Michelle comes to Korea

My sister Michelle visited me during the first week of May, and although I didn't get to spend that much time with her due to me having to work for 2 of the 4 days she was here. We still managed to see some of the sights, including Lotte World (Korean Disneyland) and of course the main old palace downtown.

Guitar Wolf+Rock Tigers= Incredible

Also on the weekend of the Lotus Lantern Festival, I saw a concert of the Rock Tigers with the band Guitar Wolf from Japan headlining. It was awesome to have such powerful forces of East Asian rock together at last.

The last picture was from when the lead singer/guitarist from Guitar Wolf, Seiji, grabbed a random guy from the crowd, brought him on stage, put his guitar on him, and had the guy try to play even though he had no idea what he was doing. This bit lasted for about 10 minutes- when the guy tried to take the guitar off after a few minutes, Seiji wouldn't let him, and instead began to instruct him how to jump and hit the chord when you land.

Lotus Lantern Festival

Last week, I went to the best festival that I've been to in Korea. The festival was the Lotus Lantern Festival, which is an annual festival held a week before Buddha's birthday. There was sort of a pre-festival celebration the night before, with dances, music, floats, and lanterns. But the next day the real thing started, with an opening ceremony, lantern making, a 3-hour long lantern parade involving thousands of people, music, drum circles, congo lines, old people dancing, us dancing with the people in their costumes, and everyone holding hands with complete strangers with pink confetti falling on us at the end. It was awesome.

P.S. I might need to explain that one picture- while in the western world, that simple symbol makes us think of Nazis, it (with the arms going the reverse way) is actually the Buddhist symbol here. The Koreans innocently put on signs, flags, and of course, festival floats.

Mountains, deserts, and cowboys- all in Seoul

So it's time to catch up with everything that's happened in the last few weeks. First of all, there's been a lot of hwasa the past few weeks (yellow dust from the Gobi desert in China that has made its way to Korea. No, I'm not making this up). Here's a picture I found on the internet that someone took about 2 weeks ago from Seoul tower- you couldn't see it this well from inside of it, but visibility was real low and it made my throat hurt.









Kim and I went hiking a few weeks ago, and I managed to get a great shot of a Korean hiker while pretending to just take a picture of Kim:


Koreans take hiking seriously. They have a whole wardrobe solely for hiking- a special hiking hat, shirt, scarf, pants, vest, shoes, socks, backpack, walking stick(s), caribeanners, ice picks, etc. Ok, so the ice picks are a little rare, but the rest is standard equipment. This is the mountain that we climbed, Bukhansan- we didn't make it to the top, but we told ourselves we would next time. I can see it from my apartment, and while for some people seeing it every day would be like a constant challenge, I look at it and think "Boy, I don't want to waste my time trying to climb that thing again."








Also, I saw this guy downtown the other day, advertising something, and it was love at first sight. I'm just sorry I didn't get a better picture.