Lotus Lantern Festival

This year Buddha's Birthday fell on a Saturday. It's a big deal in Korea, and had it fallen on a weekday, it would have been a day off for most Koreans. The celebration begins a few weeks earlier with people all over the country hanging lotus lanterns in the city, and especially near Buddhist temples, to remind people that it's coming. There is a Lotus Lantern Festival the weekend before, which I attended with several of my friends.

The main event for the festival was on Sunday April 26th, so I canceled my Korean class for the week and headed out late Sunday morning for Seoul. I had planned to meet up with friends later in the afternoon, but I got there around noon, so I wandered around to look at the area by myself.

A mass of lanterns in Tapgol Park in Insadong, in front of the remains of the Wongak Temple.

I wandered through Tapgol Park, and discovered that the station I got off at was an easy walk to Insadong - the ancient cultural tourist trap where I purchased all my traditional Christmas presents last year. I came across some ajumas making mini lotus lanterns for donations.

The ajumas hard at work making mini lanterns outside Tapgol park.

There was a woman standing near the ajumas, trying to get people to buy the lanterns for only 1000 won (about a dollar). She pointed to the sign that she had written, which said something to the effect of "meals will provide to men are old". I was able to tell the woman, in Korean, that I understood what she was asking for, but that her sign didn't make sense in English. So I offered to write her a new one. I wanted to write something along the lines of "The donations you give to purchase a lantern will go towards purchasing meals for older men", but it was too far away from the original sign. So this is what she ended up with:

Photo courtesy of a Chris Chien, who I didn't see at all that day, but who saw my sign later on that day and thought it was awesome enough to take a picture of.

She seemed very pleased, and after I gave her 1000 won for a lantern, she gave me another for free as a thank you. At this point I headed back to the subway station to meet up with Kathryn. Kathryn and I chatted over chaumchi-kimchi-jiggae (tuna and kimchi stew - yummy!) in the Jongno area.

Kathryn took a picture of me in Topgol park with my two lanterns, which I later lost.

I took Kathryn through the same areas I had been, and we went through Insadong as well. We had forgotten it was the Hi Seoul Festival as well, and we came across these lovely dancers, who broke out into dance in the middle of the very crowded street:

And right after the dancing, I ran into one of my students from my morning classes and his mom. She spoke no English at all, and he knew no English two months ago when he started, so communication was rather difficult. I had to explain to the rather worried looking mother that I was his English teacher, and not just some random foreigner talking to her son. She indicated with her hand for us (myself and Kathryn) to follow her, and then she proceeded to walk away, without a glance back to see if we were following, or even if her son was still with her. She ended up buying us a box each of some traditional Korean spun sugar candy (that I also lost later on in the evening), but it was a good distance away from where we had been and the whole time Kathryn and I were watching her son to make sure he didn't wander off and wondering where she was taking us, and even if she had meant for us to follow.

Little wooden statue men in Insadong. They're traditional, and I have no idea why.

After wandering around we went for coffee, but apparently it hit Kathryn wrong and she said she needed to go home just as James and Dayna got to the station to meet us. So James, Dayna and I went to look at the festival.

The first part we saw was an area with a bunch of tents that had everything from grinding your own coffee, to painting hanji paper crafts and meditating with monks.

Well-Being is Korea's version of the health craze. This is Well-Being Yoga. With plates.

Dayna talking about fair trade practices while grinding her own coffee.

The coolest version of double dutch I've ever seen. Look closely, and you can see the ropes form a cross that the person is jumping over. So you need 4 people to hold the ropes instead of just 2.

The penultimate Jenga game.

After wandering through the street of tents and such, we ended up at Jogyesa, which is the largest Buddhist shrine in Seoul and the headquarters of the Jogye sect.

The entrance to Jogyesa, which was overly adorned with lanterns. We thought they might have spelled something with the colors, but we couldn't tell for sure.

More lanterns just inside the entrance, with the seven-tired pagoda in the background to the left of the tree.

How can you take a scolding seriously when your mom is wearing a lotus on her head?

The white lanterns are hung for relatives or friends who have passed on.

