cherry blossoms for all...

Wow, this last week flew by so quickly! My chin is almost completely healed, just a bit red with a few scabs left. I'm just really hoping it doesn't scar...but on a good note, for some reason I brought some scar cream with me in my random assortment of medicines from home!

As far as my classes for last week, it was one of my favorite lessons because I was able to play a game with them! I started with the prizes being pencils and stickers but they disappeared fast and I had to resort to candy. My plan is to only do games with prizes every once in awhile so they don't expect it every time and will still want to participate in my lesson. This week's lesson is "Going to a Restaurant" and I am having them work with a partner to create their own menu of food. Next week I will have them practice ordering food by pretending to be a waiter/waitress and a guest. Thanks Scottie for the idea!! :) Now I have next week planned as well. Recently I've been planning my lesson for the week in less than 30 minutes on Monday morning lol. But hey, I'm getting good at "winging" things too!

So now to talk about the best part of last week...the weekend!! I ended up meeting up with the lovely people I met in Jeomchon a couple weeks ago & we all went to Jinhae for the 49th annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Cherry blossoms can be found in many places around Korea, but Jinhae (about 2 hrs 30 min away from Gumi), is supposedly the best (or most popular) place to go for the festival.

So we went and had a blast! For the most part it was more of a relaxing weekend in that we didn't just drink the entire time. Ok, maybe a few of the group did, lol, but I only drank Friday night. And I blame that on the Dong Dong Ju (a kind of thick rice based wine) that sneaks up on you later! Plus you drink it out of a bowl, how cool is that?! :)

FRIDAY NIGHT:
Like I said we began the night with Dong Dong Ju along with some pork and side dishes inside a tent style restaurant at the festival. Afterwards we found a small bar in which we continued the fun of beer and drinking games. We played this game called Baskin Robbins 31. Needless to say, I had the worst luck at this game. Overall, the night was awesome. I even laughed so hard that it resulted in laughing tears. :) Glad I could provide some entertainment to my friends!!

Our next mission of the night was to find a place to sleep. Some people decided to go to the Jjimjilbang (a sauna where you can also sleep in a little cave like area), while others wanted a real bed. I was with the second group lol. At the first hotel we discovered that they (of course) raised the rates due to the tourism. On top of being pricey, this place only had one room with no beds, so we decide to try our luck at another one. The second attempt was way too expensive so we went back to the first place. This is when we found out that they don't like it when you do that. The lady still had the room available but refused to give it to us. Geez, didn't know Korea required you to commit so fast to one place! Now we know! So we dragged our tired bodies to a third place where they gave us two rooms for $35 per person. Pretty expensive per person, but we were super tired & didn't want to risk not being able to find a place.

SATURDAY:
The next morning as we were headed out, the little lady who had showed us to our rooms the previous night...literally chased us saying "coffee?! coffee?!" While we did appreciate her generosity...we really just wanted to go sit somewhere nice for coffee and breakfast. During the process of telling her no thank you and walking down the stairs...my clumsy hungover self tripped down a section of the stairs. Jurgen claims I tripped UP them as well the night before, haha. Regardless, the lady starts running towards us even faster as I'm trying to scramble off the ground with all of my stuff. Eventually we escape in laughter and meet up with the rest of the group to start our Saturday festivities!

The day brought alot of wandering through markets/tents with more stuff to buy than you could ever need in Korea, alot of eating of unhealthy food on sticks, and lots of fun picture opportunities. Since our group grew larger due to more people meeting up with us on Saturday, some of the day was spent in confusion and losing & finding people. Eventually we made it to a large tower where you could see a great view of the city and the coastline. There were 365 steps up to the bottom of the tower...I only know because Korea was nice enough to number them for us. And we also ventured to the infamous "love bridge" of Jinhae where the cherry blossom trees line along the sides of the bridge and branch over it. While it was beautiful (especially when we went at night to look at it), I just wasn't feeling the love effect, haha. :)

One of my favorite parts of the day was on our way down from the tower, we came across an area that had hula-hoops of all sizes to play with! We were pretty entertained for quite sometime. I must say the ajummas (old Korean ladies) put up some pretty stiff competition in the hula-hoop skills/stamina category!

