Beautiful pictures, festivals and unfair competitive practices

This was a good weekend. Despite losing my voice friday night and still not having it back as of sunday night, I had a wonderful time. Jason and I went and checked out the Jeju Cherry Blossom Festival and found it strangely familiar. If you think about it, festivals are pretty much the same anywhere you go. They have a purpose or theme, they have some carnival games, some singing and performances and loads of interesting (read scary) foods. Here the flowers were lovely, the performances lively and the food plentiful. Definitely a fun experience.

Me in a sea of (I am not making this up. This is their actual name) rape flowers. Two weeks ago we had the rape flower festival (music provided by Nirvana)

Jason looking ... thoughtful?? (maybe)

However, my favorite part of the weekend hands down was getting to play basketball for the first time since i've arrived. In fact I got to play both days in games with Korean and Chinese students from the university here. It was exhilarating to get back to playing one of my favorite sports. And yes it's probably unfair for me to be playing basketball in Asia given my height but too bad. I've always loved Shaq and now I feel like him every time I play.

I went for a walk in the woods after the game Sunday

As you would expect, everyone in the games was very polite. I was invited into 2 games saturday and another on Sunday. In all of them it was call your own fouls (after apologizing for them) and competitiveness was fairly low. Most of the guys weren't bad but playing against a skilled big man is not something they're used to (big shock). Maybe that will change if I get to play with them more throughout the summer. For now i'm heading to bed so i'll have plenty of energy (and hopefully a voice) to teach the kids tomorrow. For now enjoy more of the pictures from the festival and around the island.