out and about with cherry blossoms

april's been a busy month, yessirie. started off, as previously posted, with the short trip to gyeongju and yeongdeok. in those early days of april the cherry blossoms had yet to make a strong appearance, but since then they have already come and gone. a beautiful flash in the pan. but a massive, explosive flash! because unlike, say, the united states, where you're hard-pressed to find anything resembling a cherry blossom, they're stinkin' with them in south korea. not that they smell bad (like you, female gingko trees - shame on you).

but these aren't the cherry blossoms of korea's past. no, that alpha tree--the super-strain, the superstar of blossomed trees everywhere--was almost unbelievably usurped, like so much of korea's past, by japanese invasion. if we're to believe my conspiracy minded co-teachers, there once upon a time existed a beautiful cherry blossom, the original cherry blossom, that could only be found in korea. and they were everywhere. a symbol of national pride and beauty. but when japan made their habitation of korea--as if stealing their arts and enslaving their women wasn't enough--they jealously destroyed korea's iconic tree and replaced it with their own, much less grand version. and now the only place you can still see the original cherry blossom is in the small town of jinhae, where they have a massive cherry blossom festival every year (and to which i did not go to - sorry).

anyways, these photos are from around school, in gyeongju and out in jumchon. everywhere i went i had my good friend the cherry blossom following me. i'll try and make note where appropriate.

outside school and around the neighborhood:

duryu park:

gyeongju teachers trip. glad to see there were no back-of-the-bus-peeing-in-a-bottle type incidents this time around:

my 6th grade co-teacher ms. sung-hyi baek.

mungyeong 3-gate path, outside of jumchon. used to be the main way to get to seoul from that part of the country. all these were taken with my ipod:

while this looks like a beautiful old korean town, its actually a movie set that's been used by different korean period dramas.

this is real though. one of the 3 gates. we only made it to gate #2 before plopping down in front of some makgeolli and some kind of seafood pancake.