A Weekend of Tea (and sniffles)

We had quite a big weekend here in beautiful, cosmopolitan Daegu. Saturday Morning found us awake before 7:00am, and out on a run before 8:00am. After our run we cleaned up and headed to the EXCO convention center to see one of our friends compete in a Tea Ceremony contest at the Daegu Tea Expo. The Expo was pretty cool, with lots of different teas, the foreigner tea ceremony contest, taiko drummers, and a fashion show. It was really worthwhile. I bought some Chrysanthemum tea for Carolyn, and she also got some sort of fermented green tea. I think my favorite thing that we tried was the powdered Japanese style green tea that is frothed with what looks like a bamboo shaving brush. It was a little bit bitter, but looked like it should be creamy. The color was as green as green can be, and I felt like I got a little bit of culture out of it.

After the festival we went to an Indian restaurant we've been wanting to try called Maya. It was outstanding. The decor in the restaurant was nicer than most if not all of the other places I've been in Korea, and the food was amazing. I had a samosa, vegetable curry, chicken curry, tandoori chicken, and garlic naan. I had the sniffles before we got there and when we left my sinuses were wide open.

With full bellies, we headed downtown to run some errands. We made quick stops to get body wash, look at sandals, and find a book for our upcoming beach weekend before realizing that we didn't want to go home yet, and we didn't want to keep walking around. What do you do in this situation? Well, you go to a movie, that's what.

We got to the theater about 20 minutes before Dark Shadows was about to start, so we got our tickets and headed up to the theater. I thought the film was hilarious, and it was perfectly cast with Johnny Depp doing what he does best, essentially playing Captain Jack Sparrow (although his character's name was Barnabus Collins). After a few laughs we headed home, although I got into a bit of a tiff with the subway ticketing machine. Oh well, it's over and I survived, right?

Sunday morning we woke up and headed over to DaVinci Coffee to have our regular vacation-and-wedding planning date. So far it's been all vacation and very little wedding. We did get something accomplished though. After a couple of weeks of shopping online we found a resort to stay at on Railay beach, and also found out that there are cooking classes available on the peninsula that won't require going into Krabi or Ao Nang. Huzzah. Sunday was pretty uneventful, a short trip to the Emart for groceries later and we were at home. I made a Thai red curry for dinner with tofu, eggplant, mushrooms, and pineapple, and we watched some TV show reruns on Korean TV until we both gave up on the weekend and went to bed.

Pretty great, eh?