Suncheon Garden Expo

This past week, I visited the Suncheon Garden Expo, a place which I've been meaning to go since I've been here, but hadn't made the opportunity yet.  This visit was on a Wednesday afternoon with many of the other native English teachers in Yeosu, who were all visiting with one of our co-teachers as some kind of bonding activity put on by the Yeosu Education Office.  Mind you, many of the teachers, both Korean and English, ended up abandoning each other to hang out with their respective group of friends.  I, however, managed to not be abandoned.  Although that was probably only because my co-teacher didn't know any of the other teachers there - but that's not the point! 
And as a random aside - I did feel a little bit passed around by the teachers at my school - originally my main co-teacher was supposed to come with me, but she was gone for training all week - so that's understandable.  Then it was supposed to be the vice principal, who became to busy to go, and then my grade 3 co-teacher, who was also too busy because she has a number of make-up classes to teach as she will be gone next week.  And so, I was passed on to my grade 6 co-teacher.  Now I wouldn't have felt so passed around if he hadn't told me about the fact that I was passed around, but there you have it.

Anyway, that story aside, what was I talking about? Right -- so I managed to not be abandoned, spending the day with not only my co-teacher, but also a few of my other teacher friends as well - even if we did separate and return to each other at times, but that story I'll tell a little bit later.

The Garden Expo itself was quite nice.  They had all different kinds of gardens: a traditional Korean garden, Japanese gardens, Thai, English, French, Spanish, Turkish, American, Dutch, German, and Italian gardens.  I'm pretty sure I'm missing some in there - but anyway, you get the idea - there were all different international styles of gardens throughout the expo area.  They also had many places where you could stop for food and ice-cream (Turkish), there was a tiny little zoo area with animals like badgers, foxes, rabbits, hedgehogs, otters, and parrots (not that many different kinds, and they were all trying to sleep when we were there).

 At the traditional Korean garden

Also, amazingly enough as it was the middle of October, many of the flowers were still in bloom providing a colorful afternoon.  Some, such as the sunflowers, had died off as they were out of season, but it was still very nice to see.  And of course, given my background, I had a massive amount of respect for the sheer amount of work that had to have gone into making the expo possible, so that may have given me a little bit of extra enjoyment compared to some of the other people who went.

 

 

If you want to see more pictures from the garden expo, please click here.

I kind of felt a little bit bad for my co-teacher though - I forced him to talk in English all afternoon, which must have been incredibly exhausting for him.  He kept stopping to sit down and 'take a rest', saying that he'd wait for me (and my friends when they were around) while we climbed up hills and such things.  And at one point he told me that from this afternoon he understood how I must feel at school (being out of place and not understanding all of what's being said, and things like that). Poor guy.  HOWEVER, since he called me cruel, maybe I'm not that sympathetic.  Allow me to explain.  When we were going through some of the first gardens my co-teacher and I decided to walk up a hill to see the view, and we left my friends behind at the bottom of the hill as they were busy taking photos and didn't want to go up the hill.  So, my co-teacher asked if I was going to wait for my friends, and I of course said no, and that we'd meet them later when we went back down, and if we lost them, I could always call them.  This is when he said I was cruel to my friends.  What?!  We're all independent adults, and we actually did in fact join up with them again not that long after, so I feel like that was a horrible thing to say to me! hehehe....

Always taking a rest...

Anyway, all in all, it was a lovely afternoon which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it was also quite nice because my co-teacher also explained about some cultural Korean things that we saw along the way.

Guardian 'trees'

Oh, and there was a mini-adventure at the end of the day, as when the bus dropped us off at the pick up point back in Yeosu, my co-teacher and I went to go find a cab, and there weren't many, so we walked for a while to a bus stop, where we waited for 15 minutes for the bus, and at that point it was starting to get a bit chilly, so when the bus finally came, we were temporarily relieved.  I say temporarily because the bus was PACKED and a couple people managed to get on it, but just as my co-teacher and I were about to get on the bus driver said no more people were allowed to get on!!  So, as it was chilly and we were hungry, we finally found a cab, and made it back to our home area safe and sound.  Yep, that's my story about that day.

Lovely Lanterns

This weekend a friend and I went to Jinju, a city about 2 hours outside of Yeosu, to go and see a lantern festival that has been going on. My other friends who were supposed to come, were unfortunately sick this weekend (feel better soon!!) So it was just the two of us, and we hopped on the one and only bus that goes out there and got ready for a lovely day full of blue skies, sunshine, lanterns and festival food.

When we arrived in Jinju, the festival was incredibly easy to find for two reasons: first, it was right next to the bus terminal, and second because the displays were quite big and could be seen from a good distance (which we weren't by the way...like I just said).

The first thing that you have to do when you get to this particular festival is cross the river - because while there are a few things on the bus terminal side of the river (like constructing your own floating lantern (for a small fee)) most things (the food, lantern displays, music, etc) were on the other side of the river.  However, in order to cross the river, you have to walk across these floating temporary bridges that were put up for the festival - and they charge you 1000 won EACH time you want to cross a bridge.  I believe that there were about 4 bridges that you could choose from.

There a number of displays in the river itself, and one activity that you could do was ride a little boat that weaved in and out of the river displays.  Once you cross the river, you are faced with the option of either taking a stroll under the lanterns or walking in front of the tents where they had information, places to rest and were selling food and souvenirs.  Over the course of the day, we did both (multiple times as we were waiting for it to get dark so the lanterns could be lit up).

There were two different kinds of lanterns that were displayed - the majority were blue and orange - and they all looked more or less the same, other than the attached ribbons that had the names of the people who made/hung them. (not really sure)  The other lanterns were referred to as 'creative lanterns'.  These lanterns were pretty much all very unique as they were made by people (again, for a small fee) attending the festival however they would like.

In our wanderings, we found a path that went up to the bridge along the road - and walked over that bridge (for free!!) to the other side, where there was a sort of children's area and a musical fountain, which we timed excellently as the show started right when we were about to decide what we should do next.

So, yes, the majority of the day was spent strolling around the area, enjoying the sites of the lovely lanterns, trying out some food, taking in some sunshine and things like that.

Oh - and as a random side note - I saw a few people that I haven't seen since orientation - and had a little chat with a couple of them, which was also rather nice...

At 6:00 when the sun went down behind the mountains, the number of people at the festival area increased incredibly quickly, as the lights in the lanterns was turned on.

The two of us took a stroll through the lit up lanterns - of course taking many pictures, and then went back to one of the bridges (which at this point had a long line up to get across), so that we could go back to the other side to catch the last bus back to Yeosu.  This time, crossing the bridge was much more interesting though because since there were so many people crossing at the same time it was moving around quite a bit and you needed your sea legs to keep your balance!

Before we left we also watched people launching their floating lanterns for a little bit.
I'll explain a bit since I know at least one person (**Mom**) wanted to hear more about it.  So what they did was put a floating platform out on the bank of the river - and people would go onto that to launch their lanterns, and then the current in the river would carry them along under the bridge and down the river.  While a few of the lanterns did get stuck along the banks - that wasn't necessarily a bad thing because people were pulling them out to take pictures (mildly unsafe - but this is Korea...) or they were poking them with sticks to get them to continue moving.  Also - they had a few, let's call them obstacles, (they were really floating kind of platform things similar to what was holding up the floating displays) placed in the river along the path of where the lanterns would float, so that they would be forced to go around and not all follow the exact same path.

Anyway, I think that explains most of our experience so it's likely off to the beach to get some more sunshine today! :)

For pictures from the Jinju Namgang Yudeung (Lantern) Festival, click here.