Advertisement
Hey everyone,
Seven months in Korea, and spring has finally arrived! You wouldn’t have been able to tell today, what with the sudden drop in temperatures, punctuated by snow flurries this morning, but it is gradually getting warmer here! Haha just kidding, it's now been nine months here, and spring is in full force. I can finally start wearing T-shirts comfortably, with only a light sweater needed in the evenings. Man, the weather changes quickly once it's committed to a season.
Along with warmer weather comes beautiful flowers coming into bloom! And SUN! Yay!
Last
weekend month, after an eventful Saturday morning spent at the hospital getting Tanya’s cough checked out—and subsequently getting her situated into a weeklong hospital stay for pneumonia—I walked over to the nearby reservoir and park to enjoy the warm weather and clear skies. As I got closer and closer to the park, I began noticing that there was more traffic, both vehicular and on foot, than I’ve previously seen in the area. It turns out, the trees in and around the reservoir park are cherry trees, and their blossoms were out in full glory last weekend. It seemed like half of the
city had turned up to see the flowers, and to take as many cutesy couple selfies as possible.
While it was kind of lonely walking alone through a crowd made up of couples. families, and groups of friends admiring the flowers, the trees were really beautiful, and I can definitely understand why they are especially attractive to couples. Each tiny, white flower has just enough pink tinging the edges of its petals that when viewed from the ground, the trees have almost a pink glow to them, one that is wholly underrepresented by even the best camera. Pair beautiful flowers with a warm, sunny day, and I think I can easily say last Saturday was one of my top five days here in Gwangju so far (minus the time spent at the hospital worrying about Tanya, of course).
Having the chance to see so many beautiful flowers last weekend only made me more bummed that Tanya had to be hospitalized, as we had planned to go on a semi-organized trip to Jinahe, a city on the southern coast of South Korea, which is famous for its yearly Cherry Blossom Festival. Since Tanya was in the hospital, but I
had already paid for the trip, I ended up going alone. Luckily, there was a group of girls who are in Gwangju teaching through EPIK, the government-sponsored English teaching program, who were nice enough to let me tag along with them for the day.
One of the most famous places in Jinhae is Yeojwacheon Stream, which is lined with cherry trees, making it the perfect spot to snap some pictures and enjoy the flowers. Unfortunately, I think we just missed the peak of Jinhae’s blossoms, and it must have rained a bit this past week in Jinhae, because the trees themselves were a bit bare, but there was a light carpet of petals on the stones surrounding the stream. It was exactly the kind of place that you would see in a romantic drama, where the woman is standing looking beautiful, surrounded by pink petals falling gently around her, the colors impossibly vibrant. In fact, we did see a good number of couples taking advantage of the scenery. Rather than taking photos together, more often than not it was the boyfriend taking what I would imagine were some very Instagram-worthy photos of their girlfriends (at least I hope the
photos were that good, with the way they were going for those angles and instructing their girlfriends on how to pose just so).
Before living in East Asia, ‘flower viewing’ was never really something I thought about. I knew it was popular thing amongst Asians, especially in Japan, where cherry blossom season merits seasonal sakura-flavored everything, and giant crowds of people with picnic blankets in the parks, but it was more of a vague idea than a real understanding that it’s a huge deal. Living in East Asia, I’ve actually started noticing how few plants there are around in these big cities, and how used to being around greenery I was at home. In Boulder, Dad had a nice garden out back, Mom always had at least one vase of flowers, and one live orchid, and grass was visible from any of the windows in our house. In Tacoma, plants were everywhere (the one benefit that came from the constant rain). Here, though, the vast majority of plants that I see are the trees lining the roads, and the rare small park. Consciously going to just look at flowers suddenly makes so much sense.
I suppose now is
as good a time as any to apologize for how incredibly late this post is. It’s officially been over a month since I actually went to Jinhae, and at least three weeks since I started drafting this post (hence the changes to the beginning). My only excuse is that for about two weeks, I was expecting to go to a different flower festival to see tulips, so I was going to wait to include that in this post, but that ended up being first delayed by rain and then canceled because my friend and I didn’t get an early enough start, not realizing how far away the festival was. After that, I kind of just procrastinated until the point where I now have another post that I will begin writing this weekend (hopefully) about the trip to Jeju Island that Tanya and I took last weekend.
On that note, I will conclude this post, and I promise I will get the next one out really soon!
Until next time!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0267s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kay
non-member comment
Gorgeous pictures
Katie, your pictures are gorgeous and you are an excellent writer. I really enjoyed reading this and looking at the pictures. Thank you so much for sharing. I look forward to reading about Jeju