I'm trying to catch up...

Okay, so  I haven't updated in a while because I always end up writing too much. So the answer is to update often to I can have shorter posts, but you guys know I always take too long to tell a story so it's difficult. But this time I will try to let the pictures do most of the explaining.

Alright, I will start with the Jindo Festival I went to last month. It was really interesting. The Yellow Sea parts in a few various sections for about two hours a few times a day, for a few days, twice a year. I hope that makes sense. So every 6 months or so, there is a festival for the "parting of the sea" in Jindo. Its in the southern part on the western side of Korea. You can walk across from the mainland to a small island about a mile and a half away, maybe only a mile. The legend is that the sea parts so that this old woman can go see her family on the island. They were separated somehow, and she only gets to see them twice a year. (I don't actually know the legend, I just saw a statue and someone told me that the lady riding the tiger is why the sea   parts..)  Anyway, so that's the legend that Koreans tell.
But the festival was awesome! We had to get these thigh high rain-boots so we wouldn't be soaked walking through the sea. There were tons of foreigners there, and tons of Koreans (obviously) but while us foreigners just came because it is a spectacular thing to see, the Koreans were there to get some easily caught sea food.   I will explain in the pictures following.

So here we are, before the sea has parted. See that island off to the right? That is where people will be able to walk in a few hours.

And we're off! Just leaving for the island (which we didn't make it to since we had a bus to catch) Yes, I know I look like a retard.

Stopping to look at things...I think Kyla thought she saw a starfish or something...idk. But anyway, if I may direct your attention to the bent over people in the background. Those are all Koreans looking for clams, fish, small octopus and crabs. Which they found...and stuffed into plastic bags.

Taking pictures with the huge line of people in front of us....see how long that is? It was amazing!

Finding more things...unfortunately we don't have a picture of the lady, or the little boy, that reached down into the water and came up with a squirming octopus in their hands. It was hilarious. We clapped for them of course.

Aaaaannndddd, Kyla found a starfish! But Emilee (featured in the picture) is the only one I found that has a picture with it. So, here is the starfish we found. Some other foreign girls were came up and asked "can we hold your starfish too?" Haha, we knew it didn't belong to us, but we did kind of act like it was ours.So we responded, "sure! you can hold our starfish!"

But we were worried it would start to dry up and die, so we all quickly took turns holding it and taking pictures before we carefully placed it back into the water. Literally, 2 seconds later, an ajjusshi (who had been watching us this whole time) splashes over to us and kicks the starfish we had just lovingly placed back in the water, and sends it flying. He turns to us and says "no no. bad...yucky" and splashes off, leaving us all with our mouths open. Our beloved pet starfish was probably upside down somewhere....drying out...poor starfishy. 

So, that was the Jindo festival. It was really fun and I am so glad I got to see it. It is definitely one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. 

Our next trip was to Busan, which we just came back from this Sunday. It was really fun as well. Busan is the San Francisco of Korea with the coastline running along the front of the city, and gorgeous mountains at the back of it. Last Friday was Buddha's birthday, a huge holiday here in Korea. All of us teachers had the day off, so we decided to go to Busan on Thursday night and stay the weekend. We didn't realize how big of a deal this holiday was until we tried booking hostels and they were all booked up two and a half weeks in advance. We also didn't know that Busan is a real hotspot to go to for this holiday, so everything was REALLY packed. We eventually got a 6 bed dorm in an all girls hostel right on the most famous beach in Busan (Haeundea Beach) It was, of course, quite expensive, but there wasn't any other option really, so that's where we stayed. On Friday, I met up with a Korean friend and we went to a famous temple up in the mountains, while the other girls went to the beach. ( I heard it was cold and windy, so they didn't stay long, but it was long enough for them to get horrible sunburns! Poor girls!)

 Anyway, the temple was really awesome. I heard that it is very famous, and a lot of people want to see it, but it is not open to the public on a regular basis, so it was a special thing to get to see it. Especially on one of the biggest holidays in Korea. There were lanterns everywhere. They were lining the paths up the mountain, covering the festival areas like a canopy and there were even huge animal shaped ones. It was really something. My friend and I walked all around the temple (except inside the places of worship) and we made paper lotus flowers (since that seemed to be some sort of traditional thing to do). We stayed until 6:30 when the lighting of the lantern ceremony took place. It wasn't as impressive as I was hoping since it was still light outside, but I got to see a little bit of a Buddhist ceremony (or something) so that was interesting.

 These are the lanterns that were everywhere! It was really something to see them in person!

 This is Ryan, the friend I was with. He is a friend of one of the Koreans I know at UCO. He plans on going to UCO next year, so he wants to practice his English as much as he can before he goes. (He actually photo bombed this pic...I was trying to get a picture of the mountain.)

 A man saying "Happy Birthday" to Buddha. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures of the actual Buddha statues, but they were huge, and some of them were really mean/scary looking.

 Here is just one of the many pathways that were lined with these red lanterns. Do you see the Buddhist monk in the orange?

 I don't know what this thing is exactly, but I do know that it is the 454th treasure of Korea. Ryan and I were laughing about it on the way to the temple because they had signs in Korean and English that said "Korea's 454th treasure 35m ahead." It was just silly.

 Here are the paper lotus flowers we made! I'm surprised at how good of a job he did considering he's a guy, but I wasn't actually too surprised because Korean boys seem to like, and be good at arts and crafts, as I have found out from my students when we do art activities.

I was trying to get a good pic of the lanterns when they were lit, but it didn't turn out so well. 

Anyway, so I think that is plenty for one post. I still have some other things to tell you about, but I'll do it in a new post, so for now, enjoy this one! The weather is beginning to get really humid here, but it hasn't been too bad yet. I am not looking forward to June and July though! 

Talk to you later! Have a wonderful day!~TWGA