Gwangju Photonics Festival.

May 1st the weather finally let up and gave us a few really nice warm days, so we took the weekend vacation to Gwangju to see the Photonics festival. The trip was lovely and we got to see alot of cool Korean takes on what Light means to them. Very interesting.

Our first stop was to secure a hotel and this place was cheaper than most that we stayed in but it was still pretty posh. I had to get a picture of the bathroom because there was actually a seat warmer ... I had no idea how to use it but you could tell it was on!

They also provided us with toothbrushes, toothpaste, face mask, bubble bath, facial wash, razors and q-tips all in a cool blue pouch. The motels also provide shampoo, hair rinse and body wash but those they store in the bathroom... now if only they would give you something bigger than a hand towel to dry off with.. Luckily we don't take showers if we only stay one night, but we did use the toothbrushes!

After dropping off all our stuff we headed to the subway to make our way to the festival.

Yeah, it was NOT crowded at all.

The park itself was really huge, and totally surrounded by apartment buildings. The fountain would move along with the beats of the music blaring all over the park.

They had lots of exhibits about light and also a rock climbing wall. It was HUGE. We had fun just standing around watching this guy get to the top.

Another side of the park.

This was the huge building we watched a 3d movie in. It was hard to tell what was going on since the movie was in korean... it was also bad because they let in way more people than they actually had space for so joseph and I ended up sitting on the aisle steps with little kids sitting on our feet, and little kids kicking us in the butts...

They had all kinds of tents selling everything from toys, boomerangs, doughnuts and hats... pretty much anything you wanted.

This was one of the cool exhibits we could take a picture of with our camera.

I wish I could own this piece, it was really neat it would change color every few second, but slowly so you felt like the sun was rising and setting... very neat.

Lightbulbs filled with wishes for the future.

I felt like I was walking through a light bright!

Lawn furniture made out of flourecent bulbs.

this structure was called "the eye"

So Happy to see some flowers finally. Yeah Winter is over!

Towers in the park at sunset.

Joseph under the expo sign.

The flag that helped us find our way.

The city was fairly large, and we were one of three other white people we saw that day... Must have been pretty interesting to the Koreans too because we were stopped a few times for people to talk to us and show off their english skills, or to take a picture with us. Kinda weird when all you want is to find a bathroom, and someone is telling you how much they admire Kennedy... "yeah yeah yeah, me too, where is the toilet?" (because they don't say restroom, and have no clue what you are saying if you do)

All in all it was a nice day...

Spring is on it's way.

For those of you who talk to Joseph or I on a regular basis, you know the weather here has been pretty cold.... well as of April 1st it has FINALLY started warming up, so Joseph and I decided on saturday when it hit 55 degrees (which, yes was cause to jump for joy) we decided to take advantage of the weather on a saturday and walk around our fair Island once again. The winter kept us inside much of the time, but this will soon change in the coming months!

Here was part of our walk as we headed toward the stadium in Gohyeon. I love all the Mountains in the backgrounds, I guess I am still an Appalachian girl at heart.

Further down the path we came across some Apartment buildings far off the beaten trail, we headed up to explore and found a few cool restaurants that we may have to visit in the future.

The fence with the community farms (I think) there were many people out working them when we walked by that afternoon.

My new favorite flower... they have them everywhere, and they are the perfect shade of baby pink!


Also you can't mention flowers without saying something about the cherry Blossoms, this was the first of the start, now the entire street is lined with tiny pink buds, it is really beautiful on the walk to work,

And with any blog I try to include a fun story or tidbit, We came home from dinner out one night and stopped at the new 7-11 they just opened next to our apartment. We bought some water, pepsi, and a few various snacks to enjoy for the week ahead. We are walking back to our apartment and there is an odd glow coming from the car port area of our apartment, we continue to walk until we found there was a flaming bicycle....And no this is not some wacky drink or mis-translation, literaly there was a bike on fire. Being Foreigners we really had no idea what to do... And the odd part was NOBODY was there.... we were on our own with no phone, so we could not call the fire department, and no Korean skills so we really could not tell anybody. But this fire was big and getting bigger, it was melting the tires and smoke was filling the doorway to get into the building. So I went to knock on the Landlords door, Not home OF COURSE.... so I am all set to open the huge bottle of water we just bought and put out the fire. Joseph says " wait, lets get the trash can filled with water and take that out instead, that will have more water anyway" so we ran upstairs, and dumped all our trash on the ground and filled it up with the sink. We ran back downstairs and managed to put out the flames.

Now why is it that we have lived in that apartment for 6 months and NEVER once seen one of our neighbors, but the minute we are putting out a fire we didn't start with a trashcan full of water one of them happens to walk up and see us...

Nobody has said anything at work to us about it, so hopefully we are just some unseen heros.

Anyway, i got some pictures of the aftermath of the blaze the next day, I figured this would be a fun time to post it.

the remains of the seat.

Here you can see the burnt springs of where the bike seat used to be, that was the main casualty of the fire. The tire is burnt too... and the lock...

Enjoy, We just got back from a trip so I will try to update that this weekend.