For lunch on Saturday we decided to have an actual sit down meal instead of eating festival fried foods off of sticks, lol. As I've mentioned before, the restaurants where you can cook the meat yourself are one of my favorites in Korea :) While we did eat cooked meat, we also decided to be adventurous and try some raw beef. The taste was surprisingly good! This is my friend James, mixing in the egg for us.

The rest of the day we kept ourselves entertained, whether it was getting McDonalds delivered to the train station, buying the most random things, eating festival candies until we were sick, sipping coffee in a cafe, or just walking aimlessly...we had alot of fun! Here are some other pictures from our adventure:

 View of the middle of the festival from the top of the tower

 Outside of the bottom of the tower...it's very Korean to pose with the statues!

 Stairs that lead to...wherever you want to go...haha :)

 The Dunhofen brothers...being themselves!

 Corn dog on steroids...hot dog fried in batter, then rolled around in french fries & fried again!

 Mmm...more food on sticks, makes for a great peace sign! Thanks guys for giving me your trash sticks and making me look like super hungry lol

Up close and personal with the cherry blossom...camera quality not the best, but still pretty!

Saturday night after visiting a couple bars and the noraebang, we decided to just stay at the jjimjilbang instead of dealing the the complicated process of getting a hotel. So we caught a cab to an area outside of the festival area and went to check in. Right as we enter, a Korean couple in front of us it told that the sauna is full and nobody else may enter. GREAT! We then head to the nearest hotel where we are told that the 4 of us, me and 3 guy friends...can stay in one room without any beds...just blankets, pillows, and a heated floor. We gladly accept and tough it out for the night for $10 a piece. The room was actually more comfortable than what a jjimjilbang might be. The funny part was the little old man was super concerned with me staying in a room with 3 guys. We convinced him that we were only here to sleep lol. FYI: Koreans don't believe in unmarried or unrelated males and females staying in the same room. However, they are also known for their love motels where guys can order prostitutes. Go figure! Anyways, the sweet man brought us a 4th pillow, showed me how the hot water worked, and showed me an area to sleep...away from the guys on the floor HAHA! The next morning we got outta there as quickly as we could...not the kinda motel where you feel like hanging out. See the pics below:

 Not sure why this picture insists on turning sideways...but you get the point!

No mattresses...but they have a T.V. and a fridge...that makes it atleast 5 stars worthy!

SUNDAY:

So, the end of our adventure. Thanks to someone in the group having the genius idea of buying our Sunday train tickets home on Friday night...we were able to get a spot on the 3pm train. After escaping the "hotel room" we met up with the group at McDonalds. It was about 10:45am when we got there and as we stood in line everyone started talking about how hungry they were. I was super excited about McDonald's breakfast because that's all I've ever really eaten there back home. After I decide what I want, I'm standing in line and notice someone flip the signs over to the lunch menu. Everyone in our group realizes it's 11am, which is when they stop serving breakfast. Just our luck lol. So two of the people in our group were able to order breakfast...they became the outcasts, haha. Being that I'm not a morning person, I was pretty ticked by this so I ordered a Big Mac, which I didn't even want (and I didn't know how to order it plain) and ended up giving most of it to Shaun. Basically I had fries and a coke for breakfast. Which was ok, because a few hours later before we departed to the train we all decided to get Dominoes pizza...mmm! :) Great Sunday Korean food right?! lol. After McDonalds we went to the coffee shop that we had went to the day before. Only problem was, this time the lady forgot our order. After 45 minutes of sitting around staring at each other we finally realized that it shouldn't take that long to get some coffee, haha. Luckily we were trying to kill time until our train at 3.

The funniest part of the day was...we were all walking down the street together, it's quiet...and James goes, "damn, that was some good breakfast!" Needless to say, it got silent for about 5 seconds, then James got pushed into the road. LOL. And back to our pizza. We didn't make it to the train station with the pizza...we ate it in the streets which received many stares. :)

Eventually, after buying some cherry blossom treats for our teachers (it's customary to give a gift to the staff after you receive your first paycheck), and walking through the festival one last time...we made it to the train...where I slept for about an hour. Then our second train from Daegu was standing room only. Actually out of our group I was the only one that was able to get a seat when I bought my ticket, but it was so crowded I couldn't even make it to my seat. Oh well, we survived. Finally around 7pm I was back in my apartment. Overall, I would consider Jinhae a successful weekend and one of my favorites in Korea so far.

XOXO,

Amanda