Mums the word

This weekend I went to Masan to visit Liezle. One of the reasons I decided to go to Masan this weekend is because it was the mum festival and I thought that would give us something extra to do. I left Jinju around 9am and immediately got on the wrong bus, but figured it out before the second stop in Jinju. I got off that bus then got on the correct bus, which luckily was immediately behind us. Masan is only about an hour away and I took a cat nap and looked at the scenery. Once I arrived, I called Liezle who gave me directions to get on another city bus and ride it for about 20 minutes. I was then supposed to call her when I got close to the stop. Her directions were very good and I got off at the correct stop (or one past) but my phone decided to stop working and I had no way of contacting her. I decided to start walking and find a coffee shop. They are usually all over Korea and most have free computers that customers can use. So after walking for about 30 minutes and still not finding a single coffee shop, I got back on a bus and headed back towards the bus station because at least I knew where that was and I knew there were major coffee shops there. So after about another 15 minutes, I spotted an Angel in Us, which is a big chain. I got off the bus, went inside, ordered and coffee and...no computer. I was not happy. So armed with coffee, I decided to do what I should have done in the first place, and go to a PC room. It's like an internet cafe. I've never been in one before, and should have taken a picture, but I was stressed out and sweaty at the time. It's a giant room with tons of computers with huge monitors and comfy desk chairs. A nice young girl showed me what to do after some miming and pointing on my part. You log in with a card number, then when you check out you give them the number back and they charge you based on time. I logged onto facebook and luckily Liezle was monitoring her phone. She had gone to the hospital close to her house because she thought I might have been in a bus accident since we had been talking and then I wasn't answering my phone all of the sudden. So after some messages, I decided to just get in a cab and hope he would take me to the correct place. He did. So what should have taken a total of about an hour and a half took closer to 3. Suzette, one of Liezle's friends from home who also lives in Korea (I forget which city) was also meeting us so we just waited near the hospital for her, then went back to Liezle's to drop off our stuff. Her apartment is adorable. It's a decent size, but more importantly, it's arranged in a usable fashion. She also has a small couch and decent storage spaces.

After a brief rest period, we walked to a little restaurant near her apartment and had lunch. We ate samgyupsal - sort of like thick cuts of bacon. This kind was also rubbed in a spicy sauce. The people were really nice and gave us tons of side dishes including some really good onions, the always present garlic, peaches, acorn gelee (which was actually pretty good) and sweet potatoes.

Lunch

After eating, we hopped in a cab and went over to the other side of town, near the harbor, for the festival. I didn't really know what to think, but I was happy with it. There were tons of flowers everywhere. Most were put into some sort of sculpture, but there were also just pots and pots of them in random spots. I might have done some of the craft things, like making soap or tea, and the girls probably wouldn't have minded, but I already dragged them there, so I didn't want to make them wait for me. Chrysanthemum tea taste like eating flowers by the way.

Flower castle that you could walk under

The only down-side was the bees. None of us got stung though.

They had all these weird sculptures in the middle, including this guy, an Indian in full head dress and a crayon

Pandas

Passed this restaurant and had to take a  picture for the Roll

Masan harbor through a flower heart

The "mascots" of the festival

After the festival we went to a coffee shop and sat and people watched for awhile. Then I had to pee, which usually isn't a problem, but this coffee place shared a bathroom with some other stores, so you had to go 3 stores over, walk down a hallway and have a key. It was fairly clean though, so it all worked out. Then we rode the bus back to Liezle's and met a friend of hers at the corner grocery store to pick up dinner making stuff. We made spaghetti with red sauce with mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and onions. It was really good. We also ate some food that Sam (Liezle's friend who lives a few houses down) made earlier with a Korean lady - fried kimbap and some really good chicken and potatoes. One of the stranger parts of the evening was when her landlord showed up to fix her outer door which was basically hanging on by part of a hinge. It was 6;30 on a saturday night and 3 guys show up, they unlock her door (without knocking) while we're in there, apologize once they realize people are there, plug in a desk lamp so they can see better and proceed to fix her door. Then they tried to ask us to go get chicken and beer with them, but as we were already cooking and in pjs (and due to the fact that they don't speak English and we don't speak Korean) we decided not to go. We sat around eating, drinking and chatting for a few hours, then Sam went home and we went to bed. Sam let me borrow her bed topper, which is almost like a thin mattress. It was pretty comfy. I could feel that I was getting sick though, so I tried to drink a lot of water before bed.

When we woke up, I had the start of a cold, which sucks. I need to remember to get a humidifier asap. We got dressed, had coffee at Liezle's then met Sam and went on a hike behind their apartments. Neither of them had done the hike before. It was crazy steep and had long flights of stairs at some points. I am totally out of shape and had to go fairly slow up the mountain. Sam and Suzette are in really good shape and they went ahead of us and told us that the top wasn't really worth it because you couldn't see anything, so Liezle and I went didn't go quite to the top, but we went a decent amount of the way. It was a gray and cold day too, which didn't make it any better.

Obligatory gym halfway up the mountain

Giant hula hoops next to the gym hung on a tree branch

Second or third set of stairs

Once we got down the mountain, we decided to go to get some food. We went to a little kimbap shop near her house and ordered soup. I got mandu guk which is usually pretty good. This kind wasn't bad except that it had little clams and shrimp in it so I didn't eat very much of it. It started raining while we were eating and the only thing we could say was that we were lucky that it waited until we were done with the hike because at least one of us would have fallen. Then we went to a coffee shop called Java Coffee. It is run by a Kenyan lady. apparently it's a new government program in Kenya and they are opening coffee shops up all around the world. My latte was pretty decent, but my mango donut wasn't anything special. We sat there and chatted, then went back to Liezle's and chatted some more.

Sweet potato latte - it's purple. Suzette ordered it. She likes them apparently.

At that point I decided to go home. I was planning on having dinner with a friend of mine and didn't want to be out too late since I was still feeling sick. When I got to the bus station, I easily got my ticket, only to walk outside to the longest bus line I've ever seen. The line for the Jinju bus went all the way down, then circled back around the station. 4 buses and about an hour later, I was on the bus (and also got a seat - some people had to stand for the hour ride home). I got home, moved dinner to tomorrow, got in pjs and typed this blog. I'm going to bed soon because I need to get up (although not that early) to go with my boss and try to get my phone fixed tomorrow. I'll keep you posted!