Lotus Lanterns

What a week! Sometimes it feels like the world is about to go up in flames all around us. We've been looking forward to our summer vacation, which is in the last week of July. Our main/dream destination was Thailand, where we're planning to stuff our faces full of amazing food in Bangkok, go elephant trekking in Chang Mai and enjoy a few days on the beach down south. Unfortunately, all of the "Red Shirt" riots have made the country a hazard zone, and it doesn't look like it will be calming down any time soon, so we're looking into other vacation spots. Sad times. Also, this week, South Korea finally pointed the official finger at North Korea for sinking their warship the Cheonan. The torpedo they recovered from the ocean floor clearly had North Korean writing on it. The North of course, is denying it, even going as far as threatening all out war if the South tries to push their sanctions. Comforting, yes? We're keeping an eye on the news and keeping out passports at our sides. I doubt anything will happen while we're here, but it never hurts to be on the safe side.
Aside from these global tensions, our own existence has been pretty enjoyable. Last weekend David and I went into Seoul to check out the Lotus Lantern Festival. The festival was held in Insadong, where we went last weekend and hung out the entire day. The place was jam-packed with people. There were tons of foreigners. At one point I was overhearing as much English as I was Korean, which was quite a miniature culture shock.
The streets were lined with tents on Buddhism. There were many different crafts to do and foods to try out. There was even a tent dedicated to Buddhism in Cambodia--I went up and used my smattering of Khmer to communicate with them. It made me smile and I got a meat stick for my effort! The food was much more flavorful than any Korean fare. It reminds me of how much I miss southeast Asia and its food. Oh the food!

The Cambodian tent.



Drumming with a monk!




The place was so crowded that trash was overflowing out of the cans.

The craziest part of the day: we ran into a friend from Charleston in the crowd! What a small world it is that we run into someone thousands of miles away from where we last met them! We had a good time catching up with Hutch and touring the rest of the tents.

Me and Hutch.

We also went back to see the temple again. It looked pretty much the same as last week, only with a lot more people and a few more lanterns!


People were pouring water on top of the tiny Buddhas to bless them.

The parade started at dusk and the street was packed with people. The parade itself was over two hours long and filled with hundreds of colorful, hand-painted lanterns. There were huge wired lanterns pushed on crates and tiny individual lanterns carried by monks and other people. The whole scene was quite beautiful. David was going crazy with the pictures. A sea of colored light. That's how I describe the view that was the road.





We went back to the temple and saw that all of the lanterns we'd seen last week were now lit up in all of their glory.


Twirl!