Baduk Festival

On the last weekend (28-29th of July) a Baduk Festival was held in Jecheon sponsored by Tygem. There were several events on this festival, such as Baduk tournament, singing contest, chokku tournament, etcetc. We have attended on the Baduk tournament and the chokku (footvolleyball) tournament, unfortunfately nobody had the confident for singing or dancing. Blackie could do it, but we wanted someone from the students :)

Members of the BIBA team for the Baduk Tournament:

Manuel (Canadian 5d /tygem 6-7d/, he just arrived to Korea one day before this festival)
Toni (Finnish 3d /tygem 6d/, he arrived to Korea few days ago)
Daniel (Singaporian 3d /tygem 5d/)
Gareth (England /about tygem 3d/)
Melissa (France /about tygem 2d/)
/on the Baduk tournament one team had only 5 players, so Alain-Melissa's father couldn't join us, but luckily he got the chance to play in another team/)

Members of the Chokku team:
Blackie
Dia
Manuel
Gareth

On the chokku tournament we were the second strongest team, but the Baduk tournament seemed to be a bit tougher. Anyway, everyone had some good games.

Here are some photos:

BIBA team

(from the left: Daniel, Toni, Dia, Gareth, Blackie, Melissa, Manuel, Alain

1st round of the team tournament, indoor

(from the front: Melissa, Gareth, Daniel, Toni, Manuel)

2nd round of the tournament, outdoor

We have got several prizes :) BIBA team got 2 boxes of potatos and 2 bags of corns, Dia got 1 box of potatos, 1 bag of corns and 1 frypan (chokku MVP). So lunch and dinner is gonna be only potatos and corns for about 2 weeks :D Vegetarians are welcomed. ^^

After we came back from the festival, Blackie and Dia made dinner for everyone and Manuel got inspired by the potatos so he also made some special Spanish food by potatos and eggs (was tasty:). Thanks. ^^

BIBA Holiday 2nd part

On the 6th:
We moved to a new accommodation. Actually we got really lucky, because someone had membership card for this room, so we could get it for pretty good price.

 From the entrance~

 Living room~

Bedroom and bathroom 1~

 Bedroom and bathroom 2~

Swimming pool, view from the balcony~

The sea, view from the balcony again~

 Before swimming, few games of backgammon~ with a nice view in the background :)

Very nice hot Jakuzzi :)

 It was raining a lot, but we didn't mind. Actually thanks to the rain, we had the whole swimming pool just for us. Later some Koreans got some confidence and joined too.

 

Blackie found a new friend :)

 

 Our bodyguards and us. They look a bit cold :) 

This water was pretty cold, especially after the hot jakuzzi.

 Team games between

 BIBA students vs players

 from Kangleung Baduk Club.

Blackie and me were preparing some melons for the players. I told to Blackie I can handled the melons, he should take some pictures. But I failed, melons won against me (I cut myself)

 So Blackie finished the job.

(9p power was needed:)

Next day, we went to the beach near by. The waves were really huge. :) Actually at first the weather wasn't so sunny, but slowly the sun reached us. (Nobody was really prepared for the sun after 2 days of heavy rain.)

 Blackie, Dia, Fredda

Me, enjoying sun. Blackie trying to hide from the sun. Probably he was worried that if he gets darker he might be not seen on the next pictures anymore.

We (Fredda, Ben, Gareth and me) got sunburnt a bit, but Blackie just only got darker. :) 

After spending about 3 hours on the beach and in the sea between huge waves, we started our way back to Sanbon. We stopped at a resting place and the guys found some very nice massage chairs. It was so good that we stayed at least 20 minutes :) (normally people only tried for like 3-5 minutes)

 After we managed to escape from the chairs, we continued our way back to Sanbon and arrived back around 9pm. Except for Blackie, it was time for us to deal with our sunburns. :)

Anyway hopefully everyone enjoyed this short trip to the sea.

The End

BIBA Holiday

Just like last year, we went for a short picnic in the beginning of July.
On the 4th of July, Blackie, me (Dia) and Gareth went to Kangleung by car. Blackie had golf meeting with other professional and strong amateur baduk players on the 4th and 5th, therefore we had to go first. Ben and Fredda were busy, so they came after us by bus on the 5th.
We went to the beach and I gave some life and death problems for Gareth, while we were waiting for Blackie to finish his golf game. At first he was solving them too fast, so I had to give him harder ones, so I could have some rest on the beach :)

The beach was pretty empty, but we had almost all we needed. :)

Gareth with his problems.

The problem in the lower-right corner gave him hard time.

After he managed to solve the problems, we played one game at the accommodation then we went for a nice dinner with all the GO(lf) players together.

left side: Professor Jeong (9 dan pro and professor at Myeongji, going to EGC this year), far away on his right is Kwon Gap-yong sabomnim (he was the teacher of many top pro players /Lee Se-dol, Choi Choel-han, Park Jeong-hwan, etcetc/ we often visit his school for match play), right next to him is Cho Hun-hyun 9p (was No. 1 for very long time, /until he made Lee Chang-ho very strong:)/ , he is Lee Chang-ho's teacher) on the right side: Blackie and Kwon Gap-yong sabomnim's wife

We got to eat some small crabs :)

 The owner of the restaurant

 asked an autograph and a picture

 with Cho Hun-hyun Guksu.

After the dinner, Gareth got to play one more game with a strong amateur, he already played one before they went to play golf. Unfortunately Gareth couldn't take his revenge.
We planned to go to swim around 11pm, however the beach was closed so we postponed swimming for the next day.

5th of July:
Anh Young-il 8p, who has been spreading Baduk in Australia already for 4 years, came back to Korea few days ago and decided to join us for 2 days. He arrived in the morning and played a short teaching game (even) with Gareth, then we went to the sea, but still didn't swim.

 Big discussion right next to the sea. :)

Blackie came back from playing golf around 2pm, we rested a bit,

studied Baduk, 

and finally decided to go to swim before the dinner appointment. Luckily, Fredda and Ben had nice timing, they arrived around 5pm so we went to swim all together (except Anh Young-gil, he had to meet someone).

Unfortunately the weather was not so good, it started to rain, but nothing could stop us. It seems the rainy weahter is going to become the tradition of BIBA picnics. Anyway the sea was still warm enough, so we could enjoy:)
After the sea, we were invited for dinner in a very nice restaurant by the President of the Kangwon-do Baduk Association. Actually his son lives in Australia and studying Baduk from Anh Young-il (small world) :)

On the left: Ben, Gareth, Mr. Ko (President of the Kangwon-do Baduk Association), Anh Young-il.
On the right: Fredda (half), Mr. Ko's son, Blackie, me (Dia)
The dinner was really nice, thank you. :)

 Me, taking picture of the red bean ice cream, which was served in a plate made by ice,

while Blackie is being very curious. ^^

To be continued...