The architecture of the temple was amazing- even the doors were beautiful.

A happy Buddha statue at the temple, seemingly asking you for money.

We stayed at the temple for a while, and watched a performance with dancers from the traditional Hahoe masked dance, though it wasn't the original dance itself but rather just the characters from it. After the dancing we met up with some other friends, who had just had dinner. We recommended to them that they watch the performance, and then Dayna, James and I went to get something to eat.

Girls in Hanbok, traditional Korean clothing, waiting for something.

James knew a small place in a back alley in Insadong that served home-made mandu (dumplings) that was delicious.

My favorite Korean food - steamed mandu.

After dinner we headed back to the main street by the Jongno subway station, which is where the lotus lantern parade was to be held.

Lining up waiting to start the parade

It started drizzling right around this time, and since the sun was going down it got rather chilly as well. We decided to move from where we were to get a better view, so we switched to the other side of the street. And before we saw anything, we heard this:

The parade was fascinating. I sat next to James the entire two hours, and we talked about all the different floats, people, and just random weird stuff that kept passing by us. After the parade was over, we headed to the subway to go home, at which point I realized I'd left my bag with my lanterns, my candy, and my brochures under my seat by the parade route. But it was late, I was cold, and I just wanted to go home, so I didn't go back for them.

Here are the photographic and video highlights from the parade:

I tried to catch the peacock on film while it was breathing fire, but it didn't want to cooperate.

Up and coming events and such...

It's amazing how quickly my life here went from rather boring day-to-day (though granted fascinating on the weekends), to a rather full and scheduled existence. I now have plans 5 days a week - Sunday through Thursday I have something scheduled to do after work, from meeting with friends to Korean lessons. And of course on Friday and Saturday I'm usually with friends out and about in Seoul or Uijeongbu (not Oingo-Boingo!). This week/weekend will be no different - I had a lesson this evening, I go into Seoul tomorrow for my movie night, Wednesday is lunch with friends, Thursday is another lesson, and then this Saturday starts the Yeiodo Cherry Blossom Festival. I'll probably end up going into Seoul on Saturday morning, taking tons of pictures, meeting some friends that moved to Seoul for lunch, and then on to a rooftop party elsewhere in Seoul to see some people I haven't seen since the last rooftop party in October. And of course I have to be back home by Sunday night for another Korean lesson.

I'm also making small preparations to come back home. I'm looking into other jobs in Seoul to come back to in August or September (I've found a possible one that I'm praying I get - it's everything I wanted in a new job and the pay is amazing!), and trying to set dates and such for coming back. The current plan is to leave Korea at the end of June and be in the States around June 27th or 28th and fly into Georgia since my parents will be there for the summer. So any friends who may live in the Raleigh/Durham area - make a note on your calendar - I'd love to see you again! And then it's back down to Florida for a Bahamas cruise with the family, and catching up with friends in Tampa, Gainesville and Boca before it's time to fly back to the ROK.

A very accurate view of life as a foreigner in Korea - those pizza guys go 90mph on the sidewalk when the road is completely empty.

"I'm Not As Dirty As You Think"

This was the slogan on quite a few of the t-shirts that I saw at the Boryeong Mud Festival that I went to this past weekend. It's an annual festival that runs for two weekends each summer at Daecheon Beach, which is apparently a sleepy little town a few hours south of Seoul for the other 50 weeks out of the year. 

I went with Adventure Korea, which basically meant that I had paid ahead for a coach bus there and back from the Express Bus Terminal, and lodging for the night. This particular trip didn't have meals included. We had to be at the EB terminal at 8am, which is an hour metro ride and a 20 minute bus ride away from me, which meant being at the bus station at 6am. Oddly enough, when my alarm rang at 5am, I got up without hitting the snooze button once. Why is it that I can't do that on the weekdays? Anyway, we got there a few minutes early, hoping to find a coffee shop or something open at the bus terminal. Apparently nothing at that stop is open until 10am, even the coffee shop whose doors were open, lights were on, and the music was playing at 8:05. So I had to settle for some horrible kimbop (rice rolled in seaweed) from a street vendor, which I ended up giving to Cherita because it had some sort of pickled radish in the middle of it that was just gross. 

