Seoul Lantern Festival

Cheonggyecheon Stream, Seoul
Nov. 2nd-18th

Anna (my roommate from NM) and I.

So every year Seoul has a lantern festival along the 'stream' in Seoul (it's a fake stream) but still beautiful! They light up over 30,000 lanterns (apparently, I just read that on some website). So yeah pretty much a big deal. So I went to Seoul the weekend of the 10th and was planning to see the lanterns, but just didn't make it there. I was determined to see them, so I left school at 3:10 on Wednesday the 14th (since I have Thursdays off!) -- 4 hours later got to Seoul, met up with Anna, got some dinner (went to a Japanese place -- I think -- and got some cold noodles and some soup) and went to see the lanterns. I don't know why so many people were saying it was so busy and they had to wait in line... we just walked right down to the lanterns and had PLENTY of space to walk (well for Korea). I am so thankful I went on a week night. I guess the weekends were horrendously packed with people. (at least that's what my friends said!)

It was freezing, but we walked down until the last one (at least that we could tell) and then made our way back. The first ones were more traditional Korean lanterns of old dynasty people. As we went along it got more kid like. Fish, Porrero, even Spiderman and Batman made an appearance! They had little 'kids' from many different countries around the world.. can you guess what the little girl from the U.S. was? .... yup a Native American. I think maybe a bratty little girl on a cell phone would have been more appropriate.