I've Got Butterflies

But only pictures of them because this last week was yet another goodun' involving a Butterfly Festival. The fun started Wednesday night because Thursday was Children's day in Korea, which is also a national holiday and us teachers had the day off. However, most Americans know that the 5th is also Cinco De Mayo and a lovely reason to drink Tequila. During this holiday it also dawned on me that I can remember exactly what I did last year this time, in fact I even blogged about it. Man, time is flying!

This Cinco De Mayo was spent much like the last one, at the local Mexican bar/restaurant. People were throwing back margaritas, taking over the whole back alleyway of the bar, and getting their socialize on. I met a few new people, ran into a handful of old ones, and eventually Fliss and I headed down town for some more fun.

The next afternoon when I finally rose from the dead we went out to a take out restaurant really close to our house. The lady there is super sweet and always says her few English words to me. After she runs out of English words she proceeds to speak Korean, which I sometimes understand, and sometimes don't. The other day she was staring at me, trying to think of things to say and in Korean she asked, "Do you miss your mother?" I said yes because I obviously miss my whole family and friends, but I also thought it was an interesting thing to ask. Just by looking at me and seeing I'm foreign she knew I had to leave my family and country to come here. She seemed generally concerned about me, and it was sweet. I would eat there more often but I'm pretty sure it's not the healthiest array of food. I should also probably brush up on my Korean before the next trip.

Later that evening Fliss and I cleaned ourselves up to attend our boss' sister's twin's birthday party. The twins, Shi-Hya and Shi-Hyun are Shi-Ho's sisters. I know, confusing right? They are super cute with big ol heads but unfortunately take a lot of attention away from the cutest kid ever, Shi-Ho! In case you forgot Shi-Ho is one of my two kindergarten students. He's a little angel. The party was at a hotel near Mudeung mountain by my house, a really nice place, and it was all you can eat buffet. Basically the best little kid birthday party EVER! We didn't even have to buy presents! My boss, Fliss, our new English speaking Korean co-worker, and another co-worker who only speaks Korean, and I managed to have a handful of laughs and a good time chowing down on endless amounts of sushi and other random Korean buffet concoctions. A couple of hours later we were finally home.

Then was another day of work on Friday and finally the weekend. On Saturday Fliss, Emilie, and I planned to go to a butterfly festival about 40 minutes away. Apparently a handful of other Koreans also had this idea and our plan to get on the 11:00 bus was foiled when we saw a giant line at the station. Felicity had no desire to wait another hour for the next one so she left for Seoul and Em and I waited about 15 minutes and another bus came. Apparently we read the schedule wrong? The bus ride was and less than $4.00. Strangely, our cab from our house to the station, about 10 minutes away, was like $7. But I'm not going to complain, I love the cheap cross country Korean buses.

After arrival we decided that the most important duty of the day would be to get some food in our bellies. Last year at the Green Tea festival we ended up getting seriously jipped on a plate of pork for about $40 so we opted to get some food in town. I'm not going to lie, going blindly to new restaurants in Korea is the most annoying thing ever because I never know what I am ordering, and there is a small chance that it can be something terrible, like dead dog for example. So as we were wondering around I didn't notice any familiar dishes but we did see a fried chicken place and you can't go wrong there! We entered the dirty shack of a restaurant, relaxed and devoured a giant plate of fried chicken. No better way to get the day started!

We moved onto the festival and my first observation was the size. It wasmuch larger than the others I've been to. We first went into a few green house-like places and saw some strange and beautiful plants.

Afterwards there were a handful of different events. Everything from kids chasing

pigs/ducks/rabbits for bags of rice to mudfishing to ice cream making.

An hour or so later we (actually I) decided to relax a little and go in a swan paddle boat. I complained that my legs were too long and awkwardly shaped to actually paddle so Emilie graciously took over the paddling.

Somebody else was also tired...

All in all I would highly recommend this festival as good day trip activity. It's 7,000 Won (about $7) to get in and a never ending maze of things to do. They even had a little area for rides, but we were getting tired so we left. One side note, we took the 4:30 bus but the bus driver said the next bus didn't come until 7:00. So, keep that under consideration.

We spent about 4 hours total at the festival and then decided on our plans for the evening. We were going to get all dolled up, make some dinner at one of our houses, and drink wine until the late evening. The plan went almost exactly as discussed minus the late evening part. It was more like the late night and also involved some Skype calls home, some talks of getting matching tattoos, and a lot of James Taylor and Neil Young. As usual we ended up in down town with all the other expat barflies. All in all it was a lovely date day/night with a great gal in Gwangju. So sad to know that she is also leaving in a handful of weeks.

I'm also leaving in a handful of weeks, but ON VACATION! WOohoo. I also am looking for a vacation buddy for the second week of August (my birthday week). I'm hopefully spending the first week in The Philippines with Felicity but the next week I'd either like to go somewhere else in S.E. Asia or stay in The Philippines for a second week, relaxing in Borocay on a beach.

We rescheduled the camping trip to the 21st because of the supposed bad weather last weekend. Obviously the weather was fine, and lets hope it is then too. This weekend will be spent doing absolutely nothing because I have about $15 for the next 6 days. Woops, I guess I wasn't as frugal this month as my previous post suggested.