Driving down the main street in Gimhae you can see a small creek running down the right hand side with a path running along it for walking or running or cycling.
At the moment on the far banks of this creek there are about a hundred white tents sent up along the footpath, and masses of coloured lanterns. In the sky there are half a dozen huge balloons in Red, Yellow and Blue with flags flying from the bottom with messages written in Korean. This is a small festival being celebrated in Gimhae filled with international stalls as well as traditional Korean arts, crafts and displays. Earlier this week Park and I took a wander around the festival site. We ate rice cakes and drank rice juice and watched two men pounding rice to a pulp showing how the rice cakes are/were made.
Watching the cakes being made with us were a group of children in costume who were to perform a musical piece on the stage set up within the festival grounds. I asked them if I could have a photo (which Park kindly took for me) and then Park and I sat in the arranged seating waiting for the performance to begin. The performance piece was one mainly of drums and gongs with complicated beat patterns and changes in tempo accompanied occaisionally by a horn that sounded a little like a clarinet, or a large stringed instrument which looked like a bass lying on its back. I found it pretty amazing (while slightly hypnotic), Park tells me he was struggling to stay awake.
I've moved in to my new homestay accomodation. While I say homestay, it kind of is and kind of isn't. My understanding is with homestays you're generally living within another family's home. Whilst I'm living in someone else's place, I'm not really living in their home as such. The family owns two apartments side by side. One they live in, the other is basically a study area for their two children Nicky and Vicky.
Nicky is a 6 year old boy who has been studying English every school day for the last 2 years (that's in addition to normal school, violin and WTF Taekwondo every day as well). He's an impressive kid who has so much energy at the end of the day I don't know how his mother does it?!? Vicky is Nicky's 4 year old sister who is also studying English as well as attending normal school. As soon as I can get them to stand still long enough - I'll get photos :-)
Anyway, the apartment is basically floor to ceiling school books in Korean and English (very impressive), and it is only used from 5pm-8pm when the children are working with their private tutors, so they have cleaned out one of the bedrooms for me and that's where I'm living. It's a great space and I've got plenty of privacy which is great. Not to mention its a 30 second walk (if that) to the Gimhae dojang where I'm instructing Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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