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Published: October 29th 2009
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Hello family and friends! How are things back home? Things here have settled down a bit in the last couple weeks after a busy first month and a half here! We're a little behind on the blog, but here's an update of the past few weeks!
Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) October 8-16th, Pusan became the host of the 14th annual PIFF, the largest film festival in Asia! We took advantage of this and went to see a couple movies that we participating in the festivities. The first film was called "Deliver us From Evil" and was a Danish film about a man blaming an immigrant for a crime he committed..it was a decent movie. The second movie was much better - a Czech movie about Jews during WWII. We realllllyyyy wanted to see a movie called I Come with the Rain, a hyped-up movie starring Josh Hartnett (who made an appearance in Busan for the festival, even though we didn't see him!), but that movie was completely sold out!
Pusan 5th Annual Fireworks Festival Following the closure of PIFF, was the fireworks show in Busan, which drew in 1.5 million spectators tp Gwangali Beach last year. It featured
85,000 fireworks in a 45 minute show and was definitely the best fire works display we have ever seen!
In many ways we experienced the best and the worst of Korean culture right here on the beach that day. We were told to arrive early for the show that begins at 8pm, so we got there at 1:00 and just camped out on the beach for the afternoon people watching and playing cards. We scored this awesome spot, right in the front row, spread out blankets, stretched out and relaxed. We had it made! or so we thought. Come 5:00 it started getting reallllly busy at the beach and other people were slowly moving in on our space, sitting on the edge of our blankets, like it was normal. Ok fine, let's be friends, we'll let you sit there. We were not so happy to oblige when people started sitting in front of us, which was also in front of the security line - we were not happy campers then! Of course no one said anything or did anything about this so the people continued to pile in in front of us, closer and closer to the water. Problem is,
the tide comes in eventually and where were these people to go when that happened? Well obviously, we were supposed to move back more to make extra room for them! Of course! Why didn't we figure that out! lol So in the end our wonderful spot with lots of room to stretch out and relax in the front row became a tiny spot with barely enough room to sit without touching the people around you and with a few rows of people in front of us! However, it wasn't all bad! The thing is, when you do something nice for Koreans, they are so grateful and will go out of their way to help you! Case in point, one family who we let have some room on our blanket...they then gave us some of their food that they had brought (and since we weren't that smart, it was very appreciated!). We had a few people give us chips, tangerines and kimbap rolls (rice and veggies wrapped in seaweed) for something or other that we did.
The beach was also crawling all day with people selling everything imaginable from blankets to coffee in thermoses to chicken to fish! You literally could
sit on the beach all day and never get up if you wanted!
Fall in Korea Fall is beginning to arrive here, although the days are still warm enough to wear just a t-shirt. Fall is supposed to be a beautiful time to be in Korea becase, unlike Canada, the skies are mostly blue and rain is rare. The trees changing colours on the mountains that surround us are on their way to being a very gorgeous array of colours.
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