Korea in bloom

Spring suddenly descended on Korea. Birds are tweeting, children are laughing, and the cherry blossoms are blooming.


The thing about cherry blossom trees is that they make you feel lucky. Lucky because you were able to catch them for the few days a year the blossoms are on the tress. As soon as they bloom they start dying. The light pink petals dusting the ground everywhere I go are evidence of that.  A cherry blossom's life span is about a week. Some of the trees in my neighborhood that looked like fluffy pink clouds last week are as bare as they were in the dead of winter. Gone. Like it never happened.


It did happened though, and I have the pictures to prove it. I have 137 pictures actually, but I've plucked a few of my favorites out to show you here. I'll upload the rest to Facebook for those of you who get enough of flowery landscapes. 


This festival was in a small city southwest of Ulsan, where I live.  It took about 2 hours by bus to get to Jinhae. It was a pleasant trip and I enjoyed the landscape through my little window. Getting back to Ulsan was quite an adventure. We had to take a bus to Busan, which took about an hour and a half, and since in Korea it's ok to sell WAY more tickets than you have seats for, we had to stand in the aisle. I was not pleased. Then we jumped on the subway for 45 minutes to take us to a bus station with buses going to Ulsan. Then, after a bus ride that seemed like it took 10 years we arrived in Ulsan. It was a long night but the lovely day trip was worth it.


So, This is the 진해 (Jinhae) Cherry Blossom Festival.

Korea in a nutshell.

I like this picture a lot because the city was actually really beautiful
from the observation deck. You can't really tell from the
picture but the blues and orange rooftops looked like sprinkles.

Korea is really into artificial streams. Sometimes they suck but
sometimes they're perfect, like this one.

Up close and personal.

Welcome to Ulsan

At the beginning of March I moved to Ulsan. That's here:

View Larger Map

I really like the city. It's one of the larger cities in Korea but it's not overwhelming. I can get just about anywhere I need to go in a 10-20 minute taxi ride. I don't find shopping as easy as it was near Seoul but that's probably a good thing.  Ulsan is a vast improvement on Uijeongbu if only for it's green space. Ulsan has several large parks, walking paths along the river, beaches, and even a waterfall (which I have yet to find, but my students tell me is really nice.)

I really like my school. It's a really tiny school by square-footage, but over 400 students pass through he halls everyday. The students are wicked smart and some of my classes are really fun. My co-workers are all really cool and helpful. Overall, Toplus is a good egg.

Photo time!

This is my apartment building. As soon as I clean I'll take pictures of the inside. 

My street is terribly exciting.

This is the elementary school near my apartment. Many of my students go here.
As a result, I can't leave my apartment without responding to excited
shouts of " SARAH TEACHER!!!"

The main street where my school is.

I teach on the second floor of this building. Lotteria is on the first floor. It's like a knock-off of McDonald's, but, like most Korean fast food, it sucks.

This is Ulsan University, where I sometimes go to my Korean class. More on this soon.

There's a river literally in my back yard. More on this later too.

Here is my friend, Jeff, modeling the bamboo grove along the river.
 I like to run through the bamboo and pretend I'm Pocahontas.

A walk along the river at night.

These are my co-workers! We went bowling. I'm still bad a bowling, but it was fun.
More on team building in another post. 

 So, there's a sample of Ulsan. In the next post, I'll be sharing my awesome day trip to Korea's largest cherry blossom festival.

And we're back.

I've been away for a long time. In the last month I've been too busy acclimating to my new city and school to write. 아니요, That's a lie. I've been lazy. However, for the sixth time this year I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm not going to let writing be another one of those things I fall out of love with .

I'm working on making and achieving attainable goals. Halfheartedly shooting for the moon obviously doesn't work for me. If it did, I'd be having lunch with Anderson Cooper, Paula Deen and Oprah right now while they all put in bids to have me as their private events manager.

New goal: post on this blog at least once a week.

I'll see you all within the week for an introduction to Ulsan post.

안녕히가세요!

P.S. The Korean girls sitting next to me are totally talking about me, but all I can understand is “That Foreigner” and “nose”.