Spring is in the air!

Saturday, February 23^rd, 2013 – Sunday, February 24^th, 2013

I started the day off right and went to Costco for the 10am opening time.  A group of seven people went!

After dropping off my food, I met Laura to visit the UN Memorial park near the gym where we practice Jujitsu.  This park was build to honour the soldiers from the UN who found in the Korean War. 

We walked to Jujitsu class from there and we had our first official Gi practice and we were also introduced to our new part time teacher, John.  This particular class involved a lot of sparing, which was challenging but useful to better understand the sport.

 Our name in Korean is written on the back!

On Sunday, we went for our first big hike!  We meet at 10am in a famous temple in Busan called Beomeosa Temple.  There were four of us in total, including a new friend who is an experienced hiker.  First we hiked up the mountain, which was the hardest part, especially when we went full speed up for around 45 minutes straight.  At the top we saw some amazing views of the city!  We hiked along the fortress wall and it was beautiful!  We stopped along the top for a quick lunch. 

We reached the East gate and continued down more trails (similar woods style trails like at home) back towards the city and found the nearest subway.  We reached the subway around 2pm. 

The Jeongwol Daeboruem Fire Festival was being held this weekend.  This is an annual festival that is held the first full moon after the Lunar New Year.  We saw Buddhists praying on the beach, there were booths set up with free tea and coffee and rice.  They had an announcer and dancers and the main attraction was the enormous bond fire on the beach! 

It was incredible seeing such a huge fire pit lit on fire!  Something I will never forget!