Cha

I've been doing a little traveling the past few weekends so it's time for an update!

Three weekends ago, a few friends and I headed to Boseong for the Green Tea Festival. According to my awesome Korean guide book (thanks Kelly!), the first two weeks in May is prime green tea picking season. And it is one of the natural beauties to see while in Korea. So, after a minor glitch in the travel plans (apparently there isn't a bus from Busan to Boseong at 7:40pm like my Korean co-teacher told me), we headed to Su Cheon for the night (about an hour from Boseong).

We found a love motel called Motel BMW... quite aspirational I think!.. and spent the night. Early morning (or mid morning :)), we stumbled on to the next bus to our final destination. We decided that we wanted to find a place to drop our stuff before heading to the festival. We ended up choosing to stay in Yulpo (a small town on the coast) rather than Boseong which didn't seem to have much going on when we got off the bus that morning. Yulpo wasn't exactly bumpin either but since it was on the coast, it was definitely more beautiful. On to the Tea Festival...

As far as festivals go, I have only been to two now. Crab Fest and Green Tea Fest. While Green Tea fest had many little tea vendors and was cute and quaint, I'd have to say crab fest was a bit more exciting. The best part of Tea Fest was the scenery. The tea fields were carved out of the sides of the "mountains" (hills would be more accurate I guess). It was brilliantly green everywhere you looked. And I thought it was amazing that Koreans could farm on such steep land. While in Boseong, I obviously had green tea, but also had green tea cookies and green tea ice cream. All very very delicious. I snagged some cookies and tea to take back to Busan.

I'd have to say the funniest part of the trip came at the gingebong that Teresa and I went to on Saturday night. A gingebong is a Korean spa in which ladies (and gentlemen ... in a separate area of course) strip down to their birthday suits and soak in hot and cold baths. It is a very very common Korean past time. The baths have different salts which they claim will make your skin softer, relieve muscle pain, cure sickness, make you more beautiful, and rid the world of hunger (or something like that). I'm still waiting for the affects to set in...

Anyway, at the gingebong, they of course had a green tea bath. So I soaked a bit there and then headed to a smaller hot bath. A few older Korean women (which I will blog about another time... these woman are their own species) started talking to me ... in Korean of course. One of the ladies cupped her hands at chest level and gave me the universal sign for big breasts. I laughed and said aneo, aneo (no, no!). Although, I secretly thought in my head that its nice to finally be in a country where my size A minus tatas are relatively big!

They continued to talk to me, so I smiled, shrugged a few times, and smiled some more. Then one of the ladies leaned over, gently padded my "love handles!" and gave me the thumbs up! hahaha! I'm butt naked here and this lady just caressed my side! But in Korea, age gives you t the right to do just about anything. So, the older you are, the louder, ruder, drunker, etc you can be. Now, don't get me wrong, this woman wasn't being rude at all. But given her age and the fact that I'm foreign (and apparently a freak of nature here -- remember the elevator guy!) it is totally acceptable to talk openly about my physique and even make blatant reference to my more or less desirable parts. But I got the thumbs up. Which means I have an agima (Koran older lady) approved body! I've never felt so loved by such a finicky group of people!

ET

PS - "Tea" in Korean is pronounced Cha. Similar to Chai so easy to remember!