Be Rad in Korea: To Jinhae and Cheongdo we go!!!

Sorry it's been so long!

I've done a lot of fun stuff since I last posted... I got behind on my blogging so the task became more and more daunting with each event that passed.... now its condensed into one long one. I'll try and keep more on top of it from now on!

So, on Election Day (4/11), we decided to take a trip down to Jinhae (map), which is on the southern coast of South Korea. Jinhae is known for having a high concentration of cherry blossoms so people come from all over the country to walk along this two-mile long stream lined with cherry blossoms. We got up at about 6 and took a bus to Dongdaegu, the main transportation hub in Daegu. From there we got tickets for a train to a city near Jinhae, then we had to take a bus about another 30 minutes to actually get there. The morning was a little damp and foggy… the fog covered just the tops of the mountains and made everything look very beautiful. At about 11 the fog cleared and the sun came out. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Dongdaegu station

on the train

View from the bus

The BONO crew: Brad, Aaron, Alyssa, Chris, and Don

The Korean pose

Jinhae

Pretty flowers

The stream

Street vendor food

Speaking of street vendor food... I'm ashamed I didn't get a picture of this, but we found a street vendor that sold slushies... thats cool enough in itself... but these particular slushies had a compartment in the top third of the cup where fried popcorn chicken was held. The straw went through this little cup-like compartment so you could drink your slushie and eat the chicken at the same time... genius!

it was crowded...

One thing that I’ve gathered from Koreans, when it comes to hobbies, is that when they try and do something… they go all out. So when a Korean decides they want to get into hiking, they go to the nicest outfitter and buy ALL of the gear. We’re talking the hats, gloves, shirts, the pants, shoes, jacket, the walking sticks… When Koreans want to bicycle, they get the helmet, the cycling glasses, then spandex pants… ok I think you get it. Same thing goes for photography. So along this path there were guys lugging around these gigantic cameras taking pictures of their girlfriends by the cherry blossoms. It makes quite good people watching.

Also, I find it quite funny that in Korea it's very common for couples to wear matching clothing. Apparently it signifies that you're in a pretty serious relationship, and the guy usually decides when it's become acceptable to do so. Then I can only assume they go to some shop where they have guys and girls clothes in the same design laid out to buy (I'll get some pictures).

Last weekend, we signed up for a trip through the Daegu Compass (a foreigner magazine… great resource for those living in Daegu) to go see bullfighting. For 30,000 won (roughly $30) we got round trip bus fare (hour each way), wine tasting, tickets to the bullfighting, lunch, and strawberry picking after. So it was a great day! We got up at about 8 and made our way downtown to meet at the bus. Right from there we went to the wine tasting. The city, Cheongdo (map) is known for 2 things: bullfighting and persimmons. Before coming to Korea I didn’t know what a persimmon was, but it’s a citrusy orange like fruit. I think you can get them in the states… go buy one… it’s interesting. Anyways, so in this wine tunnel, all of the wine was made from persimmons. The tunnel itself, we found out, was made by the Japanese in the early 1900s to carry weapons and ammunition.

After our wine tasting we went over to the bullfighting arena, ate some lunch and watched the bulls fight for a few hours. It really wasn’t as gory as you might imagine. It was like two oversized billy goats going at each other. The rules are simple… the loser is whoever runs away first! One fight took 30 minutes to finish!

After the bull fighting we took the bus to a farm and we picked a carton of strawberries each! It was fantastic!