Lantern Festival

I went to a Lantern Festival a few weekends ago. It was held in honour of Buddha's Birthday, a national holiday in Korea. This year marked the 2545th year since the Buddha's birth. I'm not sure how long he actually lived for but I doubt it was too long considering how heavy that little guy was. He definitely died of heart trouble or possibly it was complications arising from diabetes



The highlight of the festival was a street parade in downtown Seoul. Pretty well everyone in the parade displayed some sort of lantern. I was wondering why the parade started at 7pm but once I got there it all made sense. The lanterns in the night made a pretty nice display and they also had some typical parade floats that were lit up like lanterns.

The procession of lantern holders like this went on forever:

My friends and I had the best seats in the house for the parade....on the side of the street there was a 6 foot high electrical transformer that we were able to climb onto (don't worry grandmas it was 100% safe). We managed to get 5 of us up there including lanterns and beer so it made for a fun time!

This was the area around the temple...sure was purrty:

A weird thing happened too because out of the thousands of Koreans streaming past as part of the parade, I met eyes with one of them who just happened to be the secretary of our school. She is one of my favorite Koreans. A definate sweetheart. I talked to her afterwards and she told me how her family was Buddhist and how she always participates in the parade. Considering how big Seoul is and how many people live here, I am always amazed when I have these weird encounters....

Who likes lanterns??? Me.

Til next time,

Clark

PS: Happy Birthday Mama!

A video of the parade as it passed. The quality's poor because it was dark out...