Butterflies and Barbecues.

I went to the butterfly festival in Hampyeong last weekend with my friend Miji.



Every year, when the flowers come out and things are looking beautiful, they have a festival in this little town in the middle of nowhere. There are fields of flowers and pavilions selling all sorts of food and drinks.



Our first stop was to try some prime bbq beef. I don't know how anyone can be a vegetarian. This simple meal of beef, kimchi and garlic tasted so good!

Unfortunately it was "Children's day", so it seemed like every child and their family in Korea were visiting Hampyeong all on the same day. Just walking around was difficult, as the milling crowds were covering every bit of open space there.



Lucky the children are so cute in Korea.



Miji and I decided the best way to have a breather would be to go out on the little creek on a paddle boat. Now I'm not talking about a big paddle steamer or anything. This was one of those little boats that you have to peddle with your feet to get it to move around. It was fun, but also hard work. Miji was a crazy driver, she kept accidentally (on purpose) running into other boats. oops :)

After this, we decided to go for a stroll through the flower fields and have a break from the heat.



On our way to a nice shady pavilion, I got to watch some kids chase some piglets around a pen and saw others playing in mud, trying to catch little fish with their hands.



It looked like lots of fun.

Eventually, after resting for a while, we caught up with to more friends, Cathy and Monique, and headed over to the main attraction, the butterfly pavilion.

Inside were many different types of flowers and some butterflies fluttering around.


This one had just emerged from its cocoon and was drying its wings.

I'm not sure if our timing was out, but there mainly seemed to be one type of butterfly (which looked more like a moth) in abundance. In the whole pavilion, I only saw 3 types of butterfly.


This was the nicest butterfly I found there.

Still, it was nice to look around.

After all this fun in Hampyeong, we decided to leave the crowds and head back to Mokpo for a BBQ at a friends place. Kristen and Hyn-joong had been lucky enough to be given the use of Hyun-joon's cousin's house, with a large back yard, to host the party.



Quite amazing considering the Korean owners weren't there and they let a bunch of foreigners have the run of the place.

It was a great night with nice burgers provided by Kristen and Hyun-joong, some music provided by Matt Amond, David (?) and myself, and great company provided by all who came. I was able to meet some of the latest newbie crowd to come to Korea and we were also graced with the pressence of Alex's mother.

Not even the rain bucketing down put a dampner on the event.



In fact it helped provide some entertainment later in the evening...



You go girls!



Yet another great weekend in Korea.