sorak festival

Well its festival time again and in between the m
Mushroom Festival and the Salmon Festival is sandwiched the Sorak Festival. I had been to this festival last year and won some North Korean soju shooting at targets in the shooting gallery and really wanted to duplicate my feat this year.
The festival started on Thursday and ran through Sunday but it was on Saturday that Ruthie, Paul, Aubrey, Rachel and I headed out to enjoy the festivities.
We started out strolling through all the concessions, doing the shooting gallery, and checking out the vast array of stupid shit for sale for a dollar before setting down to the nights cuisine, roast pork done on a spit, awesome!
After that we headed through the fire walkers, some sort of clowns, and screwed around watching the fortune teller before heading home through the bonzi trees. Well some of us headed home, Ruthie and I went out for cocktails but that is a whole differant story.
Pictures.....
1 and 2 some very cool banzi trees
3. I am getting pretty good with my new camera. Here is a picture of the fireworks that I took just by accident.
4. The view from my roof at night
5. Paul pontificating about the rather poor performance of the fireworks.

The Salmon Festival

I love the salmon festival, good times, fish, crazy girls, lots of drinks and good food, I mean what can possibly go wrong? Well, this year, unlike last year, it can get really fucking cold.
Saturday dawned windy, clear, and chill, perfect weather to wade into an ice cold river and catch large fish with your hands. Despite a minor setback or two the fisher people managed to get ready and registered for the four o'clock dunking and after that we had a few hours to head out and check out the festival.
First on the order of business, at least for me and Ruthie was to head over to a tent we spied earlier selling cold beer and big steaming bowls of mussels. After eating and drinking for a bit we headed out and saw a very amusing musical act doing some weird Korean version of classic Abba.
Finally, after kicking it around for a while it was time for the real event to start, the fishing.
With a bang on a pot, the crowd of people surged off of the gravel bank and headed out to the river, towards the rippling ribbons of water where the dorsal fins of scores of salmon cut through the windswept water.
It was over in a few minutes. I am proud to say that the first person to cross the bridge connecting the rocky starting point with the river bank was my girl with the biggest fish, and after her straggled Paul, Aubrey, and Toby, with everyones fish getting progressively smaller.
After we went to the tent to have their fish inked and pressed on to rice paper, a priceless memento, we headed back to Ruthies where I got to clean three very nice salmon. A great day.

Pictures-
1. If you are to lazy to catch a fish you can buy some pre dried
2. A little boy watching the fish
3. A happy crew with their catch.
4. Ruthies salmon getting ready to be pressed
5. Babi with the band