A Tale of Two Festivals

So I had a crazy and jam packed weekend. On Friday I went to Gyeongju, a city about an hour outside of Busan, with my school on a field trip. We took the grade 3s and 4s. The significance of Gyeongju lies in the fact that it was the captital of the Silla Kingdom (57 BC – 935 AD) which was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea and the longest sustaining dynasty in Asian history. A great number of Silla tombs can still be found in the centre of Gyeongju. Silla tombs took the form of a stone chamber which was surrounded by a soil mound. We visited such tombs as well as memorials for the two great kings and the one warrior who unified the Three Kingdoms of Korea. This was a good cultural experience but more than that it was a great day of bonding with my students. They are so adorable, they were all trying to hold hands with me and a few of them made me notes and drawings telling me they loved me. After that long day outside with the kids I went home a lil early and fell asleep. I woke up ate some McDonalds and called it a night. lol


Saturday was an absolutely amazing day! The others were late, so Taylor and I headed to the beach for the Eobang Festival (Fish Festival) taking place on my beach. There was free everything! Free face painting, flip flops, wish trees, balloon hats, characatures, traditional candy and games. The others eventually met up with us and we had a blast. As we walked along the beach a few local political figures asked us to sit down and eat with them. An extremely old lady kissed Taylor lol and another man told us not to worry about money. He bought us seafood pancakes, soup and my new fav drink Makoli (Korean rice wine of some sort). The Makoli was disgusting at first but I have to say that stuff really grows on you. In any event we continued on after lunch and checked out some more games and cool little jewellery vendors etc. After this the real fun began! We had signed up to participate in the traditional pulling of the fish net at 6pm. So we were suited up and ready to go. Little did we know we would be the celebrities of the night. We were interviewed by local news crews and given cool fish hats that lit up. We were constantly pushed into centre stage(beach) to dance and pulled in the net and participated in 3 exciting games of tug of war! After which we were awarded with more Makoli! We danced the night away and then watched in awe as a beautiful display of fireworks ensued over the Gwang-an bridge. After that we got some free beers at G Terrace (a beach side bar), grabbed some burgers at Breeze's Burns and finished the night off with some darts and more drinks at Thursday Party (another beach side bar). All in all one of the most amazing nights I've had in Korea.


Sunday was another festival. The lantern festival. We were once again signed up to participate in the festival. This time it was by walking in the parade. The lanterns looked beautiful at night, but in my opinion we got there far too early and did way too much sitting and waiting. I actually wished we had simply watched the parade rather than participated in it, but it was another experience in Korea nonetheless. Needless to say even though I wasn't dressed up in traditional Korean clothing like Taylor and Kiara, the locals were still waving at me frantically as if I was something special to see, despite the fact that almost everything else in the parade was way cooler to look at. Paulenna and I skipped out early because we were tired and cold. I must say I don't regret that decision lol.


Walter has left to Hong Kong for the week and I will meet up with him in Shanghai on Saturday. Looks like I'm in for another CrAzY weekend!!!!