November, really?

Wow, I can't believe that 2009 is basically over...where did it all go? I feel like an old person (which, I guess these days I am! HA) saying it, but 2009 has just flown by, seems like just yesterday was Christmas 2008, and here it is almost Christmas 2009.
I hope everyone is doing well! Things have been going well for me. I had a nice Chuseok holiday (a month ago! HAHA). I went with my friend Sam down to Busan, it was gorgeous...the weather was amazing and we had a nice trip. We had planned to go to a lantern festival...I had seen some pictures from last year, and it looked quite amazing. As usual, when the two of us take a trip we usually just wing it and go...we hadn't really planned anything out, and just went. In fact, we didn't even have a map when we left Cheonan, so we stopped at a 7-11 and asked the lady there if they had a map we could buy. They didn't, and so Sam asked her where the closest place was to get a map. She told us that most things would be closed for Chuseok, and so she gave us her personal map! Koreans are so kind. It was funny though, the map appeared to have been used quite well...as I unfolded it, it fell apart into about 5 different sections. That was a bit of a challenge to navigate, but, oh well! Anyway, we chose to take some back roads as Chuseok holiday is know for INSANE traffic. Just imagine Thanksgiving AND Christmas traffic combined, and keep in mind Korea is a small country, so there are literally millions of people all trying to drive to their hometown...suffice it to say, it's a mess! So, we took all kinds of back roads and finally made it down there. It was a beautiful drive, and as I said, the weather was amazing! Crisp and clean air, nice sunny day, and probably about 75, hard to beat that. So, we get down there, all excited to hit up this lamp festival...Sam hollars at a taxi drive at a stop light. "Where is the lamp festival?" "There isn't one," he replies. (Of course, this didn't take place in English, but I figured if I typed in Korean this would be a less interesting exchange!) Sam and I looked at each other, "what?" So, Sam decided to go into a store and ask someone...sure enough, the lantern festival had been cancelled due to H1N1...ugh! I was a little upset, as was Sam. We had just driven about 5 hours...now no festival. The ironic part to cancelling things like this is that the city looked everybit as alive as if there WAS a festival, so why not just have the thing? Not like people were sitting home and not out and about...but anyway. So, yeah, no lantern festival. But, we usually try to make the best out of everything, so we headed down to the beach in the evening and sat down there and talked for a while. There were a lot of people there shooting off fireworks, and the night was beautiful, so we still had a great time. We got a hotel and stayed the night in Busan and decided to drive up the east coast the next day. The next day was even nicer (Saturday was actual Chuseok)...it was amazing and a really really nice day to be out and travelling. We made our way up the east coast and back to Cheonan by around 10PM, I think we had driven around 1000km in two days! HA! Anyway, it wasn't what we anticipated, but we had a great time, and got some great pics. Sorry the night pic is a little blurry, I don't exactly have steady hands, and good thing I wasn't born in the 1800s in the west, or I'd more than likely have been killed my first duel!