Korean Culture Festival

A lovely mini festival was held in our town celebrating Korean culture, there were performances from dancers, singers and bands. I have learnt that Koreans are very proud of their culture, they all have a detailed knowledge of their countrys history and they try to preserve many of their traditions.

Traditonal Korean Fan Dance

Soldiers carrying a Princess!

Sunny Seoul!

Seoul seems to have transformed now Spring has arrived, the streets are busy with people enjoying the warm weather, the restaurants have opened up their window and doors and mini festivals and performances are being held in the squares. We had a great weekend in Seoul enjoying this change in atmosphere. Our friend taught us the traditional Korean game Yut Nori (Yunnori), we then went to Gwanghamun where we took in some sights and then to Jongak where we played real American beer pong despite some practice at University we still lost!

Yut Nori in the park

Gwanghaun in central Seoul

Real beer pong!

Our Garden

Bringing some nature into our apartment :)

In looks like typical British weather outside today!

Lake Park Ilsan

Spring has arrived! At last we have been able to put away our winter jackets and enjoy spending some time outside. This week I decided to explore the famous Lake Park in Ilsan and I was pleasantly surprised. The park was a lot larger than I expected and it was nice to see some grass, trees and finally some Cherry blossom!

Wine and Champagne Buffet

We splashed out at the weekend and went to an all you can eat all you can drink wine and champagne buffet at the Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul. The wine and 'champagne' was fairly decent and there was even sangria. The majority of the food was pretty good too, apart from the dessert which looked like brownies and flapjack but in fact turned out to be rice cakes, I knew it was too good to be true! It was nice to pretend to be sophisticated for a few hours, although this didn't last very long as we ended up going to Itaewon, the dodgy 'foreigner' district...

Our first glimpse of Cherry Blossom

Living it up for a few hours!

Korean workout

After a few months of putting it off, I finally bit the bullet and joined the gym. As well as all the usual equipment they have a few other additions that are essential to your work out. These include a machine with bands of rubber that jiggle your fat, a rotating barrel with wooden balls that you sit on and a machine that hangs you upsde down! I wish that was all there was to exercise!

Boiled egg?

If you were on an Easter egg hunt in Korea you would be looking for a long time! There was no evidence of Easter at all over the weekend (even though over 25% of the population are Christian). The closest I came was this boiled egg, which some friends were given a cafe! Despite this I enjoyed an Easter brunch, instead of a roast dinner, and some Ferrero Rocher!

Happy Easter!

The no cherry blossom festival!

One of the must sees when you come to Korea is the cherry blossom, so since we have been here we have been looking forward to Spring. To make more of an event of it we decided, along with a few friends to go on a trip to Jinhae (a town on the South coast) with the Seoul Hiking Group. This meant another very early bus  journey! First on the itinerary was a hike on an Island which was very pretty but we were later told was meant to be covered in pink flowers. However, this has been one of the coldest Aprils in Korea for many years so alas there were no blossoms at the cherry blossom festival the next day! Despite this we managed to have a lot of fun some of the highlights including Jack and friends swimming in the windy cold Korean sea, green tea birthday cake, a beach bonfire (started by Jack) and a chicken Kebab! I think we will be seeing the cherry blossom in Seoul after all!

Hiking

Going in for a dip

Jack was specifically requested to demonstrate the the rice cake making!