Dj Festival and Beach Blast

Hey Hey Hey,

What up friends? I hope that you are all having a great day and that you are all happy and healthy :) I would like to send all my love to my Mother with the passing of Mother's day. I love you Mom, thank you for all the amazing things you've done for me over the years. Just to mention a few- attending 98% of my soccer games (the only ones she missed was because of emergency situations-seriously!), taking the liver off my plate when I was five and Dad insisted we eat it, and the many care packages over the years (my friends are also thankful for these :) )

I've had quite the past couple weeks. I've just come off two long weekends in a row and happy to report I've taken full advantage of the mini-vacations. I wish I could describe so much of it as it's been hilarious. I've met many new friends and we've shared lots and lots of laughter.

The first of the two weekends was the World DJ Festival held in Seoul. I might have to put it out there and say that it was my favourite weekend so far in Korea. I'm not sure what my expectations of it were as you just never know in this country. But, whatever they were they were surpassed big time. I arrived in Seoul on Friday night with my friend Chris and we met up with a friend that I met during my Reiki course named Jenny. We went to a sweet Reggae bar and just chilled out for the night. The festival was Saturday and Sunday all night, and we partied both Saturday and Sunday ALL night!

It took us about an hour to actually find the festival. There we were a group of Waygooks (foreigners) walking around aimlessly picking up other Waygooks and Koreans for that matter, in search. We finally found someone who showed us the way. Upon arrival at the festival we were all pleasantly surprised to find out that there were 4 stages. A big main stage and then three smaller ones. One of the smaller ones had reggae/dub and the decor was super earthy (so you can guess where I spent most of my time :) ) We ended up being about 8 people from both Gwangju and Seoul all hanging out.
The Saturday afternoon of the festival was sunny and gorgeous. The music varied from HipHop, rap, reggae, dub and techno. I could go on forever about all the funny things that happened but you'll have to check the pictures for a visual description. One cool thing that happened to me was when I went to go to the bathroom I noticed a bunch of belly dancing happening at one of the smaller stages. So, I wandered over to watch and as I got there it turned into more of a lesson for everybody. I joined in the lesson and then a competition started and I got dragged on stage. Turns out I won and got a $5 voucher for what I think is an amusement park. It was so fun I never thought I would be belly dancing in Korea!

Mom, you'll be happy to know that I just didn't party all weekend. On Saturday we headed down to Insadong where the Lotus Lantern festival was happening. It was part of the week long celebration for Buddha's Birthday. We visited the main Temple called Jogyesa temple it is the chief temple of the Jogye order of Seon Buddhism, and as such it is a very important temple. As the center of the largest Korean sect, it plays a leading role contemporary Korean Buddhism. It was beautifully decorated for the big Birthday Bash. I took a few minutes inside the temple just to sit and take it all in...wow...it was overwhelming. The energy that was inside that Temple was moving.

The big event for the day was the Lotus Lantern Parade. The parade displayed over 100,000 paper lanterns, floats with elephants and dragons and many happy people walking in celebration.
That night we headed back to the DJ Festival in the pouring rain (we were troopers!). We had yet another night of great music. I got swing fire poi on my own and then with another girl it was a blast!

Ok, so on to the next long weekend. After having such a great time together the group that I hung out with in Seoul decided that we wanted to go camping. After some research I found another group heading camping on an island close the city of Mokpo. Chris, Jenny, Sarah and I were suppose to meet up with our other friend Mark at the Ferry station in Mokpo on Saturday afternoon. But when the time came to get on the boat Mark was nowhere to be found. We got on the boat all feeling as if something was missing. We opened our 'ferry beers', lemon CASS and felt guilty as we looked at Mark's lonely beer. Chris however didn't feel that guilty because after awhile he decided to crack the beer we had bought for Mark. Minutes later we hear in a thick British accent 'what are you guys doing here?' and it was Mark!!! We had somehow missed each other in transit. The group felt complete!

We sat in the sun the entire trip to the island it was gorgeous out. Once we got to the island we realized that this wasn't your typical touristy island as there was only 2 taxi for the entire island. We met a bunch of friends on the ferry and we all headed to the beach. Our taxi ride was great as we took the 'beach' as the road to where the group from Mokpo were staying.

We had a great couple days camping, singing, dancing, rolling around in the sand and swimming (well actually I was the only one to go swimming, must be all that training I did in the St-Lawrence 'cuz i was able to handle the cold water).

We came up with a few quotes on the weekend based on actual events. The first one being 'Drink while you think, it only makes you Smarter!' and the second which makes me laugh every time I think of it was taken from when the 5 of us went to sleep in our 5man Korean tent 'Ok, Everybody SPOON left, ohhhh much comfier!'. Good times!!

Sorry, for the very long blog! That's it for now, after the past 2 weekends I'm taking a breather and saving some money this weekend. So, I hope to talk to many of you soon :)

Peace and love from the land of the morning calm.