go back to Australia for a short time!
We have visited Hyde Park Barracks before and it wasn’t that scary, but when we went the other week it was such a rainy miserable day and it made the Barracks seem really scary! There weren’t that many people when we went and it was quite eerie being in old rooms that once housed convicts.
We thought we’d give you a video with some Australian history because videos are going to be all Korea for a while.
Some people might already know a bit about Australian history but I hope we can impart a little bit of information for those that don’t. I think it’s important to understand that most convicts weren’t bad people. Usually they were born into poverty and resorted to crime to survive. Around the time that convicts were first sent to Australia there were over 200 crimes in Britain punishable by death. This was because of the Bloody Code (when there were very harsh punishments for many minor crimes) but by the 1800’s the death penalty was thought to be too harsh, so transportation (sent to Australia) was seen as the best alternative.
Until recent decades there was a stigma about having convict ancestors, but these days people are quite interested and proud of it. I think I have an ancestor who came out on the Second Fleet. Her crime was very minor as well. I think it might have been just stealing bread or a piece of fabric.
By the 1840’s convicts were no longer being transported to Sydney, so Hyde Park Barracks became an immigration depot for mostly young single Irish women (Ireland was devastated by famines). These women, most had lost their families, waited at the Hyde Park Barracks until they were hired for their services. Then in the 1850’s the barracks were used to house the newly arrived wives and children of convicts. In the 1860’s it was a government asylum for sick and destitute women and then eventually it became government offices until 1979.
What is really interesting about this building is that it is a museum about itself as well. On display are so many objects that were found in the building, particularly under floorboards. Things like pipes, clothing, games… you can see all these things there, as well as the tunnels made by rats over many many decades.
I really love history so I can go on for ages. We didn’t want to make a video that was like a documentary which is why a lot of serious stuff was cut out and we left the silly stuff in. But I hope you enjoyed because we like doing stuff like this and we hope we can show more about both Australian and Korean culture.
Hey guys, we will be having a meet up in Seoul on 4th of May. It will probably be in the afternoon, 4 or 5pm. It’s just a chance to meet people, meet us and others that read the blog as well. At this point it’s likely to be at a Twosome Place near Sinchon station.
EBS will be filming us for a few days and will likely film a bit of the meet up. I just want to check firstly how many people are likely to come, and if people are okay being filmed. Really it’s us being filmed so I think you’d be more in the background.
If no one is going to show up because there will be a camera, I want to check first haha.
Yesterday we went to Jinju. We were actually there for most of the day but just filmed bits and pieces. In order to go to Jinju we walk to the next town and catch a bus. It takes about 20 minutes on the bus. Jinju is a city but it’s quite different from Seoul or Busan.
I have seen some foreigners around but really not as many as in Seoul. I’ve only occasionally seen some teachers around other times I’ve been here. So far this time I’ve only seen one foreigner working in a restaurant and she was Cambodian.
In the video it looks like I’m really tall but I’m not. Most of the people around were older people who are usually quite short. Younger generations are taller.
I had an embarrassing moment when we went to the hair salon (which is called something like ‘Hue’ in Korean which is why we were saying it’s his hair salon) and we just spoke in Korean. I thought I was doing pretty well answering in Korean and the owner sat me down with a cup of tea and some magazines while I waited. Hugh’s haircut was finished and he got up and started walking out with the hairdresser so I thought he was going to go pay so I jumped up and got our bags and followed him. Actually they were just going out into another room to wash his hair and the owner said loudly to me in Korean to not go there and to sit down. Then all the hairdressers were laughing at me and the owner makes me go sit down again and laughed at me. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you can understand and speak in Korean and how hard you try because you’ll still make mistakes. In hair salons I go to I Australia, hair is usually washed first, which is why I didn’t expect him to be getting his hair washed and taken out to another room. It was just temporary embarrassment though. Can’t take it too personally when people are laughing at the dumb foreigner!
Hope you enjoyed the video. We might go film the strawberries in the greenhouses now.
This made us laugh because she called it out so cheerfully. Mr Gwon’s parents were with us and his father took the opportunity to say, “She is my daughter-in-law!” and then pulled wedding photos from his wallet. The staff oohed and ahhed over them.
As it’s the third time I’ve been to this area of South Korea, I’m quite used to the attention and stares. Most people are just curious. We get asked if I’m American a lot so often we stop to chat and say that I’m from Hoju (Australia).
So we haven’t done much today. We are just relaxing. Helped my husband’s parents with their farm work. I was on box making duty. They are packing up the strawberries to be taken to market.
My husband’s home town is very small and it’s mostly just old people living here. People stare at me but I’m used to it. His parents have a tiny shop at the front of their house and high school students come to buy snacks. There is a high school near by because there are a bunch of small towns in this area. But really, there is not much here in this village. But there are supermarkets one town over, which is walking distance and the city of Jinju is 20 minutes away.
We will be making small videos while we are in Korea. Our friend does most of our editing so she will edit bigger videos when we get back to Australia but we’ll just do some small vlogs like this. If there is something you’d like to see in particular, let us know.
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