The bus ride was fine - there were three chartered buses coming from the EB terminal, so of course we left about half an hour late. I suppose that's to be expected when you have over a hundred 20-somethings all having to get up at dawn. They told us on the bus that we were to check into the hotel once we got there, and that at 1:30 we needed to be back at the hotel and hosed off so we could get back on the bus to do the extreme sports. Our group (James, Cherita and I) decided we'd rather stay where we were and meet up with our partner teachers, who were only able to come down for a  few hours the first day. And since our room, as well as most of the rooms on the second floor, were still occupied, we left our bags at the front with one of the 'tour guides' and headed off to get lunch.

We met up with our partner teachers, Ally, Gina, and Sylvia, and decided to eat at a seafood place right on the beach. We got what would be the equivalent of a shellfish platter. There are large tanks outside all the seafood places with every kind of different seafood, live, that you can think of. They lit a charcoal in the pit in the middle of the table, put a grill over it, and then proceeded to cover it in live mussels, conch, clams, shrimp, and a few other shell creatures that I couldn't name. When the shells popped open, they were done, and we ate them right out of the shells - with chopsticks of course. I would have taken pictures of this amazing meal, but my batteries had died on the bus, and I couldn't find the extras that I'd brought with me just in case. At one point, the shells started exploding, and little bits of hot shell were being propelled at our faces. I'm guessing this is why we were all given aprons. Every time we would clear off the grill, or start to get close, they would bring us even more. After a while, we had to tell them to stop because we were all getting full. 

After lunch, the Korean teachers went off on their own while we went to go put our bags into our hotel room. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted with a bare floor, a tv, and a tiny dresser with a pile of blankets and pillows on it. There were no beds. I'm pretty sure there's not a single hotel in America that could get away with having a hotel with no beds, but apparently this is a standard cheap hotel in Korea. Talk about paying for just the roof over your head. 

So then we headed out for the mud! The few pictures that I do have from the first day are from James' camera. He put it in a ziploc bag to keep it from getting mud on it, so the pictures are a bit fuzzy, but you still get the idea.

We got ourselves covered in the Mud Tub, and then James and Kate and I went for a few rounds of mud wrestling, which looked something like this, only with about twice as many people:

We pretty much spent the rest of the day bouncing between playing around in the mud, and washing off in the ocean, then getting muddy again. We had dinner at a golbi place since we weren't in the mood for anymore seafood, and spent the evening on the beach drinking, eating, people watching, and waiting for the fireworks. We were told the fireworks would be around 10pm, so we waited until 10:45 and decided to head back to the rooms since we were exhausted. And of course, they started right after we had left our perfect spot on the beach. By this point I had bought some batteries for my camera since the extras I brought that I found in my bag were, of course, dead as well. 

As soon as the fireworks were over, we headed off to bed. We had to be checked out of our room by 11, so we got up a little earlier than we would have liked - 8am. So we went to get brunch at Lotteria, the Korean version of McDonalds, and took a few pictures while we were out.

 

The Mud Prison, one of the easier ways to get covered

We went and got muddy on the beach for a few hours, did a few more bouts of mud wrestling, and then rinsed off so we could pack up our room and put our things on the bus. After making sure we had everything out, we headed out again for more muddiness.

Cherita and me. She didn't really want to get muddy the second day.

Kate and me. We met her outside the hotel and she hung around with us most of the weekend

Cherita, James and me. The three English teachers at EWAS

We had to be back on the bus by 3:50 (of course we didn't leave until almost 4:30), so we rinsed off outside and I changed in one of the public restrooms near the bus parking lot. It's the first time I've been in a squatting bathroom. No toilet, just a porcelin hole in the ground that flushes. It makes it a bit easier to change when there isn't a toilet taking up most of the stall, but I was mortified at the prospect that I might end up dropping my clean clothes on the floor. I really hope I don't have to use one of those again, but that's all they have in the subway stations. So we got on the bus and made it home just fine. I'm a bit sunburned, but mostly just sore from the wrestling and sleeping on the floor. I can't wait to go back next year. :)