Our friend, Marissa's boyfriend, Luke has lived there since I arrived and he's come to Seoul dozens of times to visit and I had yet to visit him. So, on the weekend that wrapped up the Dano Festival in Gangneung, we decided it was time. Plus, Luke leaves for America on July 10, so we only had a few weekends to choose from.
There is a big river that cuts through downtown, and festival tents lined either side of it.
There were lots of tented shops, restaurants, and cultural activities. There was also, what we would call, traditional carnival games:
A huge pot of soup that you could sit down and eat (it was way to hot and humid for soup):
Betsy found a stand selling fresh coconut milk. She lived in Brazil for a year when she was 16 and hadn't drank from a coconut since! Agua de coco is much better in Brazil than Korea.
Then, we found a tent that was doing traditional hair washes for about $1. Before shampoo, Koreans would wash there hair with Iris water. They took leaves and petals from the iris plant, boiled them, and used the water to wash their hair. It smelled really good!
Saebomi and I after our hair washes. Excuse the raccoon eyes, my mascara ran all over the place when they were dumping water on my head.
After we had our fill of the Dano Festival, we headed to the beach! Gyeongpo beach was beautiful and quiet. We played until the sunset!
Here's a picture of the "boardwalk:"
Here are some Korean teenagers who lit a fire atop the sand-covered chest of a buried friend. He said it didn't hurt... yet. Kids these days...
Luke and Dustin on the beach! Luke teaches at an all girls high school and is pretty much a celebrity in his town. I felt like I was walking around with Brad Pitt in Fort Wayne. They dubbed him Beckham Teacher as soon as he arrived on the peninsula.
The girls on the beach!
At this point, my camera died. We bought some beers at the local convenient store and chatted until the sun set. Then, Saebomi had to head back to Seoul, and we found an ocean-side restaurant and ordered some fresh pan-fried fish.
The next morning we got up early and caught a 10:30 am bus back to Dongbaek. We all had prior obligations to meet that day so as much as we hated to leave the coast, we had to. It was a great trip and really interesting to see what small town Korea was all about.
It was nice to visit, but I think the foreigner crowd would be a little too small for me. We went to 2 of the 3 foreigner-frequented bars that night and everyone seemed to know everyone already. I have much more fun being anonymous! :-)
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