Hampyeong Butterfly Festivus for the Restofus

On Saturday afternoon I was sitting around watching another episode of "America's Next Top Model", and I get a call from Stu saying that I should come to the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival. It was hard to tear myself away from quality programming, but I somehow managed, so I caught a bus out of Naju with Monique. When the bus finally got into Hampyeong there was so much freaking traffic that our bus was at a standstill, but we could see balloons and whatnot in the distance, so we decided to get out and walk!

Took a picture of the mahem: us and hundreds of others had also left their vehicles to walk the last little bit, so we were walking along a big highway dodging buses and whatnot!

The festival itself wasn't really all that much to look at; I think it was more of an excuse for parents to get their crying children out of the house for a day. The group of us stood out A LOT amongst all the other visitors, so we also recieved many many stares and "*Gasp* Megook saram!" (American person). And I'm not talking little children whispering it behind their mothers leg, I'm talking run up to you and point. After a while Stu was joking about saying back to the kids "Ahhhhh!! Hanguk saram!!!" ("Ahhhh! Korean Person!!"), but I don't think the kids would've gotten the irony. Eventually we did finally see some real butterflies, but not enough to have a big festival surely!

From there we (i.e. Stu, Mi-ji, Monique and myself) headed out to the barbeque that Hyun-joong and Kristen were hosting in Mokpo. Hyun-joong's cousins have a country house with an actual backyard!! So we all sat out side eating and drinking until there was a big thunderstorm and everyone had to move their guitars inside. Alex's mom is also visiting from Canada, so on Sunday we took a walk up Yudalsan, which was nice, except that the humidity has started over here, which is probably going to make me want to hide in my apartment in front of the fan a lot. I also learned that Alex is a big baby (even more so than usual) with his mom around (hahahahahaha).

So that was my weekend! Now I'm in the office waiting for my ONE 40 minute class that I'm teaching today. Here are some extra pretty pictures of the view from my balcony after sunset.