Seoul Lantern Festival

Last weekend I went to the Seoul Lantern Festival with my friend Kara.  It was a beautiful festival along the Cheonggye Stream consisting of over 27,000 lanterns from 24 different nations!  There were large life-size lanterns in the middle of the stream and then many other smaller ones along the sides of the stream.  The festival opened just in time for the G20 and it was absolutely packed.  Kara and I went around 9pm in order to avoid the large crowds from the opening ceremony, but it was still so crowded it was hard to get really close to the water.

The view from the end of the stream where the opening ceremony was held.  Yes, that's a Bennigan's in the background.  

Is that Bambi?

I've previously written about the Cheonggye Stream, it's a beautiful man-made stream that was part of a big restoration project that got Korea's current president, Lee Myung-bak elected.  The festival was one of the many "Hi Seoul" events, which were basically a series of projects and events to spruce up the city for the G20.

It's never to early to get in the holiday spirit!

Some of the lanterns were really amazing.  They were all beautiful, but the life-size ones were just amazing.  It was hard to get good pictures because it was nighttime, but I was able to get a few shots.  My favorite lantern was a rotating globe and standing on top of the globe were miniature models of all the G20 leaders holding their respective flags.  Very impressive.

A shot of the G20 world leaders!

Lady Liberty made it all the way to Seoul!

Also there were some cute projects for the kids to do at the festival.  One of them was making lanterns out of a cardboard cut-out.  The kids were decorating them and writing messages inside of them (not that I could read what they were writing).  They were then given a candle to put inside of it and then set them free on the stream.  It reminded me something we would do on the lake at camp; also I felt an overwhelming desire to go over to the crafts table and start helping the kids like a camp counselor!

Korean kids are too cute, look how sassy she is!

Iteawon

This afternoon I traveled to Iteawon with a few friends. Andreas, Kia, Rosie, Jumee, and Samantha from Waterloo, Canada, decided to explore this district of Seoul because we heard that it's very American friendly. And that it was! It took us about 40 minutes with walking and subway time to get there, also we had to make one subway transfer. When we ascended the stairs to the street we immediately saw a Mcdonalds, Coldstone Creamery, Subway and Burger Mart (basically a Burger King) all on the same block. This district was extremely American! Everything from the street vendors speaking English (not common in Sinchon) to the large variety of Western-style hotels, this was definitely more familiar to us. In fact, it basically looked like parts of New York City.

The reason Iteawon is so Western is because the U.S. Army base Yongsan Garrison is located there. We saw a handful of both American and Korean soldiers on the streets and in the shops and restaurants. We realized very quickly that Iteawon was not as great as we were hoping it would be. To be honest, it just felt a little boring after being faced with the culture shock of the much more traditional city-districts of Seoul. We decided not to have dinner there and return to Sinchon to eat. Since it's more of an international-friendly district, everything was more expensive. In Sinchon my rice and egg bowl was 3,000 won or about $3 but if we had ate in Iteawon I would've ended up spending about $8 or $9 (which is still fairly inexpensive compared to American prices).

The coolest thing I saw in Iteawon was a pair of socks for sale on a street vendor cart. Each sock had a huge picture of President Obama's face on it. Very cool, but very American. I know you're all psyched for the interview/bio on my roommate Valerie, but you'll just have to wait one more day because she got caught in the rain tonight and needs to dry off. It's rough times here in Seoul.