Another week....another festival!

Hello. Well here it is, already a week since the last post. Let's see....what has happened. Last Friday (May 8) was Parents Day. Not a national holiday, but still a special day to honour ones parents andshower them with gifts (a kind of combo Mothers and Father's Day). Jin and Lili made special paper flower bouquets at school and also made special rice cakes called sukddeok. Suk is apparently mugwort which appears to be a common plant (some might say "weed") here. Jin said her teacher picked the suk from their schoolyard. Ddeok is a cake made of rice flour. They shaped them into hearts, decorated them with sunflower seeds and wrapped them up specially for Mom and Dad. Here are pictures of the girls with their rice cake presents and the bouquets they made for us.

They are such good kids!

We continued enjoying the May festival season in Seoul on the weekend (May 9 and 10). Saturday we went back downtown to catch the end of the Hi Seoul Festival and then the Seoul Friendship Festival on Sunday. First we did a little shopping in Insadong, a popular shopping area for traditional Korean arts, crafts and souvenirs. Here are a few shots of a little of what Insadong has to offer.

Shopping for jewellery for Mom (we still celebrated Mothers Day). Lili resting on some fun benches - I think the "redheads" are cartoon characters.

Pigs can fly! Traditional Korean knots.

Here are some downtown Seoul scenes. The TV's here are REALLY BIG! We've seen these large screens all over the city. Although many things in this country are cutting edge 21st century stuff, work place safety, especially in the construction business seems a little lax. I'm not sure these guys are tied on to the scaffolding they are building.

Walking along Cheonggyecheon stream we encountered a man making balloon animals for kids. He had a couple of live birds that he put on the girls as he made their balloons. I tried to pay him for the balloons, but he wouldn't take any money. Nice guy! The girls loved the budgies and the balloons!

The Cheonggyecheon area was also host to a large flea market (got Jin some shorts for a buck) and some singing and dancing exhibitions, like the B-boy dance troup in the photo below. They were fun to watch but a few times came dangerously close to their audience (see J and L in the front row, they had to duck a couple times!).

Recognize the tourists behind the coin shaped visors? These were being handed out as part of the Hi Seoul fundraising campaign that was also wrapping up that day. People like visors here as they like to hide from the sun. We were told it was not just a UV concern but that they didn't want to tan. Funny how we in the west admire (at least until recent years) tanned skin. These will probably come in handy in the summer when it gets real hot.

Down at Seoul Plaza (in front of City Hall) we ran into Haechi, the new mascot for Seoul and watched some kids enjoying (kind of....I think the screaming and look of terror was real...) the Euro-bungie, a sort of strapped in trampoline thing. The girls weren't interested in it....thank goodness.

Sunday we went back to the Seoul Plaza-City Hall area to catch the Seoul Friendship Festival. This festvial showcased the large and varied foreign community in Seoul. They had performers from around the world. We caught a Mexican musical act on the main stage and then walked through the busy side street that was converted into an international food court/bazaar. The air was filled with the aromas of traditional foods from more countries than I could count. We tried some Bangladeshi food. It was good, but the girls found it a bit spicy. We gave a pass to the guy in the kilt BBQ'ing bangers at the UK booth. But I was lured in by vodka shots (for a buck) at the Ukrainian booth where we then had a plate of verenike (like my mother calls it!), which is their verion of the perogie. Interesting how so many countries have their own variation of the humble dumpling.

In the information section of the festival we ran into some friends from the Seoul Global Center that have helped get us settled in Seoul. They are great! If you are ever travelling here you should check them out (their website is listed in the sidebar of the blog). Here is one of their Chinese staff with Jin and Lili wearing traditional Chinese hats.


Well that was last weekend, and now we are half way through this weekend. I am getting behind on these posts! It rained today so we took the girls to the National Museum of Korea. They have a very good Children's section. We'll tell you about that in our next post.

Good night!