Butterfly Festival, dates

SO yeah... before I talk about mom's visit, I should talk about the Butterfly Festival and a few other things.
So, anyways, the butterfly festival. I was invited to play in the talent show for foreigners at the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival, which was pretty exciting. Vanessa and I panned the whole weekend around it, starting with a FRiday night in Gwangju, then the Festival on Saturday, then over to Mokpo for the rest of the weekend. Anyways, Friday was the night that we wound up going to my place after having some drinks with Mel in Gwangju, but then we wound up at the Windmill anyway, because of the cat's damned allergens. haha. We got up bright and early to catch the bus to Hampyeong leaving from the Gwangju International Center. We got there at nine, and there was no-one there! I started freaking out a little bit, but not too much, because great hair has an incredible calming effect on me.
Anyways, I called at around ten to find out what the heck was going on! I was very surprised to learn that the festival performances would actually be taking place the following day. Yeah. Shitty.
But it turned out alright, we were already packed, so we headed to the bus terminal and got on a bus for Mokpo and caught up on our sleep there (late night illness+early morning=tired). The next morning we caught a bus to Hampyeong, and got there just in time to grab some lunch and then perform. I played three songs, opening with "Such a Simple Way" (of course) then a Ryan Adams cover "The Hardest Part" and closing with a new song "Make you smile". It was well received. We were asked to wear "traditional costume", so I wore Columbia Hiking shorts, a gray T-shirt and some Birkenstocks. Basically, that's my uniform in Canada, so it seemed appropriate, especially since I have no Voyageur pants.
Ooh, I just had a random flashback to playing against the Valois team from Mattawa, with the guy who was playing house league after years of double and triple A who made me wet my pants (not really) every time he took a slapshot at me... yikes, still remember how bad he hurt my elbow through the shitty house-league monkey suit that the Powassan hockey league provided for me.
I won second place, which came with the awesome prize of 200 000 won in Farmer's Coop gift certificates! That's just over $200! So, I'll eat cheaply this month, that's for sure. The woman who won did a traditional dance from India, I believe, and it was quite good! The other highlight for me was two girls who did a very country-ified cover of "Last Night" by the strokes, with some great harmonies and tambourine/cowboy boot accompaniment!
After the performance we had some tent meat, which is always fabulous (seriously) and then we headed home (to Mokpo).
I forgot to mention that the other part of the prize was "Stamina Wine". hahaha, awesome. I love how every second thing here is lauded for providing increased stamina... especially alcohol. I think that general consensus is that alcohol has the opposite effect... and why the obsession here? There is a LOT of concern over stamina here. Do Canadians have so many stamina products, and I've just been ignorant of the market? Is there an pickled eel store somewhere that no-one ever told me about? If there is...
What else happened that was awesome? there was another thing I wanted to mention... before I turned it over to mom...
Oh, the Wando Beach party? Well, that was cancelled, which sucked. But, it led to a pretty awesome weekend with Vanessa anyways... we had a double-date with Kristin and Jeff, who are a LOT of fun, and we gifted out some stamina wine. Jeff drank it at dinner, which was highly amusing. Then we went out for some drinks... I had some over-priced/under-tasty sake... and terrible sausages. ugh.
I forgot to mention this party we went to at Jeff's uncle's house... it was really nice, we had some barbecued burgers and we drank wine coolers, and I wound up playing some guitar for a while, and meeting up with some new musicians, as well as some just general noobies... which was fun. I got to play the part of "Sage". haha. It was nice, but it rained later in the night, and kind of put a damper on things.