Spring Flowers and Suncheon Bay

In the past few weeks it's been starting to feel more like Spring so we've tried to take advantage of the good weather on our weekends. Last weekend we found a new park in Jinyeong so we had a picnic and we took some photos of Jinyeong in bloom! This weekend we headed to a coastal town called Suncheon and visited a wetlands area where you could take a board walk through the reeds and up a small mountain to look out on to the estuary. All is well here, this evening we discovered a German restaurant called 'Brauhaus' in the middle of Jinyeong! We were very curious to see what it was like! Our conclusion was that it still had to work on it's German/Europeaness, as it served us garlic bread with jam and a green salad with strawberries! Here are some photos of the past two weeks:

Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival and Our New Apartment

Today we headed to a city called Jinhae for its annual cherry blossom festival, the biggest one in Korea! We had heard that getting there might be quite difficult due to the amount of tourists it gets but we decided to go for it anyway. We headed for the nearby city of Masan before changing onto a city bus to Jinhae. It became clear that most people in korea had this same idea as when the city bus pulled up at the stop it was engulfed by about 80 korean tourists with no conception of queueing. Waiting our turn in line as polite English people do actually proved to be in our favour as we were the last two people let on the already hugely overcrowded bus meaning we got the extra space of standing in the doorway. We had a front row seat for the ride into Jinhae through streets lined with beautiful cherry blossom. As we turned the corner into Jinhae for our first sight of the blossoms, the entire bus let off an "ooooooooohhhh" so it became clear we wouldn't have to worry about where to get off. We were really lucky with our timing too, as the trees are only in blossom for 2 weeks a year and it was lovely weather. The city of Jinhae was filled with stalls and tents surrounded by the blossom trees. In one of the stalls, we were offered to have our picture taken in traditional korean outfits which we thought was too great an opportunity to miss. We tried very hard to keep straight faces and look the part.
Nina also made a flower out of paper but needed more help than most of the children at the stall. While walking around all the restaurant tents we noticed that every single one had a hog roast so we decided to treat ourselves and did not regret our decision! While eating we also realised that whale(!) was on the menu, something which we thought was illegal! Here are some photos of our trip to the festival:

Finally, we've had a busy weekend as we have moved into our new apartment. It has its pros and cons as it is bigger and cleaner with a working washing machine and brand new appliances, however the living room and bedroom are combined into one big room which will take a little bit of getting used to! Now Nina can never escape! Here are a few pics:

Hahoe Folk Village

This weekend we took a trip to a traditional folk village in a city about 3 hours north of us. Apparently when the Queen came to visit Korea she asked to go to the most 'Korean' place in Korea and she was taken to Hahoe folk village, this fact obviously made Hahoe all the more inticing. So we got up early and took a series of buses, the main one being massively over heated! We were on the bus in t shirts sweating whilst the Koreans were happily snoozing in their big coats. When we arrived we had a bit of trouble trying to find the bus stop for the folk village. Luckily whilst we were wondering around with our little map, a Korean man who spoke near perfect English lent us a hand and was in fact heading to the village himself. When we got to the the village we were just in time to see a traditional mask performance something which Hahoe is famous for. We didn't really catch the gist of the story but it was cool seeing the actors prance around in their masks. During the performance we were approached by a man with a huge camera who wanted to take pictures of us watching the show, and what was stranger he wanted to take a photo of Nina taking a photo of the performance. After several awkward minutes of feeling like we were in a photo shoot, he produced his card revealing that he was a photographer. He liked taking natural pictures, but on viewing the pictures they were a little bit too natural as Ed looked rather gormless and Nina was laughing with a huge double chin. He said he could e mail the photos to us but we don't think we'll get in touch. Here are some photos from the mask performance:

The weather was lovely and sunny so we were able to wonder around the Folk village. Firstly we looked around a commemorative exhibition which celebrated the Queen's visit. It was quite strange seeing huge pictures of the Queen and looking at artefacts such as 'the chair the Queen sat on' and 'the plate the Queen ate off'. Afterwards we looked around the village which was built about five hundred years ago and people still live there by the same traditions. It was built by the Prime minister who was in office during the invasion of Japan in 1592 so as you can imagine he is regarded as a national hero in Korea. Here are some photos of the village:

 It's a small village surrounded by a river and mountains which makes for a very picturesque view. We were able to take a very small and overpriced ferry/boat across the river to a cliff which you can climb for a view of the village. Here are some pictures of the view:

In other news, we have joined the gym in order to work on our summer beach bods. The gym is only two minutes away and you are provided with your own work out kit/uniform:: boys in blue, girls in pink. The changing room etiquette is quite different too, let's just say people aren't shy. Next week we are also moving apartment about 1 minute down the road to a bigger place. So we shall put up some photos of our new pad next weekend.