Singing in the Rain

We know, we know, we have not been keeping up with the blog this past week. But we have a good excuse.......ummmmm.....ok, so we don't. But here is a brief catch up blog, and we promise to do better this week!

Last week, we decided to spend Sunday at a neighbouring city, Gyeongju, which is known to have particularly beautiful cherry blossoms. Our friend, Melissa promised good weather. So when Sunday arrived and I had the biggest sore throat ever, and dark clouds had filled the sky.....I thought the mission would be aborted. But Matt, Melissa and Brett are such big fans of the cherry blossom that neither rain, nor dark clouds, nor sore throats could keep them away. How could I deny them their dreams of roaming streets lined with beautiful cherry blossom trees? I simply couldn't face their wee sad faces. So I bravely took some medicine for my sore throat and prepared to face the rainy day.

Well, our mission started with a taxi incident. We simply had to take a taxi to Matt and Melissa's house, and would continue the journey from there. But, alas, we did not know how to give the directions in Korean. We tried our best. But as the taxi driver turned a direction we knew was the wrong way, all we could do was call Melissa to say that we would call them again from wherever the taxi driver dropped us off. Luckily, while the taxi driver wove around the streets of Daegu, we recognized the bus station we thought we needed to be at later on that morning to take a bus to Gyeongju...so we yelled a loud "yogi-yo" (which means "over here") and the taxi screeched to a stop. We hopped out, called Matt and Melissa to tell them to make their way to the bus station, and then headed into Dunkin Donuts for a much needed cafe latte.

After Matt and Melissa arrived, it then took four confusing conversations with Korean bus employees, and five trips across the road to check other bus stations nearby, to find the bus station we needed to be at. But...success....we eventually got on a bus to Gyeongju. The four of us were given the seats that stretched across the back of the bus. There are five seats along the back wall. Two of us on one side, two of us on the other, and a sleepy Korean man in the middle. He clearly did not know about my sore throat as he rested his head on my shoulder, exposing himself to my germs and a gentle poke from my elbow.

As we drove to Gyeongju, the sky got darker and darker. Then it started to rain. We got off the bus in Gyeongju, made "oh yuck" faces at each other as we pulled up our hoods and zipped our jackets up as far as possible, and began our wander of the city.

Eventually it did stop raining, although it never did warm up. We found the cherry blossoms, however they were not fully out yet. We also found something very strange- in Gyeongju, they rent small motorcycles and tiny cars to children and adults. We spent a lot of time watching people zip around on these small vehicles, nearly killing each other and having a lot of fun doing it. The tiny vehicles were allowed to go on the same sidewalks as the pedestrians, so we had to live in fear of our lives the whole day, but the entertainment we got from photographing them was worth the risk.