It’s springtime and moving quickly into summer here. The humidity has skyrocketed, and we’ve had many days of rain greening everything up.
Saturday, May 24 was spring arts day at KIS. Parents are invited to watch the middle school play, middle and high school chorus, bands and orchestra performances all in one day. Plus there’s an exhibit of student artwork from the semester. It’s a lot all at once, but with so many parents living far away, we have to make the trip worthwhile.
Middle school chorus in their school dress uniforms.
Middle school band
Seeing the kids perform brought back lots of memories! The kids are fun to listen to – and the band performance was pretty incredible. The kids are very talented and sounded great.
It was the band teacher’s final concert of his career. The kids got him a cute cake. Odd choice of decoration wording…
We also took the chance to show off to the parents some of the Service Learning Trips (my field at the school). Each grade set up a display of photos, quotes and “stuff” from their trips.
Service Learning displays.
Spring has also meant tons of growth: flowers and new crops and pretty things. Here’s a collection of my favorites from the past couple months.
Beth in the rapeseed / canola flowers back in March.
Patrick being a sneaky photographer. We paid ~$1 to enter this field which may be harvested but was mostly for tourists. Lots of couples there taking pics.
After rapeseeds bloom, the next “festivals of flowers” are for apricot blossoms!
These bloomed in March, at the botanic gardens down the road from our apartment.
Then cherry blossoms came in April. The road between home and school is lined in these trees that burst into fluffy pale pink flowers.
Now in May we’ve had more wildflower type finds…
And some planted flowers in front of people’s homes.
And sometimes crops are just as pretty as the flowers. I think this is barley, caught in perfect evening light.
Closer shot of the almost glowing grains.
Jeju is really a beautiful place in the spring. The one big difference I’ve noticed between fall and spring is that it seems the air is dirtier in the spring. I’m not sure if that’s because wind patterns bring pollution from China, or because more people locally are burning things right now (they burn all their trash here, right on the roadside), but I’m hoping for some more picture-perfect blue skies again come autumn.