한국에많은축제있어요

In my broken Korean, I hope that the title of this blog post says, "Korea has a lot of festival." I have known that for a while, but this month is making that fact even clearer. This weekend alone, Gianni and I went to three festivals. This month in Daegu alone there were/are 6 festivals that I know of; colorful daegu festival, suseong lake festival, palgongsan festival, herb medicine festival, dongseongro festival, opera festival.

Starting on Thursday evening, I convinced our Korean teacher to take us to the Herb Medicine Festival. To be fair, this festival was moved to the fall because of the Sewol accident, and it wasn't supposed to be this month, but still. It wasn't a big festival, and it was mostly just different vendors selling various herbs. I wish I could understand enough Korean to know what the herbs were for and how to consume them. It was a fun learning experience to walk around and learn random Korean words with our teacher. She ended up buying all us soaps in the shape of teeth! They are so weird, but the women who sold the soaps were funny.

After we got back from the festival, our teacher decided to tell us the story of Foundation Day, which was this past Friday (so we got a long weekend!). The story is part of an old religion called Cheondoism. Korea was formed on October 3 about 4,346 years ago by Dan-Gun, the son of a God named Hwan-Ung, who came down to Taebec Mountain. The more interesting story though is about Dan-Gun's father and mother. His mother, named Ung-Nyeo, was a bear who appealed to the God Hwan-Ung to turn her human. He told her to go in a cave and eat only herbs for 100 days. When she finally left the cave, she turned into a beautiful woman, and Hwan-Ung fell in love with her.



Friday, we went with Matthew and Maria to the Hahoe Village in Andong during the Andong Mask Dance Festival. We were unimpressed by the festival last year, but the Hahoe Village is a very special place in Korea, and we'd never been. Gianni and I managed to get to the bus station quite early and get tickets, but we didn't realize we didn't have seat numbers on the bus. It was first come, first serve seating, so by the time Maria and Matthew came and we got on the bus, the bus was almost full. We weren't about to stand for over an hour, so we had to wait for the next bus. The bus to Andong took longer than expected due to traffic, but we made it to the bus station without a problem. Unfortunately, the bus station is pretty far away from any of the tourist sports in Andong.  You'd think they'd have a free shuttle or at least more buses running, but of course they don't! We tried to take the public bus, but it was already jam-packed before it even got to the bus station bus stop. We had to pay 25,000 won in order to get a taxi to the village. When we got there, we were all hungry for lunch, so we decided to eat a few of the special foods from Andong, grilled (or maybe smoked) mackerel and jjimdak. Jjimdak is a meat with chicken, vegetables, and glass noodles. Everything is cooked in a somewhat sweet and flavorful but watery broth/sauce. Gianni and I had the grilled mackerel last year at the festival and haven't stopped thinking about it since. We've been trying to find it, but we didn't realize it was an Andong specialty dish. We got one plate of each, and the meal was around 50,000 won for the 4 of us, which is a bit

our delicious meal

expensive for Korea. It was all delicious though, and served with more side dishes than I have ever seen in a meal. They have a shuttle bus from the museum near the Hahoe village into the village itself because it's kind of separated. When we got there, there was a comedy mask performance going on. Unfortunately, we didn't speak enough Korean to understand what was happening, so it was a bit boring for us. The Hahoe village is a village comprised of old style straw-roofed houses. They do a lot of farming there still. It's similar to a historical village at home, except that people actually live there all the time, and they don't have to do everything like it was done way back when. They have cars and TV and stuff. There are a lot of guest houses in the village where you can stay and experience some traditional Korean culture. We spent a few hours getting lost in the village's winding dirt streets. It's a very beautiful place although there isn't a lot to do. Leaving was easier said than done though. We tried to get the bus back to the station, but, again, it was jamed
full before we could even get on. We then opted for the taxi and asked the poor women at the

The flowers I became obsessed with photographing

information booth by the village to call us one. These women were swamped with people doing the same things and fighting over the taxis as they came. It took probably an hour before our taxi finally showed up. You would think for something as popular as a festival, that there would be taxis at the taxi stand there because there will, clearly, be customers. But there were none! It's so stupid that they had to be called. I could understand them not being there on a normal day, but this was a festival. Ugh! We finally made it back to the station just in time to catch a bus that was about to leave for Daegu.

