pink snow

I guess I didn't have enough of the cherry blossoms. On Sunday, I took a drive along the road to the shipyard to take some pictures to show you that we have a goodly amount of cherry blossoms in our area.

Cars were lined up along the road with people taking pictures of their children/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc. alongside the trees.


Ken was off playing golf, so you won't see any of me in these pictures!! One thing I noticed though - the bark of the trees is very dark, almost black. It makes for such a contrast to the light pink flowers of the trees. There are no leaves on the trees at this time - only blossoms. I don't know if pictures do it justice though. If you don't usually click on the pictures to see it close up, do it this time.

But alas, good things have to come to an end. It rained last night and alot of the blossoms were on the ground this morning. It looks like it snowed pink petals. There were little children gathering the petals up and throwing them like they were snowballs out of my window. I grabbed my camera and went onto the balcony, but they had unfortunately headed home.



By the way, I ended up not moving from the row house to the apartment. I decided that I liked to walk out my front door to the outside instead of a hallway. Enough said.

checking out the cherry blossoms.....again

<
The cherry blossoms are in bloom again, so a trip to Jinhae for the Cherry Blossom Festival was definitely in order. I signed up for the same trip as last year with a couple of friends of mine. We caught the bus in Okpo and headed to the ferry station where we would take the one hour ride to Jinhae. Well, there turned out to be a glitch in the plans - the ferry was sold out. The trip organizers said that they had been doing this trip for years and this was the first time this had ever happened. Reservations weren't allowed either. We were given several options but elected to ride the bus for 2 hours to Jinhae. It actually turned into 2 1/2 hours due to heavy traffic. However, the plus side to this is that we did get a wonderful view from the bus of all the cherry blossoms along the way. The bus dropped us off at McDonald's and we had a quick bite to eat before heading to the festival site.
It was a beautiful day, so several different performances were going on
including this one with youngsters performing a drum and gong (I guess that is what you call it) routine. The costumes were colorful, including some hats that reminded me of clown hair.

There were the usual booths that sold anything from traditional Korean items
to the usual festival wares

and carnival booths. Remember the booth last year with the singing dolls? They were back again with not only the Truman Capote and Miss Kitty doll, but a new Rambo and Britney Spears doll. We had just eaten or I might have indulged in some bubbling silkworm pupa.
Or maybe a bottle of centipedes.
It was so crowded this year. On the day we went last year, it was drizzling most of the day, so I guess alot of people stayed away. Brenda, Wendy and I agreed that next year, a weekday trip was in order. And possibly going on our own earlier in the day. Because we soon had to catch the ferry back and really didn't have enough time to explore everything we wanted. But luckily there will be next year.

spring again

I can't believe it is April already and a year has gone by since I last spoke of springtime. The weeks just seem to fly by.

One day the trees are bare and the next day they are dressed in pink

or purple



or white.





It is still not really warm yet - the wind still has a nip to it at times. But we have had some beautiful days lately. I will be going to the Cherry Blossom Festival again this week. Hopefully the weather will be nice to us this year, last year it rained some of the day we went.

On another note - we are moving out of the row house to an apartment. We really hadn't thought of moving but I was at a friend's apartment and fell in love with it. My main complaint about where we live is how dark it is. I need alot of sunlight in my home and this place can be a cave (especially in the afternoons). We (mainly I) deliberated for awhile because it is nice not to have to take an elevator and such. But this place is brand new and is on the 17th floor with a wonderful view of the water. So here we go - probably sometime this week!