With the spring weather cherry blossom is in abundance everywhere. There are several cherry blossom festivals taking place, the most popular is in Jinhae, south of Daegu near the coast. A lot of folks went last weekend while we went to the Daegaya festival instead to avoid the crowds. I heard the buses and trains to Jinhae were all sold out days ahead, and we could see a bus on saturday heading in that area that was completely packed.

But since cherry blossom is everywhere, there is no need to goto Jinhae . On sunday I went walking around in my neighbourhood with my camera. First I went to the Chilgok Temple I discovered behind my house where the friday market is. There were cherry blossoms everywhere making it very picturesque with the colourful painted temple buildings. Many of the streets around are also quite pretty with their own trees blossoming.

Then I went to the church next to my school. They had a line of trees each side in white blossom. Some of my students were leaving sunday service and were excited to see me. They introduced me to the pastor and gave me some rice cake.

Riding the bus on saturday there were so many other scenic spots around the city and local parks. The blossom is everywhere and there is more than enough to see just in a few city blocks or parks. Theres only a two week window as now a lot of it is falling down.

Weather is averaging 20 degrees now so summer is almost here . It doesnt fluctuate in Daegu and is constant. January was a daily zero, Feb/Mar was 12, now April is steady at 20. Hope the really humid weather when I arrived doesnt come too early and not until at least late July.

Also becoming quite popular in the neighbourhood. The third graders who went to high school now see me and want to come over and say hi, and there are new first graders that are recognizing me in the area now and get excited.

I was walking by a taekwondo school and I could hear them playing Ghengis Khan as they did each of their fight moves (here it is on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Madd-sZzWY8&feature=fvsr), then I find a Japanese girl pop version on youtube as well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icvc-dNI5LE&feature=related. This was originally sung by Germany on Eurovision 1979 who came in 4th place!.

They had a mandatory meeting for all the foreign public school teachers in Daegu . They said 260 just came in the Spring 2011 hiring and there are 592 foreign teachers in total. Thats a lot! I thought the 160 that came in my group was big but had no idea there were that many. When you add all the private after schoool academies you could easily double that figure.

Some schools now have a second foreign teacher, mine only has just me. I'm glad coz then one of us would get kicked out of the fancy english room. I sometimes wonder why they're spending all this money hiring us as half the time i'm doing nothing, researching weekend trips on the internet!!

We had a rare rainfall in Daegu last week, but due to events in Japan, it could possibly be radioactive, but not fatal, so were told to be cautious. Also I signed up for Korean language classes with the YMCA. I was under the impression they only did them saturdays but they do weekdays as well. I have 2 hr classes for 12 weeks for $120 so $10 a class . My trip to Seoul showed me my level was very low when other foreigners had high fluency levels. 

I couldnt take the free Korean classes offered by the school board fridays last term as I had after school classes fridays, and it takes me over an hour to get downtown where they were offering them. I was waiting for this term to see if I could sign up again but the same problem again with classes on fridays and my afterschool classes the same time.

Learning to speak some simple conversation is one of the things I wanted to do with my time in korea. I've managed for seven months now, and I can survive with no korean, but I want to make the effort to try and interact more with people. I like languages, have studied french and german, and a few words of serbo-croatian, turkish, and hungarian from my travels. They are also selling good used bikes at the YMCA for $50 but will take me over an hour to ride it home when I get it.

Counting down to the bullfighting festival on saturday!!!!
April is festival month so several things are happening every weekend in different towns.
Not sure how they distinguish a 'festival month' from a 'non festival month' since korea is festival obsessed and they are going on every weekend throughout the year, there are just more in the festival months!!! :-))