I went and saw Curious George yesterday. Oh man… it brought back so many memories. I enjoyed the movie immensely. George was such a cutie, and Ted was amusing. Although I founded that I was sympathising Junior… poor guy. Seriously though, I want me a George. Okay, make that a less destructive George. XD I liked the animation. It was nicely done. On the last note, yes it was really fluffy for today’s children movie. It was a lot like the movies I’ve seen as a kid. Perhaps that’s why I really loved it. Oh. The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. I hope they don’t make a sequel based on the ending. No… just NO.
To start off my adventure spent today at the Lotus Lantern Festival, celebrating Buddha’s 2550th birthday, I have to say one thing: MY FEET HURT!!!!!
I ended up meeting Sarah at Seoul Station’s subway station. From there, we were supposed to transfer from Line 4 to Line 1. We did that properly. What we did not do was get on the right train. Instead of the train going to City Hall, we went the other way around. D’OH! This was the first subway blunder I made since that evil Line 2 incident. We got off at Yongsan station to go back the other way. Needless to say, I did NOT like Yongsan station at all. After today, I officially declare Line 1 to be the meanest subway line in Seoul.
We finally arrived at our destination, at Jongak station. We walked directly to Jogyesa temple and waited around to get the free lantern Sarah wanted badly. We both ended up getting two each. Almost didn’t get one when the guy yelled at me that I can only take these if I do something with it later, and all because I didn’t want the sodding candle that comes with it! Bah. Well Sarah’s green one had a small hole, and mine had a huge hole in it. That sucked, but oh well. Since we were afraid of getting rained on (the weather looked awful earlier), and we were afraid of getting these ruined, we trekked all the way back to Ichon-dong via subway and dropped these lanterns off at Sarah’s place. Then we went all the way back via subway to Jongak.
With the lantern worries over, we walked around the streets, where they closed off all traffic, to see the different activites at each booth. We saw plenty from Lotus Paintings to learning how to chant, and to learn how to make other various things. There were also booths on other countries’ Buddhism like Nepal, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka. At one of the booth, they had a thing where we could design flowers on a piece of rice cake, and they’d fry it for us to eat it. Mine turned out crappy, but it was still good.
Sarah wanted to do some beading, so we looked for one and finally found one. I didn’t want to do it, since I suck at craftsy stuff. Well, I gave in and tried. Sarah finished ahead of time, and since I took forever, someone finished it off for me. Ironically enough, they were a bit careless and dropped some of the beads that I had worked hard to get on, so they redid it for me, and I ended up with a free bracelet.
Then we had the opportunity to learn how to bow in Buddhism style. I didn’t want to do it again. But I did. Augh! Had I known they were gonna make us bow like 20 times, I would not have done it. And the person leading us did not give us enough time to get off the ground before we had to go back down again. I hope nobody took pictures of us doing it. I’m sure my form was all ugly. XD Oh well… Whoever wanted to take a picture of my ass… I guess they are free to do so. My legs felt like jelly after that.
With food on our mind, we went to a nearby Japanese restaurant and had a feast. Then we wanted to go to a cafe to unwind before the parade started at about 7. We found one, and from there we FINALLY planned out some of our RP we’ve been wanting to plan out since like January. XD Oh it shall be interesting. Our boys are gonna have an interesting love-hate relationship. Oh, la, la. ^_^ We even created a whole new planet with continents and whatnot. We even started off our RP on paper/pencil style. We didn’t name our characters yet, so we were calling them the Ambassador and Prince.
Afterwards, we went to the parade area, and we waited a good half hour with some mediocre entertainment. Then the parade started. Oh, it was great. The lanterns were lovely. My favourites were the HUGE ones in the shapes of elephants, dragons, and whatnot. I did not appreciate the fireworks coming out or exploding from couple of them. That freaked me out several times where I screamed and clung onto Sarah. Oh man. Loud noises + Fire = Freaked out Tara.
Although there was a funny incident. We saw this one guy dancing with the parade participants. We thought he was part of the parade. Apparently he was just some drunk guy because we saw the police chasing him off to the spectators area. It was funny XD. Along with various made lanterns, and people carrying lanterns in the parade, we had various groups of people doing Korean traditional dances and drumworks (Samul Nori). I love those. The drums are awesome. We even saw foreigners in the parade, and those other countries’ Buddhism representatives in the parade too. Strangely, while I saw Nepal, Thailand, and Sri Lanka… I did not see the Indian one. Weird.
After standing around for two hours, my feet had enough and so did my brain. I went and got a hot dog on the stick from one of the vendors to satisfy my hunger and sat down in an empty chair. Thankfully it ended soon after that. While it was wonderful and all, I must say that it was just a bit too long. We took the subway for the last time today, and headed back home. While walking to my stop, I stopped by Istanbul, and talked with Joe for a bit with a glass of Gin and Tonic. Now, I’m finally home.
It’s been a long ass week. I’m glad it’s over.
