The Cherry Blossoms Cometh.....and goeth pretty quickly

This time, I won’t make any empty apologies about the lapse in blog entries over the last couple months.  I’ve been pretty busy with work, and I’ve also grown a bit weary of chronicling my experiences one after another – especially now that these experiences are no longer new and interesting, but instead common occurrences lacking novelty and intrigue.  Still, I think it’s about time for an update.  My last four entries (posted back in February) were about my Japan trip, so I haven’t written about Korea since January.

I am exceedingly pleased to report that the very long, cold winter abruptly turned to spring a few weeks ago.  As a result, I’m coming out of hibernation and discovering new motivation to get out and see more of Korea – something I did so little of during the winter.  Spring here is really lovely.  Color has returned to the landscape, swiftly sweeping away the dull browns and greys of the cold season.  These days, the sun shines more often than not.  In a matter of two weeks, the temperature went from bitingly cold to tee-shirt-and-shorts weather – skipping right over the mild hoodie-weather stage.  The humidity and mosquitoes that plague the summer months are, at least for the moment, still conspicuously absent.  The result is a near-perfect combination of radiance, warmth, birdsong, and natural rejuvenation.  Too bad I know it can’t last too long.  Monsoon season is just around the corner.

But for now I’m content.  The much anticipated cherry blossom bloom came and went in the blink of an eye – the delicate blossoms don’t linger for more than a week or two, making their brief appearance across the country every spring a major event.  The blossoms bloom first in the south and gradually spread to the north, covering the country in white and pink.  On local news broadcasts, the weather anchors track the progress of the northward bloom on a map the way you’d expect them to cover a slow-moving thundershower.  During those few short weeks, festivals are held all over the country in a hurried attempt to squeeze as much enjoyment and appreciation out of the tiny flowers’ fleeting existence as possible.

I went to one of these festivals.  It was a smaller, lesser-known festival in an out-of-the-way but pretty amazing location on a lake near Jecheon.  I went with some friends on a sunny Sunday, and it was a great way to spend an afternoon.  The festival itself was nothing special – a few streets lined with stalls serving up food, games, souvenirs (some of them rather random) – but the preponderance of cherry blossoms hanging over everything infused the atmosphere with a giddy springy-ness, and it was really quite beautiful.  Really, the thing that made the day fun was spending it with friends, enjoying each other’s company while traveling by trains and buses to a random spot in the mountains where none of us had been before, taking in a change of scenery, enjoying the chance to be outside without shivering.  And experiencing a genuine cherry blossom bloom in east Asia – that was nice too.