46th Annual Cherry Blossom Festival

Lucas and I just got back from an eleven hour day. But what a beautiful day! We went with his co-teacher Jae Won and Whitney and Neal to Jinhae, about two hours outside of Daegu on the southcoast. It was the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival and it was easy to see why this was the city to host the event. When you're on the highway, you come out of a tunnel to millions of cherry trees. It's absolutely crazy. Kids had little shovels and they were scooping up the fallen petals. Thousands of people were walking along the roads that are lined with Cherry blossoms. We did get lost in the city. Jinhae was where Jae Won's father was born, so he called him a couple times for directions. We passed by a military base that had soldiers out front just chillin' with their assault rifles. Awesome. The base overlooked the harbour and there were rigs and ships galore. The festival itself was on the Naval Base. As you can see in the pictures, there were a couple battleships, but we were 10 minutes late to be able to go on them. Jae Won tried to tell the guy a sob story about how we came all the way to Canada to see this festival, and how could he turn us away? He did. Oh well. Got some pictures of the ships, cute kids, and a pink and blue whale. We then made our way to find some food and I threw a couple handfuls of petals at Whitney and Lucas. It kinda made me think of in Sleeping Beauty, when Merriweather and such are trying to change the colour of the dress from blue to pink, and I just kept imagining that sound their magic made when I was throwing the petals. Anyway. After dinner, we climbed up a mountain that had a monument on it that was originally made as a memorial for the Russo-Japanese War, but then that was destroyed because it was made by the Japanese, and Koreans don;t exactly LOVE them. But it was rebuilt as a testament to Korean courage, or something along those lines. It was a good hike, I think there were 365 stairs, and then the pagoda style building. You could see the entire city from there, it was gorgeous. We tried some coconut. Some guy had a stack of coconuts and was drilling holes in them and then put a straw in it. You just drank the milk. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be...We stopped to watch the Army and Navy bands play some music. We were a little lost in the city, but eventually made our way back to the car, and back to Daegu. It was such a perfect day for the trip, the weather was lovely. The cats missed us all day though. They looked sad when we left. They know that Saturdays are the days they get more time with us :) So now they are both hanging out in the computer room with Luc and I making sure we don't leave again! P.S. Yes, I stalk Korean babies.