Green Tea Festival

We didn't have work on Friday because it was Buddha's birthday, which is a national holiday here. Most Koreans visit a temple or two to pray and get free bibimbap. Dallas and I decided to start out the long weekend by going to Hadong to a green tea festival. Before we left, I went to the glasses place to get new contacts. My prescription changed a fair amount from a little over a year ago. That's annoying. Anyway, Hadong is about an hour away by bus, although there was traffic so it took an hour and a half. Luckily I was a good mom and packed apple slices for the trip.

Waving to Dallas's mom from the bus

When we got to the bus terminal and got off the bus, we started trying to follow the directions I got from the festival website. Apparently, even though it's labeled as the Hadong festival, it's actually in Hawgae, another small town 20-30 minutes further away. That's one of the annoying things about Korea. We ended up taking a cab because we had walked a fair amount away from the bus terminal (although some kids gave us directions back to it) and it was about $20. So that was an expense I wasn't planning on and it was also frustrating. The ride itself was actually really nice and the cab driver pointed out some tea farms to us.

I didn't really know tea grew on bushes

When we got to the actual festival, it wasn't what I expected. I thought we'd be near a plantation/field whatever with lots of tea (because that's what the pictures looked like) and that it would have lots of activities and foods made with green tea. It wasn't really like that. We were starving at that point, so before we really looked around, we went to a food tent and got beef soup. The waiter was really nice and spoke decent English and warned us that it'd be spicy. It wasn't spicy at all, but I still appreciated the warning.

Flag for the festival. I wonder how much money the country spends on stuff like that. There were dozens of these in Hadong and all over the festival.

Flower sculpture near the entrance of the festival.

Tea pot sculpture

There were a few things to do, including making T-shirts, lavender sachets, and "paintings". Dallas really wanted to make shirts, so he made one for a friend of his and I colored one for him. They also had a giant tent with male opera singers in tuxes, because I guess they go together?

Dallas coloring in a cat wearing a top hat. Check out his focus.

Me coloring in Bugs. Dallas said to do the middle part red. In retrospect I would have picked another green or blue color because I think the red makes it look like Bugs murdered and ate a whole group of other bunnies.

The finished products!

After coloring shirts, we went to paint a sign. I went first. I wanted this really cool multicolored one, but that wasn't an option. Painting it yourself was also not an option. The man took a wooden board and rolled paint on it. Then he laid a piece of paper on the wood and handed me a spoon. Then the two of us rubbed the backs of the spoon on the board. He really did most of it. After Dallas watched my experience, he decided it wasn't worth the $2 to do on. It did make an ok souvenir though.

It says "Hadong Green tea festival" on it.

Flower montage

We didn't make skin. Or skin care products which was really what you could make.

They also had a lot of varieties green tea to sample. We tried this one, but I can't remember what it was called. They didn't have many foods with tea except for green tea ice cream, which I've had before and I don't like and rice cakes, which I wouldn't pay for because they are usually gross. Instead we split a strawberry smoothie.

Kids could ride around on these motorized animals. Dallas wanted to ride one, but was too tall.

The area was really pretty and had a little river and was surrounded by mountains. The weather was perfect too, so the day ended up being a nice day, even though it didn't meet my hopes.

Me on a bridge next to the river

Mountains and the river, which was really a stream surrounded by rocks. Although I'm guessing it looks much different during rainy season.

Flowers and the river

We cabbed it back to the bus terminal because we didn't want to miss the bus to Seoul, which was our next stop for the weekend. That didn't work out too well as both the buses were sold out. So we had to take a bus back to Jinju, in order to get a bus to Seoul. Still, I can cross another city off of my list!

Another shot of the tea fields

Sunset from the bus