Spring Festivals!

Festivals are very common in Korea.  It seems like the Koreans will come up with any excuse to have a celebration.  This does not bother us one bit, over the last few weeks we got to celebrate Children's Day, Buddha's Birthday, and  cookies! 

Children's Day Celebration

The Children's day celebration was the first festival we wandered through.  There was face painting, cotton candy, icecream, crafts, and heavy machinery for the children to operate :)  What's even better than all this?  The celebration got us out of school for the day! 

Our good friend Kate came down for the cookie festival.  We started the morning out making some gimbap for a picnic lunch along the river trail to Daksil (a traditional Korean village just outside of Bonghwa).  After lunch, we took Kate to see the village and headed to the cookie festival! 

To our amazement and surprise, hidden in a small mountain valley, we didn't necessarily find cookies at the festival...but a strange Dr. Seuss-like cartoon village filled with a man-made river, waterfalls, and strange submarine houses. 

Jesse's student helped us
create a family motto

whoops...the motto was
upside down!  Thanks
new friend :) 

A good lesson we have learned here in Korea, is to expect anything...whether it makes sense or not, and just go with the flow of things. So despite our shock, we wandered into the celebration to join thousands of Koreans while witnessing Korean children dressed up in Czech outfits playing accordians and broomsticks on stage (not joking...they actually could play the accordian pretty well!), old men poking at dead trout in the stream, and men selling hamsters along with cotton candy. 



Buddha's Birthday is today, so we will see what the Koreans have in store!