Happy Birthday, Buddha!

May is a wonderful month in Korea! Not only is the weather is beautiful, but public school teachers and students are given an abundance of holidays for this "family month." For this particular teacher May in Korea holds six days off. Have I mentioned how much I love it here? (Only a few dozen times, I think.)

First was Children's Day, observed on May 5th in South Korea. Children normally get some sort of gift from their parents and spend the day doing some fun activity together. I visited Kayla in Gongju and we had a beautiful picnic on the river, and it was just as nice! We caught up on each other's lives and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and strawberries!


Tuesday May 10th is Buddha's Birthday, is also a national holiday. But my school took off Monday AND Tuesday just to extend the weekend a bit. To celebrate, I went to the Seoul Lantern Festival in Insadong with some amazing ladies from Jochiwon. Of course it was pretty crowded, but completely worth any slight claustrophobic inconvenience. The Seoul Lantern Festival was a veritable feast for the eyes. During this time of year, colored lanterns in pink, blue, green, yellow and red are scattered throughout ever city in the country, but Jogyesa Temple was by far the most impressive I've seen. The temple was completely decked out in spirit of Buddha's Birthday. Lanterns, lanterns everywhere! Strung up, dangling from tree branches and telephone poles, being held by the young and old. It was absolutely enchanting.

At 7:00 there began a Lantern Parade smack dab in the heart of Insadong. There were more foreigners there than I have ever seen in one place in Korea, and that's including Itaewon! The parade was VERY long, over 2 hours in length, which your feet begin to feel if you are standing that entire time! But I got some great pictures of the giant "lantern" sculptures in the parade. I love bright colors and lights and was fixated on them like a small child. I found the entire event to be delightful in every way and would suggest every person to take advantage of it if they are ever in Seoul around the 10th of May!

My photos for the Seoul Lantern Festival can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.512575400588.9614.295700354

It's been raining a lot for these Monday and Tuesday holidays. And boy howdy, do I mean a lot. I decided to be wise and lay low; working on lesson plans, completing graduate school stuff, packing some boxes to ship home by boat (its cheaper to send packages home by boat in Korea than by Air Mail), planning out my next two months here in Korea and, perhaps most importantly, conserving funds which isn't hard to do when you can get full on kimbap for under 2,500 won. Oh, kimbap. I think I will miss you most of all.

Plans for this weekend are good and plenty. There is a Rock Tigers show in Cheonan this Friday, as well as something top secret AND my close friend Baron von Rugglestein's going away party.