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.

A Trip to Rural Korea!

On Thursday it was National Independence Day in Korea, which is one of two national holidays celebrating Korea's resistance against Japan. So luckily we had both Thursday and Friday as holiday! We decided to go and explore a large national park called Jirisan which is about 2.5 hours away on the train. The park is connected to a small village called Ssanggyesa which is not much more than a small roundabout of restaurants and little hotels called Minbaks. This was the first time where we really felt like we were in a completely foreign place and we were going to have to depend on our limited korean speaking and reading skills and A LOT of miming! Our first port of call was to find somewhere to sleep for the night. It had been advised to us in Lonely Planet that there were various small minbaks in the town. The first one we came across looked like something from a murder horror film so we moved swiftly on. We found a small restaurant advertising rooms in the back of the restaurant so we wandered in using our best Korean.... "Minbak??", and we were shown to a small but clean room which seemed perfect for one night. The room was very Korean in that there wasn't actually a bed! In Korean houses the heating is in the floor so that's the warmest place! Therefore, lots of Koreans simply put mats and duvets on the floor instead of having a bed! It was a new experience for us but it was actually quite comfortable!

It's custom in Korea to remove your shoes when you enter a house or restaurant and wear slippers when you're inside. So when we entered the minbak we took off our walking boots but didn't have any slippers so we wandered around in our socks which the Korean family found very funny! One of the Korean ladies went and got us some slippers which fitted Nina fine, but did not accomodate Ed's size 11 feet. So Ed was made to shuffle around like a Geisha in these tiny little slippers! After finding our place to stay we walked up to Ssanggyesa temple which we both agreed was the most beautiful temple we've visited so far. The weather was warm and the sun was just going down so the whole place had a really calm atmosphere. Here are some photos of the temple:

After the temple, we decided to visit the Korean Green Tea culture centre! The main museum was closed because it was a holiday but two smiley Korean ladies were in the gift shop so we thought we'd pop in. They prepared some tea for us and we ended up sitting with them for about 45 minutes having a sort of conversation about the weather, Korea, England and University with us not speaking Korean and them not speaking English!
For dinner, we thought we would try the restaurant in front of our minbak. We had a slight problem in that we weren't gonna be able to read the menu very well, and even if we could we probably weren't going to know what the dish was! We made a plan....... in the back of the Lonely Planet guide were 'dinner phrases' so we were going to point to the sentence saying 'Can you recommend something to eat?' therefore we could avoid just randomly pointing at something in the menu! However, the plan backfired when the woman didn't have her glasses so couldn't read our Lonely Planet translation! Luckily, we spotted Bibimbap on the menu which is a traditional rice dish so we managed to order without looking completely useless!

The following morning we got up early so that we could set off on a hike with lots of time to spare. Unfortunately, unlike the nice warm weather of the day before, it was pouring with rain! We put on our cags in bags and started our route. Our goal was to reach a waterfall called Buril Pokpo. The route was good fun, being completely deserted and in a large forest. It was kinda fun to pretend like we were in Lost. We were absolutely soaked in the rain, Ed commented that Nina's hair looked like corn rows.

After about an hour and halfs walk we reached the waterfall. To both our suprise the waterfall was partially frozen! It looked more like an icy rock and we concluded that waterfalls are a lot better when there is water, and it's falling.

On the way back we came across a camp area with park benches so we had a short tea break of biscuits to keep our energies up. Nina's wet corn row hair was starting to make her cold and she noticed that there was a plug socket in the camp so she plugged in her hair dryer and gave her hair a quick blast!

Once we were back in Ssanggyesa we bought bus tickets from a fish restaurant on the side of the road and hopped on the first bus of four back to Jinyeong!!!