fire on the water, bulls on parade

before i begin this post i would simply like to comment on the fact that the weather here in south korea has been just about perfect lately. a mild cool that's suitable for both t-shirt and sweater alike, depending on your mood.

as mentioned in my previous post, this weekend i went to jinju for the jinju namgang yudeung (lantern) festival. it's sort of like mardi gras in that there are a lot of floats made out of paper, but its not like mardi gras in that its not really dirty, girls aren't flashing their boobs everywhere and all the floats are actually doing what their name suggests - floating on a river. this trip was organized through my school's "singles club," which sounds slightly sexier than the reality of it. its basically just an additional reason for all the non-married people at school to get together and get drunk. its as good of a reason to start a club as any. from what i understand, most book clubs are ran this way as well.

we left immediately following school on friday and made the 3ish hour drive to jinju. it started raining about half way there and, much to my chagrin, barely let up the whole night. my camera sucks at night as is and the rain certainly didn't help, so most of my pictures ended up looking like blurry blobs of light. here's what made the cut:

this was the area right before the lantern part. it was kind of like maifest - bunch of crafts and food stalls - except there were these low hanging tarps to stop the rain, which is nice if you're a 5 ft. something korean, but anyone breaching the 72 inch mark has to lean over the whole time.

everyone wrote their wishes on the latern. there were also small, normal sized lanterns you could buy and write a message on to float down the river. more on that later.

lantern tunnel painting everything in its fiery glow. or maybe it was just a river of blood.

one of my co-teachers, ji won, striking a pose with a tiger's head and a korean soldier.

the festival commemorates when the koreans were at war with the japanese in the 1500's. korean soldiers would send lanterns down the river to send signs to their families. they were also used to make it difficult for the japanese to move during the nighttime. here are some koreans beating down on some japanese invaders.

joining the war effort.

ji won getting friendly with the waygook lantern.

these were lanterns created by students of various ages/grades.

teletubbies.

hanging out with my friendly neighborhood spider-man.

here's a video, which i think actually does a little better job of showing what the lights looked like than the pictures:

here's one of the personal wish lanterns i mentioned earlier. i would tell you the wish but then it might not come true. let's just say it had to do with a midget, a donkey, and some scented candles.

the next day we went to watch the bullfights, because, well why not? they were there. so were we.

here's kind of a boring video of a bullfight. they weren't all this lame, i just happened to take a video of one of the lame parts:

those of you about to die, we salute you! (note: no bulls actually died)

this was just outside the stadium. i thought it looked nice.

edit: i forgot to mention on sunday i was invited to a korean wedding for one of the teachers at my school. that makes two funerals and a wedding i've been to so far and its not even been two months. my head co-teacher is also pregnant so it looks like i'm going to see all the major life milestones celebrated korean style during my stay here.

korean weddings, for those interested, are quite the spectacle. a strange mix of american wedding ceremony, fashion show, laser light show with a little bit of game show thrown in. first the groom walks down a raised catwalk to the front altar type (but not really an altar) area - fist pumping is optional but our groom decided to go for it. then the bride. then there are things said in korean. all the while a man is speaking over a pa system, providing what i assumed to be color commentary on the event. everything seemed well coordinated with its own lights and music. my favorite part was during the cake cutting, which started off with some nice mood lighting and soft music, but as soon as they sank the knife into the cake it turned into some kind of 80's action movie score with crazy dancing strobe lights. afterwards everyone gathered into a large buffet style dining hall, which i think mixed parties from different weddings. the food was good though. i hear the newlyweds are off to hawaii for their honeymoon. i hope they bring me back a souvenir.