cherry blossoms everywhere!

Luckily, we are finally moving into warmer weather here and consequently, everything is beginning to bloom.  Cherry trees are in full bloom and line streets as well as the countryside. It's beautiful. Korea has festivals for everything and cherry blossoms are no exception! A group of us, Holly, Amy, Orla and Amy's friends Loren, Ashley and James (we only saw them for a bit) decided to head to Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival this past weekend. Jinhae is a small town about 2 hours away on the coast.  It's a very famous festival and we were planning on only going for Saturday.  I had heard it was hard to get transportation home in the evening, but we still decided it couldn't be that hard. famous last words.

After taking a packed bus for an hour and a half to the city of Masan, we then took taxis to Jinhae and began walking around the festival.  It was bustling with people and there were a rather high number of foreigners due to the nearby military base and the draw of the festival to outsiders. First thing we came upon were native indians playing on a stage. Notice the older Korean women sitting on a random couch watching the show.

the blooms were absolutely stunning and lined the streets.  It definitely reminded me of home when the almond orchards are in bloom...but it was so weird to see the blooms in cities and not just out in an orchard!

The festival had booths with vendors of everything from pigs on a spit, socks, books, random jewelry, and basically anything you could think of. Below is a picture of Bundaegi which is silkworm larvae.  It's a common snack here and I decided it was my duty to try this nasty little creature. Amy had never had one either so we gave it a go.

Bundaegi - Silkworm Larvae

Now the taste of the Bundaegi is not horrible, per say. However, the texture is a whole different story.  Taste alone I probably would've been fine.  But the texture and feel of it made me gag and I could barely get it down.  I'm glad I tried it, but I can be sure I won't be consuming any of those again.  We didn't want to waste the cupful so we gave them to a random old korean man who got all happy and sat there snacking on his free larvae. :]

Next we wandered across this quite interesting performance...Korean men dressed in drag playing the drums.  An obvious entertainment choice for a cherry blossom festival right? yea, we were confused too.

L-R: Amy, Holly, Orla, and Me

Luckily it was such a beautiful day - the sun was bright and shining and I was comfortable warm in a t-shirt! amazing!

Inside a main stretch of booth tents...it was SO crowded where the people were walking you just kinda got pushed along.  Then, guy pulling a trailer decides to drive down the narrow walkway full of people. helpful.

Let's drive a big trailer down a narrow walkway packed with people.

Who needs a refrigerator?? I'll just cover my extra half pig with a mat and it'll be fine...even in the sun!

After walking through the huge tent, we kept walking away from the huge crowds and found this beautiful walkway heading towards the water

I was in the process of falling...

such fun girls!

Naval Port in Jinhae

Once we had had our fill of wandering around the Naval Port we headed back to the main area and people were crowded around this big dirt opening so logically we thought, this will be a great performance! At least 20 minutes of waiting in the sun and many false starts later, they began.  I still don't know what they were doing, but there was a lot of chanting and running around with the banners.

Next we headed up to a lookout tower where you could see all of Jinhae.  There was a cable car option or stairs, and we opted for the stairs.  400+ stairs later, we made it to the top with exhausted legs.

a typical korean girl photo pose is to make a heart with your hands or make half a heart with one hand and a friend complete it!

view from the top of the tower.

so beautiful!

All in all this was a wonderful day of culture and beautiful blossoms.  This is where the adventure part of the day began though.  It was about 5:30pm when we finished climbing the tower and decided to head home.  We began to look for a taxi and here's where things got tough.  One struggle was that we had 5 girls.  That amount does not fit comfortably in one cab so we were thinking we'd have to take two.  Then we were having trouble even finding a cab.  They were all full.  Now, coming from Daegu, this is hard to believe. In Daegu there are mass amounts of cabs everywhere just waiting for you to hop in and whisk you away.  We just kept walking and hoping and trying with no avail.  Another thought was to take a bus to Masan, but the buses were ridiculously full where they wouldn't even stop at bus stops because there was literally no more room for extra people!

We tried for hours, had walked so far that we had to take a cab back into town (they would go that way, just not out of town) and decided to get some food.  Mr. Pizza's manager wouldn't let all of us sit together (why, we don't know, we were exhausted and quiet so loudness couldn't have been a factor) so instead of waiting for another table, Holly and I headed to Mcdonald's across the street and I had my first MickeyD meal in Korea and it wasn't half bad.

Finally, at about 9:20pm, we got a cab that would take us to Masan.  We begged him to let all 5 of us squish and promised to pay him well and off we went.  We got tickets for the 11pm bus back to Daegu and even that was packed but we were lucky enough to get seats and not have to stand. 

Because we were still there, we saw a beautiful sunset in Jinhae!

going loopy attempting to get a taxi.

dinner!

 

This was the happiest bus station man I've ever seen.  He laughed at us lots but was very helpful!

 

 

Overall it was such a great day of laughs, cherry blossoms, culture, and adventure which is such a great combo. :]