Jindo Sea Parting Festival.

Thursday, looking at the people from a bird's eye view!

Our nice new friend, Mr. Park and Brandon.

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Sea Parting Festival

On Wed. and Thurs, we took vacation and headed to the west coast. There was a sea parting festival going on, and we thought we should check it out. It took us over 6 hours to get there, as the town is on an island and it quite small. We changed buses 3 times and finally made it there around 2pm. The festival itself was outside of town, so we hopped on a city bus and made it to the grounds around 4pm. Luckily for us, the actual parting occurred at 5pm, so we timed it perfectly. We grabbed some rubber boots and started marching across the sea from one island to the next. It was a really amazing experience and we're glad we had the chance to participate.
On Thursday, we ended up being shown around the whole island by a government official who works in Seoul but is from Jindo(the island). We were with him for over 5 hours, and he took us on a ferry boat cruise, out to lunch, a temple, a museum, and finally back to the Sea Parting Festival. We were very lucky to have met him, as we would not have been able to get to all those places without a car. He was a very friendly man and we learned lots of interesting things.
Saturday we had TKD for 2 hours. It's closely approaching our black belt test date, May 13, and our teacher is having Saturday classes for all the students to fine tune their skills.
Next weekend we're going with B's school to Seoul to visit an English Village. That should be fun.

The path leading to the temple.


One row of the famous wooden scripts.

The rarely decorated outer hall.

Daegu (대구) & Haeinsa (해인사)

Yesterday we visited the 3rd largest city in Korea: Daegu. We'd been there b4 but only to the famous amusement park there. H's school had a meeting there, so we hitched a free ride in the van. While the teachers were in the meeting, we checked out downtown. Unfortunately for us, the city is pretty spread out and we spent more time trying to get places than we did actually enjoying them. At 4pm we met up with our group again, and were pleasantly surprised when they decided to visit Haeinsa, a famous temple.
This temple is famous as it holds the "Koreana Tripitaka" the oldest Buddhist scripts in Korea. They have been preserved for at least a thousand years in their original storage place! Another interesting thing is that the temple had just finished holding a festival, so there were colorful banners everywhere! We'd never seen that at a temple before. It was a beautiful spring day and we had a great time. When we got home around 10pm we were greeted by our new camera that we won from the contest! It's pretty sweet!!
Yesterday was also an important day as Emily Schmidt and Trent Museus were married in Brainderd, MN. We're really sorry to have missed their special day. We wish them the best!

Weekend in Seoul

Last weekend we spent a wonderful weekend in Korea's capital, checking out a cherry blossom festival held in the heart of the business district. The weather was nice, and we had a lot of fun. I put about 40 pictures on my Facebook account, and if you want you can check out the link. We have no concrete plans for this weekend yet, but with the weather warming up we want to take advantage of it. We hear it's been snowing a lot back in the States, and are sad if it's caused any hardships (my sister is now playing softball indoors).

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On the steps leading to the tower.

Jinhae Cherry Blossoms

Last Sunday we visited Jinhae for the Cherry Blossom Festival. The day was overcast and it tried to rain, but that was ok for us as less people ventured out. The thing we didn't know was that a sand storm had come to Korea from China, and it was advised that people stay indoors. We did get a text message about this, but we can't understand Hangul. Oops. There were still enough people so that the area was crowded, so we must be ok.
There were two parts to the festival; first we climbed 365 stairs to a look-out tower, and then climbed the tower's stairs. We had a good view of all the beautiful trees. Next, we took a shuttle bus to the Naval Academy and got to walk around there a bit. It was a good time.
We plan on taking a night bus to Seoul this Friday after work. There's a cherry blossom festival in the middle of the city, so that should be pretty cool.