Lantern Festival

Things you would only find in Korea-Part 2:

  Underwear for sale at a subway stop.

 This was an entire undergarments store in a subway stop.  I guess you never know when you are going to need a new pair of underwear.  Who needs a Victoria's Secret store when you can get your underwear in the subway?
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 Seoul has a lot of festivals.  There seems to be a festival for everything here.  They have a rice festival, a migrating bird festival, a mud festival, a fireworks festival (which we attended and it was awesome...unfortunately I was very sick and didn't get any good pictures...next year I will post a blog about it), a drum festival, a photography festival and about a thousand others.

One festival that caught my eye was the Lantern Festival.   I did some research and found out that each year local and international artists create hundreds of lanterns interpreting the theme for that year's festival.  The theme for this year was "Seoul's Roots, the Lifestyles of Our Ancestors".  The lanterns depicted scenes from the days of the Joseon Dynasty (late 1300's) to present day.  The lanterns were set up on a man-made river that runs through a part of Seoul.

We recently had 2 different visitors and this festival was the perfect thing to do with visitors to Seoul.  The first time we went to see the lanterns we went with our friend Mr. Chino.  As you may know from previous blog posts, we became friends with Chino and his family back in North Carolina.  Unfortunately, Chino received unaccompanied orders to Korea for a year.  We were excited when we also received orders a few months later to Korea that we would be able to spend holidays with him.  He works about 2 hrs train ride from Seoul but often comes up for special events or holidays.  He came up for the first MC Ball we attended and stayed with us a few days after.  We first went to the lantern festival with him.

On the subway with Mr. Chino heading to the festival.

There were literally hundreds of lanterns.  I won't post pictures of all of them, but I will post a few of my favorites.

This was the first lantern that was displayed as you walked up to the festival.  It is guards protecting a gate that leads into Seoul.

There is a large fortress wall that surrounds a part of Seoul.  It at one time was used as protection for Seoul.  The wall was built between 4 mountains and had a total of 8 gates.   Much of the wall is still in tact today (there will be future blog posts about this fortress wall and it's gates) and 6 of the 8 gates are still in existence.  This lantern shows the fortress wall and a few of the gates.

The guards that used to protect the gates.  They are not to scale, the gates are huge.

A family picture at the beginning of the river.  This is where the lanterns started.

Russ and Chino looking down the river at the lanterns.

These cool lanterns were under a bridge on the river.

These were lanterns of kids from all over the world.

I have no idea how these next lanterns fit into the theme, but they were fun to look at.  The girls were excited because they recognized these lanterns.

These are very popular kids characters in Korea right now.

This is just a few of the many lanterns on the river.  It was pretty awesome to see them all lit up.

They had these paper bricks you could purchase and write a message of love on them.  An entire wall was full of them.

You could also purchase a small paper lantern to decorate and send down the river.  Mr. Chino bought each of the girls their own lantern and they had fun decorating them and putting them in the river.

This was a dragon of post-it notes that people had written messages on.

There was a Philippino band that was playing American songs.

We are in Korea watching a Philippino band play American songs and the crazy thing is how many of the Koreans knew every word of the songs.

The second visitor we recently had was Russ' Uncle Joe.  Uncle Joe was in Korea for the past month for his work.  He took a few days of leave after his project was completed and spent Thanksgiving with us.  We drug him all over Seoul and did a bunch of sightseeing.  The first place we went was the lantern festival.

The best part about the lantern festival is that is was free.  We will definitely go back again next year.

MC Embassy Ball

I'm having some technical difficulty with the blog.  I had to delete all the old pictures out of the storage in order to make room to download new pictures.  I checked on the blog before I did this and the old pictures were still there for me, but for other people they are gone.  So unfortunately as of right now on all the old posts the pictures are gone.  I am terrible with computers and technology so maybe when Russ has time he can help me get some of the pictures back.  What a mess.  At least I got the pictures for this post back up.  Sorry.  :(

Funny Korean signs-Part 2:

This blog is a family affair.  I may be the one that writes all the posts, but it is Russ and the girls that patiently wait while I take a million pictures, pose for all the pictures and help me keep an eye out for fun things to post on here. Therefore, I wasn't really surprised when Taylor very excitedly came running up to me one day after going to the bathroom and told me that she had the perfect sign for me to take a picture of to post on the blog.

So, based on this picture they have a team of people that travel around and check out the toilets in Seoul and pick out the best ones.  Congrats to this store for having the best toilet in 2004.  After receiving an honor this high what does a toilet strive for next?  It seems like it's career is down the crapper from here.  :)
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This past weekend Russ and I attended the Marine Corps Embassy Ball.  Russ had to go as a part of his job, but he asked if I wanted to go along with him.   The tickets for the ball can be a little bit pricey and so we weren't sure if my going was a good decision or not...until I found the most perfect pair of shoes on clearance to wear with the black ball gown I already owned.  After finding the shoes there was no question in my mind.  I was going to the ball.

This ball was much smaller then the ball we went to a couple of weeks ago, around 200 people this time.  And because it was the embassy ball (there are only 8 Marines that work in the embassy) it was mostly civilians and people from other military services.  In fact, they had all the present and former Marines stand up and total there was only about 30 people out of the 200 that stood up.  This ball was much more relaxed for Russ working wise as well.  He had a few minor tasks to see to then he was free to relax and have a good time.

First and most importantly a few pictures of the shoes.  I mean, they are the reason I attended the ball.

 Aren't they just fabulous?  And the best part-I got them on clearance!! 

We didn't take as many pictures this time because we didn't know very many people at the ball and since I went through the ceremony in depth on the last blog post I will just post a few pictures that we took that evening.

This is a picture of General Regner's wife, Mary.  She is a wonderful lady and Marine wife whom I greatly respect.

A random Marine and I in front of the ice sculpture.

At dinner-  We didn't really know anyone at our table and they were all speaking different languages (one couple was speaking Chinese and the other people were speaking Korean) since we don't speak either of those languages we just took pictures of ourselves.

The guest of honor at this ball was the US Ambassador to Korea, Mr. Kim and his wife.  We took a few pictures with him, but because it was during the dancing it was very dark in the room and the pictures didn't come out to well.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim and General and Mrs. Regner.

This was a pretty good picture of us with General and Mrs. Regner.  They are old enough to be our parents.

 We did know and meet a couple people at the ball.

We met this girl for the first time at the ball.  Her date was dancing and she didn't know anyone else so we spent a while talking with her.  Her English was very good and she is a chef locally in Seoul.  She offered to come over to cook Korean food for us.  As you know we love Korean food so I will definitely be taking her up on that offer.

This last picture was my favorite of the evening.  It was a picture to once again show off my fabulous shoes.  We had a great time together that night.