We just finished a very busy week, with no less than 4 festivals!
As Sarah mentioned in the last post, we went on a trip last Friday and Saturday - it was fun, but... we missed the start of the 13th annual
Pusan International Film Festival!
Luckily this past week was also midterms at our middle schools. Mine were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Sarah's were Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. On exam days the students have 3 exams and then go home early at noon and the teachers call leave by 1 or 1:30. By getting out early we were able to buy tickets and beat the rush of people still at work. On Monday we saw
The Good, The Bad, The Weird - a big-budget Korean movie that was non-stop action. As you may have guessed from its name its a Western-style movie that takes places in Manchuria in the 1930s. The action scenes were great and the chase scene towards the end was completely ridiculous and over the top - but awesome. On Tuesday I saw a Polish movie called "Scratch" (
Rysa) which was definitely the kind of movie I would expect at a film festival. It was a kind of psychological thriller about an older married couple in present day Poland who lives become altered when the husband is accused of being a former agent of the previous communist regime. It left me wondering about several unanswered questions by the end - but that's part of what made it a good movie.
On Wednesday, we both got out of school early and went with two teachers from Sarah's school to the
Jinju Lantern Festival, which is held for a week every October. Jinju is a small city about 2 hours west of Busan. In 1592 during the Japanese invasion of Korea, General
Kim Si-min and the garrison of Jinju fortress were attacked by a large group of soldiers. The siege lasted several days and at night Kim Si-min sent burning rafts down the river as a signal to other Korean soldiers and civilians that the fortress had not fallen. This is why the festival today is celebrated by putting decorative lanterns afloat in the river.
We arrived around 4 o clock and had plenty of time to check out the fortress and learn first hand how it was defended:
We then enjoyed a dinner of "Jinju bibimbap", which is pretty much the same as regular
bibimbap, except with strips of raw beef instead of egg! We then got to wander alongside the river and check out all the cool lanterns. The lanterns come in all different shapes and sizes, along both sides of the river, floating in the river itself:
Just today, we stopped by two more festivals, here in Busan. The first was the "
Global Gathering" which was more or less just Busan residents from different countries offering traditional food and information about their respective homes. We sampled several culinary delights from Russia, Poland, Nepal, Mongolia, Turkey the Philippines and Peru.... mmmmm. In addition to making us miss non-Korean food more than ever, it also got us excited about traveling again - we can't wait until this March!
Our last stop for the Day was the Jagalchi festival. Held at
Jagalchi Market - which is always fun to visit - the festival consisted primarily of a lot of people eating fish while listening to other festival-goers sing karaoke (presumably all fish or sea related tunes - but I can't confirm that). There was also a giant tub where some lucky people from the audience tried to catch fish for the amusement of others and a free meal:
In addition to these various festivals and whatnot, our cats have been keeping us busy as always. Aona was spayed on Monday and had to spent the night at the vet. After a checkup on Thursday revealed that she had been picking at her stitches, we had to subject her to the supreme humiliation of wearing a cone on her head:
And our little kitten is demanding as always. and of course still cute...
And I almost forgot! The Jinju bibimbap wasn't the only raw meat I had this week. To celebrate the end of exams our department went to a raw fish restaurant. This was my third time eating raw fish and I have to say, it grows on me a little each time. I also had the chance to try raw octopus tentacles (which looks something like
this) You might think that its not very appetizing, but when it was placed in front of me I immediately snatched a piece of the plate and shoved it in my mouth. Maybe something about seeing your food squirming around activates some primal predator-instinct? It tasted just as raw and salty as the rest of the sea-life on the table so I had some more. not bad....
