Cherry Blossom Festival

This past weekend was the Cherry Blossom Festival in JinHae, a small town about 3 hours east of us. We hopped on a bus with our three friends, Brooke, Ryan and Matt on Saturday and arrived at about 5:00 PM. There were cherry trees lining every road and major hang out area. They really were beautiful and we spent the evening wandering through the market that had sprung up to cater to the nearly 2,000,000 people that would come over the course of the festival.

One of the most popular meals was halves of pigs, slow roasting over hot coals. There were probably 10 - 20 different tent restaurants that were serving this dish. We partook, and it was fantastic. Surprisingly expensive for Korea, but delicious and worth it in the end.

We ate, we walked, we sat and we called it a night. We were thankful because it was supposed to rain all weekend long, and the rain stopped before we even got on the bus that afternoon.

The next day was not raining, but something worse than rain. It was a dust storm.

Dust from China/Mongolia had kicked up something fierce and it was the worst storm of the year so far. They issue advisories for 400 micrograms of dust per cubic meter. Warnings come at 800 micrograms. Yesterday's storm was 1100 micrograms. We didn't know that. We walked about 8 - 10 kilometers. Within the first hour, we had all bought baby blue masks (quite common here) to help filter out some of the dust. It was a wretched feeling and just made you feel gross all over.

It should be on the west coast of North America within the next two or three days, so tell us what you think!

Dust aside, it was a good time. Culturally, we (being from wide open spaces) were expecting something a little more like a "Cherry Blossom Forest" and a little less like "Cherry Blossom Carnival," which is a more suiting title. Being in Korea, you learn to not expect things to be a certain way but to just be happy for what things are.

For what it was, it was good.