Market Girl

• Today was a national holiday so we got the day off...WOOHOO!!! I working to cross as much as I can off my Korea To-Do List, so today was devoted to visiting Jukdo Market, which I pass whenever I go downtown but have never been to. It is a HUGE traditional-style market where you can buy clothes (mostly geared towards older people), bedding, fabric (!), dishes/kitchen things, pottery, plants, and FOOD. Fruit, vegetables, seafood, chicken/other meats, grains, rice cakes, prepared side dishes. Everything! Abby and I were marveling (even though she's been before). It was amazing. And, quite honestly, overwhelming. We don't know what a lot of the things are, let alone how to cook with them - and forget trying to cook Korean dishes with them. It really was incredible. The seafood selection was crazy - dried fish, live fish, octopus, shellfish, crab, sea squirts, sea slugs, and WHALE. Yes, you could buy whale. For eating. And yes, people were buying the whale. Besides the dried fish, most of the products were moving. It was very strange! And we must have been the only foreigners to pass by for awhile - or we just looked incredibly vulnerable, being women, and snapping pictures at everything - because ALL of the fish salesmen tried to sell us things. Coming up behind us, shoving things in our faces, speaking English to us (to try and impress us), saying we were beautiful...yep. At one point, I said to Abby, "I'm so glad we speak a little Korean. And aren't stupid." After that, we managed to get dinner at one of the stalls. The woman told us (by pointing to the bills in my wallet) that it would be 26K for both of us to eat. We hesitated for a few seconds and she dropped the price down to 21K (yay for bargaining on DINNER without words!) and basically shoved us into the restaurant. With our restaurant lingo (which I feel the most accomplished at) we got rice, kimchi and soup, in addition to our fish, and they didn't charge extra for any of it! We were very full and happy :) It was a day well-spent.

I would like that one...on the bottom...

 

Since every piece looked different, we could only assume
they were all handmade.

 

GREENS!

Dried fish of all shapes and sizes (many stalls also had
these fan contraptions, with streamers on them, going -
to keep flies away!)

Sea slugs. They were still moving.

Shellfish. They were also still moving/snapping.

Aaaand the whale stand.

Octopi. Complete with handy carrying handles.

Goodnight Jukdo :)