A Long Weekend of Pancakes & Festivals

I love long weekends. And springtime. Andfestivals. And friends. Luckily for me, the past few days have encompassed all of these! This week I have Monday and Tuesday off (5/8 and 5/9) for Buddha's Birthday, plus I had last Thursday off for another public holiday, Children's Day. Luckily, the weather has been very accommodating to our plans for these extra days of playtime!

Thursday, Blythe hosted a Pancake Party, with the help of my enormous bag of pancake mix I purchased from Costco way back when. Everybody hadthe day off, so we gathered at Blythe's and ate our hearts out, played games, got to know some new people while I flipped the pancakes. It was a beautiful day, so once everyone had finished their pancakes, eggs, and fruit we all headed to Manseok Park near Blythe's apartment to enjoy the beautiful weather we had that day. The group of 20-ish waygookins (foreigners) made quite a spectacle walking through the park, but we found a grassy spot to lay down our blankets and bask in the beautiful sunshine. It was such a great day of new friends, relaxation, and sun. Good times!

Pancake Party attendees all piled onto Blythe's bed. I'm way in the back corner.

Friday evening, Blythe, Michelle, and our new chingu (friend) Gina, who is Blythe's friend from Sacremento now teachingin Suwon also, decided to try out a new meal for dinner in nearby Hwaseo. After a recommendation from a friend, we decided we couldn't wait any longer to try these Vietnamese shabu-shabu spring rolls. Shabu-shabu is the mongolian stew with the very thinly sliced meat and veggies that you cook at the table in a delicious broth. At this restaurant, we made the shabu-shabu, then placed the cooked meat and veggies inrice paper and made our own spring rolls with ingredients like carrots, cucumbers, radish, sprouts, and lettuce. The waitress, recognizing our inexperience in making the spring rolls, showed us how to do it and even fed her example-roll to us! Needless to say, it was DELICIOUS. By far one of the best meals I've had in Korea so far/coolest things I've done in Korea. I will definitely be going back soon.

Vietnamese Spring Roll pre-rolled. Mashisoyo! =)

That brings me to the Buddhist Lantern Festival andParade in Insadong on Saturday, also on the top of my list of coolest things I've done in Korea. The festival was held at the Jogyesa Temple, one of the many Buddhist Temples in Seoul. We walked along lantern-lined streets from the subway station to the temple. Once we arrived we saw that a roof had been created by lanterns that stretched across the entire grounds of the temple. The temple was decorated on the inside as well, and when you looked in you could see people praying. It started getting dark, so we went to stake out a spot for the parade. We were able to find an AWESOME spot to watch the incredible, hand-made lanterns parade by us. The parade itself was very festive, with musicians, colorful Korean traditional clothing, and people and lanterns by the thousands. What an incredible experience I was able to have there.

Street lined with laterns

Canopy of lanterns outside the temple

My festival-ing continued the following day when Gina & I checked out the Street Arts Festival in Ansan, a city about 40 minutes of Suwon. Once again the weather accommodated our day outdoors, spreading sunshine across a clear blue sky. It was the official initiation of sandal and skirt (without leggings under) season for me! Gina & I perused the booths of hand-made jewelry and clothing and enjoyed a few clowning/miming/mask performances at the festival. We returned to Suwon in the early evening each with some new jewelry and unique dresses from Turkish vendors at the festival. Fantastic! Once we were back in Suwon, the day was not over for me as I went home to quickly change into pants and was en-route again, this time to Itaewon (the foreigner district of Seoul). I took the hour + 10min journey from Suwon (bus from my apartment to a subway stop in the outskirts of Seoul where I can catch Line 4, which goes straight towards Seoul, a transfer to line 6 to Itaewon) to meet Val & his friends at a bar after a Cameroonian Society meeting. After making my rounds and saying hi to the others there, Val and 5 of his friends and I decided to go dancing in Hongdae, a university area about 20 min away by subway. We ended up going to the same place I went for New Year's Eve, and it was just how I remembered it-- crowded and bad music. Oh well, it was fun to spend a night with my "boys". We got home around 2:00am and crashed.

Monday was spent at Suwon Station with Blythe and Michelle. We got lunch at our favorite Indian/Turkish food place, then took advantage of the rainy day and went to the movies. The only English movie that had showings around the time we were there was Source Code, an action movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal (hey, I spelled his name right the first time!). It was OK. The ending kind of sucked. After the movie we got coffee at a little cafe nearby- Cafe Soho. After warming up a bit I braved the rain to get to the bus stop and went home. Monday evening and all day Tuesday were spent at home, relaxing with Val. Aaaah. Now that's what vacation is all about.

That's enough for you to digest for now. More to come!

Love,

Mel

UPDATE: Pics are now up on Facebook. For those of you who are not on Facebook, you can see the pics here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.577878385216.2082511.29503208&l=12ad3ff53e