…and we’re back…Korea, present day (sorta)…
Here’s what’s been going on over in this part of the world: festivals. lots of festivals.
How many people were having their portraits taken at the same time?
I can finally *sort of* read Korean Hangul, though what I’m reading still mystifies me. It works better when what I’m reading is actually a Korean translation of an English word. For example, the first part of this says Dae -gu o-pae-la or Daegu Opera! As for the rest — I can read it but it still does not compute.
Kind of had an oompa loompa vibe going on here. This group was my fave — they were totally drum-lining it.
later, Oompas
amazingly, nobody trailed the horses with a pooper scooper like in American parades…
fake trees with fake flowers that we never got to make. 🙁
The dream of the 90s is alive in Daegu. Seriously. 90s fashion — especially hip hop and grunge is very popular here.
May is like big time festival month in these parts. Probably because the weather is awesome – still just the tiniest bit of chill in the air but still warm enough for short sleeves and sandals. We have had a few really warm days though — ones where we had to open all of our windows which let all the yellow dust in — which meant we spent two days cleaning our house — which meant we ended up buying a fan. You wanna blow yellow dust at me? I’ll blow it right back, my friend.
Where were we? Festivals.
We attended the Daegu Colorful Festival this past weekend which was actually a series of mini-festivals (?) I’m still sort of confused about this because all of the side festivals had their own names like, “Modern Festival,” “Street Art Festival,” “Pottery Festival,” and most curious, “Meomeoriseom Festival.” Apparently “Meomeoriseom Festival” has something to do with doll mimes? Is a “doll mime” a puppet? We walked to where the festival was supposed to be but never found anything resembling a doll — or mime — or puppet — or anything. So I guess we’ll never know. All of these mini festivals fell under the larger banner of the Colorful Festival — so festivals within a festival I guess — and they all happened around the same time frame in downtown Daegu.
Saturday was hot. Hot weather makes me snap at Sly. Crowds of people makes me snap at Sly. Lack of caffeine makes me snap at Sly. We walked around in attire that was way too warm for the weather and sweated like crazy. My hair felt like a matted bear pelt on the back of my neck.
Thankfully, there were lots of things to see to take my mind off the heat — art bicycles, several different parades, photography exhibits, stages set up everywhere with a variety of musicians, as well as smaller street busking acts (our favorite was this heavy metal rocker dude straight from 1994). There were lots of booths for kids to make crafty things — things like decorate cookies (to eat?) and paint tiny miniature furniture (?) for a mini diorama (?). One of the most popular activities involved assembling a paper flower then taking the flower to the end of the street to hang on a tree. Once you hung your flower, with what I’m assuming were wishes written on the hanging tag, you received a book of sepia toned reprinted photographs of Old Daegu. I think they may have been postcards? Sly tried snatching one but we were told we had to go make the flower first. So we went in search of the flower making station, only to be told they had just closed.
After our paper flower chase we walked back down a tree-lined (shady) row of crafty booths. When we walked through previously I noticed an artist drawing custom portraits in colored pencil. I needed to have one…but with our kitties. So I left Sly to ask the artist if she would be willing to include our kitties in the portrait while I sifted through my millions of cat photos to find just the right one for the portrait. I don’t know if the portrait looks exactly like us, but I love the look of it and anyway. it was less than $6 And just look at those cute kitty faces!
Next we found a street with food vendors though strangely we were not hungry so instead we waited for another parade to start. And waited. And waited. And waited. Luckily we were standing by a group of Taekwondo students who kept us entertained while we waited, but once they moved forward to let the group of chefs (???) in line, we decided we were tired of waiting. So we went and had another portrait made — this time by a caricature artist.
For the most part the artist had been drawing Koreans so we were curious to see how she would draw me. Sly anticipated that she would make my eyes HUGE — which is exactly what happened. As my MIL said after viewing the drawing, “all I see are your eyes!” I liked how different these portraits were from the pencil drawings — they were like Korean anime versions of us! (Do I really look like that?) These drawings were a little pricier than the pencil drawings — and the line of people was longer — so we didn’t bother asking to have our cats artistically rendered. Doesn’t mean i didn’t want to though.
Several hours and two portraits later we popped into a Daiso (dollar store) to pick up some school supplies for Korean class and then boarded a rickety old (hot) bus back home. Despite the heat — and crowds — and confusing maps — we had a fun time at our first Korean festival.
