Day 100: Buddha-Lovin'

Today was an awesome day!!!

Buddha's birthday is this coming Wednesday, and it's probably the biggest holiday all year here in Korea. Bigger than Christmas, bigger than New Year's, bigger than any of the other Korean religious holidays! They always have a huge festival for it in Seoul every year, on the weekend before, and that was today!

We headed back into the city and made straight for the festivities - and what a sight it was! They had closed off several blocks of one of Seoul's main downtown streets and it was packed with all the activities and excitement! Dozens and dozens of booths lined the sides of the street where you could buy crafts, sample food, browse through artwork and handiwork, and sign up for afternoon activities. Several stages were found throughout the festival, featuring music and dancing and all other sorts of live entertainment! It was really packed full of people, and was so beautiful with thousands of lanterns lining the streets and covering all the buildings. The Lotus Lantern is the main symbol for this event, so people in the city hang up colourful lanterns weeks in advance of Buddha's Birthday. By the time his birthday arrives the entire city is decked out in beautiful lanterns from top to bottom!

We signed up for a free lantern-making workshop, and it was a blast! We spent two hours putting together our own individual lanterns, where you attach pieces of coloured paper to a 'blank lantern' in your desired pattern and array of colours. It was so nice just to hang out and spent the afternoon being creative making our own lanterns. After we finished we had to turn in our lanterns, which went up on the display tent so that they could be judged later on. (Prizes would be given out for the best lanterns!) We were assigned individual numbers so that we could retrieve our luminous creations later on, and so we headed out to enjoy the rest of the festival.

After another hour or so of wandering through the festival, sampling samosas, perusing Nepalese artwork, getting free hand acupunctures, listening to Korean rock bands, and admiring all the thousands of lanterns, we went and had some dinner. After dinner we went back to the tent where we made our lanterns so that we could retrieve them and head on over to watch the parade. When we got there we were shocked and saddened to discover that someone had stolen our lanterns!!! Only Pauline's was left unharmed, whereas mine, Andrea's and Steve's were MIA. :-( We were quite disappointed to have our lanterns taken out of our lives so quickly and suddenly, without notice, no chance even for a last goodbye....*sniff sniff* But I guess we could just look at it as that our lanterns were so fabulous that the culprits couldn't *help* but steal away our magnificent creations, being so spectacular and all....LOL.

We headed on over to the end of the street where the city had closed off another major downtown artery that would be used for the parade. The parade started not long after sundown, around 7:30pm, and was amazing! It was one of the biggest parades that I have ever seen, lasting over 2 hours and being comprised of THOUSANDS of dancers and performers and lantern-carrying, Buddha-lovin' Koreans. To see everyone marching with their lanterns all aglow was truly an amazing sight - such luminous love all around! The parade had several really cool floats, including giant glowing elephants, colourful pagodas, and HUGE DRAGONS that moved and breathed real fire! Wow so cool! We spent about 2 hours watching the parade but we were so tuckered out from our long day that we actually left before the end of it, so I really don't know when the parade ended. Plus we wanted to back on the trains/busses before the inevitable crush of people at the parade's end. It was a really great day - perfect weather for a day outside celebrating the life and glory of Buddha! HOORAY FOR BUDDHA! (He throws great parties!) ;-)