On Saturday morning, I went to the Nokdong Seowon Confucian Academy and Korea-Japan Friendship Center as part of the stamp trail. I'm getting down to the wire on finishing the trail, so I'm really trying to cram them in. There's only three more weekends left to do it, and I still have three more places to see. But of the three left, I am only going to be in Daegu for one of them! I'll be in Busan this weekend for the Busan Film Festival. It's a long weekend for me because its Hangul Day (the day the writing system for the country was invented by King Sejong) on Thursday, and my school was nice enough to give me Friday off as well. Gianni's school didn't, unfortunately, so he will join me in Busan on Friday night. Then we're in Busan again in two weekends for the Fireworks Festival. It's going to be a busy few weeks. Anyway, getting to the Academy wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We've been having such bad luck with the branch buses, so I expected to have to take a taxi. This branch bus comes about ever 40 minutes though, so it wasn't bad at all. . The Nokdong Seowon Confucian Academy was built in 1789 to commemorate the achievements of Kim Chung-Seon. Kim was a Japanese general who became a naturalized Korean citizen during the Japanese Invasion in 1592. He later spent many years in the Korean military, helping to defend the country against further foreign invasions. The Nokdong Seowon Confucian Academy is a very peaceful place, located off the beaten path surrounded by trees and mountains. Next to the Academy is the Korea-Japan Friendship Center, a museum, opened in 2012, focusing on the long periods of positive interactions and relations between the two countries. The museum also offers several experience programs, including trying on traditional clothing from both countries and doing a tea tasting. There were a ton of people doing some sort of class, trying on hanbok, but I didn't know if it was open to the public to do or not. It seemed like they were with a group of some kind. When I was ready to leave, I sat down at the bus stop and started to eat my peach yogurt breakfast. Rob, my old boss, wanted to chat on skype, so I was trying to manage too many things in my hands, and I ended up spilling my yogurt all over my pants! Ugh! I cleaned it off in the bathroom (thank God the museum had one!), but I still smelled like peach. While I was at the Academy, Gianni, kindly, packed all our things to visit Jinju overnight and brought me a clean pair of pants. We met at the bus station to head out. Jinju had it's annual Lantern Festival, and we went to stay with Lish for the night. It almost feels surreal thinking about how much things have changed since then.

The view from the mountain. Lanterns on the right.

Jinju Fortress behind the lanterns

We got some dinner with Lish and her boyfriend, Ryan, and headed up a mountain in the city to see the view of Jinju and the festival from above. Actually, the mountain view makes it so you could only see a few of the lanterns, but it was still a beautiful view of the city. We didn't even have to hike up because there's a paved road, so the taxis can just drive it. We walked back down the mountain and headed to the festival along the river. Our first stop was the ticket booth to make a reservation for a river boat ride. We weren't able to do it last year because it was sold out, and I was disappointed, so it was nice to be able to do it this year. We had to kill time for 2.5 hours before our boat ride, so we went to the floating bar and got some beer and fish cakes on a stick (odang). We walked along the river a bit, looking at the new lanterns. The boat ride was short but worth it. You get to sit on an open boat with a lantern on it. They had an eagle, a dragon, and a fish boat, and we got the eagle. The boat took us back and forth down the river so that we could see the lanterns more closely. They are beautifully constructed. After the boat ride, we were all exhausted, so we went back to Lish's house to sleep.


We woke up on Sunday at only 10:30am. I felt like we went to bed way later than we did, and I had woken up a few times and the sun was up, so I thought the sun was up for longer than it actually was. I was really surprised to check the time and see it was only 10:30 because I thought it would be like 2pm or something. We all slowly got ready and went to a coffee shop that also served paninis for breakfast! I haven't had a panini in over a year! Tomato, mozzarella, and actual pesto! After that, we relaxed for a few hours before heading to the bus station to go home at around 3:30. When we got there, the place was packed! We had planned to get on a bus around 4, but the next bus was only at 6:50! Gianni and I ate dinner and waited at a coffee shop until it was finally time to head home.

It was a weekend of festivals and friends, and it was excellent getting to see Lish again. From now on, we are going to try to go to new festivals that we weren't able to get to last year, and I'm really excited for what this new year has to offer.