Author: Wolf

Sacheon is known in Korea for its Aerospace industries so when it puts on an Air Show it makes it big. Its one of the staple festivals in Korea and draws a large crowds. This is one of the few times Sacheon gets quite busy and crowded. The streets near our apartment are turned into a impromptu parking lot where people are shuttled onto the air field.

There quite a lot of booths to checkout from Korean souvenirs to foreign foods that still have that Korean side flavor. (I will still accept the Gyro even though it has cabbage and Korean pepper. As a waygooking myself I know how hard it is to get true foreign ingredients.) This year there were Tron bikes you could rent to drive around. It was all fun and games until soon after someone realized his bike was crippled.

The unique part to me about the air show is the displays allow you to get up close and personal with alot of the hardware on display. I feel like most of the airshows I went to you never could really get that close to the planes. I also am starting to think I am right just based on the one US display of the A10 Warthog. The plane was roped off and the guards were weapons ready in case someone needed persuasion to stand down. To be honest maybe this aggressive US stance is just to deter the Korean children. I have been here so long that I would have not been that shocked to see the Korean kids doing a pull up on the Apache rocket pods. Speaking of Apache we did get to have our family picture in front of it to continue the family photo tradition.

The main attraction is the Black Eagles (like U.S. Navy Blue Angels) that do a performance each day of the air show. Working and living in the area we know the performance by heart since they practice it the week before. Its a very fun time if you love the sounds of jets running full afterburner and banking hard. If you don’t like that sound then it must be the worst two weeks of the year. I have an instinctual need to just start grunting and cheering when I hear those fighter jet noises similar to Frito in Idiocracy when the police are blowing up his car. You can Google it. So it is a great two weeks for me.

This picture was actually taken during the Olympics torch running ceremony in Samcheonpo when the Black Eagles performed. The bridge is the one you take to Namhae. (Google added the black and white effect and I left it)

We decided to go to the Taebaek Snow Festival and to make it even more authentic we stayed at a traditional Korean home instead of a modern hotel. We had a feeling we were going to be roughing it when the intermediary for the rental was concerned about how a Westerner might not be used to the lack of amenities. I imagine my wife won over their concerns talking about her love of history and how much she like the architecture. While we survived the night I can understand why it is not as popular during the coldest time in winter. The “traditional Ondol”* heating works… but pretty varying temperature spread based on if you are near the fire pit or on the chimney side. Even being on the far cold side I wished there were little spits I was rotating on or a mechanism like the hot dogs at the QuikTrip. Just something to flip me occasionally so my cooked side and frozen side would change out intermittently. Some time around 6am the fire died out and we were up and ready to put on a coat.

After a stop at the local GS25 to get coffee and Mt. Dew we were ready to take the short drive over to the snow festival. We started off by parking and once again being amazed at the Korean festival bus efficiency. Once at the base its around a 1/2 mile climb up to the sites past multiple stands selling foods and grocers selling local specialties. The first stop was the ice slide which was a hit with the kids. There was also a grill your own food station.

Further up the mountain was the snow displays. There were many winter Olympic themed displays this year since the winter Olympics are being held in Korea. The ice maze was also quite fun. We didn’t stay too long due to the lack of sleep the night before. We stopped at the food stalls at the bottom for a quick corn dog before heading out. I think this is something we should probably attend again if we stay in Korea longer.

*Ondol Heating – I am not Meg and will not write a history lesson on it. Just Wikipedia Ondol.