dear friends and family who do not have facebook,

I have created a Korean photo blog of some of my favorite pictures/events.

check it out: http://brikorea.tumblr.com/

and to add to the blog line up I also have my art site too: http://brionnahughes.com/

xoxox

Brionna

Spring

Oh my, it has been so so long! Who knew sitting down to write a new post could become so difficult? I have officially been in Korea for 6 months and I am about to start my 3rd term. Its definitely time for an update.

Spring has officially arrived and along with it cherry blossoms, sunshine, thunderstorms, and more festivals than you could count or ever imagine a country this small to have.

Festivals.

• Jindo Sea Parting Festival.

Ok, this was actually more than a few months ago, but I never got around to telling you about it. The Sea Parting, or Miracle Road Festival to religious Koreans, happens once a year in Jindo in Jeollanam-do Province. The sea "mysteriously" parts and you can walk from the mainland to a nearby island. This phenomenon is caused by the difference in high tides and low tides, which creates a 2.8-kilometer-long road measuring 40 to 60 meters in width.

Lucy and I took an early am bus from Seouland arrived at the Jindo bus station about 4 hrs later. Side note, Korean bus drivers are crazy, not afraid of the brake pedal or of taking corners at excessively high speeds. Upon arriving at the bus station we needed to find our way to the festival location along the coast. We decided to take a bus which caused a whole lot of confusion. While waiting alone outside for our bus to, hopefully, come I was ambushed by a group of high school aged Koreans, who were very excited to practice their english on me. Through muddled Konglish, I was told that they liked my shoes, thought I had a nice face, and then of course they talked for a very long time about my nose ring.

We soon gave up on the bus, returned our tickets, and took a taxi. When we arrived at the festival location we bumped into some other expats that we had met at the bus station. We joined forces and found a hostel together. In the end our little expat group grew to about 10.

Our hostel was pretty typical Korean, just anempty room, with blankets and a heated floor. But this one had one bathroom, located outside of all of the rooms. Another problem we encountered was the Jindo apparently had no ATMs. A weekend of no showers and no food.

We soon met up with some friends that I went to college with, bought some soju (Korean rice liqour) and made our way to the Miracle Road. It was very cool! It was also very muddy and the water was freezing! My feet hurt so bad, but it was too pretty to stop walking. We saw gorgeous blue and orange starfish, lots of abalone shells, and many other little sea creatures. Many tourists were there to walk across, but many Koreans were there to harvest the sea creatures and sea plants. One Korean crossing the land bridge asked my to face time with his wife over his iphone, oh Korea.

- our hostel

About halfway through the land bridge crossing, disaster struck! Suddenly all of the soju we had drank hit my bladder at once and I had to pee so bad. I really wanted to turn back, but my friends convinced me to try and make it to the other end, we were so close. So I kept going. Then about 5 mins later, the Korean sea police started blowing their whistles and telling us to turn back, the tide was coming in. OH NO! I literally thought I was going to pee my pants in the middle of the Miracle Road. So I ran ALL the way back across the land bridge.

After wandering around the few tents they had and listening to a few men dressed in a sort of Korean drag sing and dance, we made our way back to our hostel. Havingonly a few wons in our pockets we found a tiny little, connivence store. It wasn't much of a store, more of a one room apartment, with half a store attached to the front, selling random snacks, juices, alcohol and cigarettes. In the front half of the shop the owner and about 4 other local men were sitting around a bubbling pot of Kimchi Jiggae (kimchi stew) having dinner. We practically walked right into their dinner, and before we knew it we were being invited to sit down and were being passed shots of soju and Jindo's very own liqour. I have no idea what it was made out of, but I had sampled it at the festival earlier that day. Its a dark red color and taste like rubbing alcohol mixed with hairspray. We gladly accepted spoonfuls of jiggae and shots of liquor, we were broke abd starving. They men were very friendly and more than excited to be talking with us. After dinner we joined the rest of our expat group for a bonfire on the beach.

It was a good weekend.

Dinner in the snack shop.

• Cherry Blossom Festival.

Wasn't much of a festival, just a street lined with cherry trees. I had been to the area a week earlier when Lucy and I rented bicycles and rode around. Only difference now was the amount of people. Cherry blossoms are beautiful, but I grew up on a cherry and apple farm. Although I do love the blossoms, the excitement of it all was lost on me.

• The Hampyeong Butterfly Festival

......or as I now refer to it The Great Butterfly Bust

How fun does a butterfly festival sound? Tons of fun!? Thats what I thought! So a few weekends ago Lucy and I boarded a bus for a 5 hour ride to what we thought would be a wonderful weekend of butterflies, flowers, and general loveliness. Upon arriving in Hampyeong we quickly realized how wrong we were. Due to some unknown error we got the dates wrong. There was no festival and there barley was a town. While we were sitting in the bus station trying to come up with a back up plan we were approached by one the five expats that lives in the area. He was friendly, from Seattle, and reaffirmed how wrong we were.

We walked around Hampyeong, it took about 5 mins, but some lunch, tuna kimbap, and decided to go to Mokpo, about an hr away.

Mokpo was a little coastal city. Day one in Mokpo we walked along the harbor and went on a wonderful hike.

The best part of the whole weekend was the laser light show, or as the locals proudly called it The Dancing Water Fountain. It hilarious, the music, the drunk Koreans singing along, it was great! I had to video it to capture at least a portion of the greatness:

Mokpo day two we decided to take a ferry around the islands. While buying ferry tickets we were greeted by Mr. Lee, the very friendly tour guide. We seemed to be the only tourist he had seen in a while and he was more than eager to help. He even gave us a personalized tour of the museum while we waited. His enthusiasm was very entertaining, the language barrier and the overall awkwardness added to the hilarity. Take for example this piece of our conversation: "this island is famous for Bumping Bisssshees?" (pause) "Ohhhh Jumping Fish!" "Yes, yes, you understand, yes?"

The ferry ride was fun. Very small walk on ferry that connects people on the island to the mainland, Mokpo. I don't think most people ride it for fun, but we enjoyed it!

• Lotus Lantern Festival.

This may be my favorite festival yet.

The Lotus Lantern Festival is the celebration of Buddha's birthday in Seoul. It included a lantern parade, a Buddhist culture street fair and a traditional lantern exhibition in and around Jogyesa and Bongeunsa Temples. It was beautiful!!

Saturday we went to Bongeunsa Temple. The entire temple was covered in colorful lanterns.

The white tags are wishes.

White lanterns are wishes for the dead.

Colorful lanterns a general life wishes.

Saturday night we went to the lantern parade. It was so, so beautiful. So many amazing lantern floats.

Sunday was the Buddhist culture street fair. A street in the area on Insadong was shut off from traffic for about a mile and lined with hundreds of booths. There were booths about korean and international Buddhist culture, local community groups, food samples, games, and many interactive booths (lantern making, candle making, incense making......) It was so much fun!!!!!!

Lotus candle making.

making wishes

making a little paper lotus.

The street fair was also located in and around Jogyesa Temple. Like the temple before, it was covered in colorful lanterns. I don't know if I could ever get tired of all the beautiful lanterns, wish I could cover my apartment with them. I'm in love with them.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully I will return again soon to fill you in on all of my upcoming adventures:

Bungee Jumping (hopefully) for my 25th Birthday

Tour of the DMZ

Gangneung Beach Trip

Vacation to the Philippines

Stay tuned.