Your Free Ticket

A few weeks ago Joe's class (well, actually I think it was the whole department) went on a field trip to the National Museum of Korea, and Alex and I tagged along with them. It was so funny because they kind of treated us like children - we had to have our "buddy" (Joe picked me), and line up in a straight line in our pairs, and follow the teacher through the museum. I felt like I was in elementary school:) Our tour was in Korean, so at first Joe was trying to translate for me, but after a while we kind of just stopped paying attention. They took us through the museum very quickly and skipped a lot of parts, so we didn't get to see everything. What we did see, though, was really cool, and we would love to go back with all the kids to the museum's children area and special exhibits. We've walked around the outside of the museum so many times, it was nice to finely go inside. Consider this your free ticket to the museum:)

Of course, my very favorite exhibit was Alex. He was really the star of the show.

This was the first time I've ever taken pictures of people taking pictures of my kids. It's happened so many times, usually with teenagers or college-age kids. We'll be out in public, and sometimes we literally get swarmed. They give our kids all kinds of treats, and take pictures, and try to speak to them in English, and shake their hands or give them high fives.

It's seriously hard to teach stranger-danger here:) We don't want to be rude.

It's hard to be a celebrity.

Buddha looks Good for his Age

It was Buddha's birthday yesterday, and I couldn't not do anything (I could have just said I had to do something, but sometimes it's just fun to use a double negative). For Buddha's birthday in Korea they have the Lotus Lantern Festival. Of course, I realized too late that the big parade is actually the week before the birthday, rather than on the actual birthday - maybe we'll catch it next year. But I knew that all the lanterns would still be up, so we headed over to Jogyesa temple, in the heart of Seoul.

The lotus is a common symbol is Buddhism. The lotus starts in the mud at the bottom of the water, grows up through the darkness of the water, and blossoms in the light. In Buddhism it represents the process of shedding ignorance to attain wisdom. By making lotus lanterns, people are aspiring to achieve greater wisdom and spiritual enlightenment (I believe that I already mentioned that I love the symbolism in Buddhism:))

As we walked down the street leading to the temple, we saw thousands of lotus lanterns for sell, in every shop. No, we didn't buy any - maybe next year. The temple is tucked away in the middle of high rise buildings, just like everything else is here. This is what the temple usually looks like from outside.

(by they way, that white pine tree is a National natural monument, and is over 500 yrs. old) And this is inside.

But this is what it looked like outside yesterday

There were plenty of lotus lanterns, but mostly regular lanters to cover the whole sky.

The outside was one big canopy of lanterns. Beautiful.

The tags hanging down from each lantern are wishes that people make. Here's a volunteer hanging up wishes for people.

People leave all kinds of gifts for Buddha - flowers, fruit, money, etc.

They even pour perfume on Buddha. There was this little well there, and people were taking turn s dipping a ladle into....well, I don't kow what it was - it could have been perfume or water or something else - and then they would pour it over the little Buddha statue in the middle.

There was ringing of the bell, music and singing, etc. Everybody who made a small donation got one of these little ribbons to wear. Our kids got them just because they're cute.

There were so many people there, Madelyn really couldn't see anything.

I let her use my camera and take some pictures of what she was seeing.

There were some local dignitaries who attended the ceremony. I don't know who they were, but everybody sure seemed excited for them to be there.

Anyway, it was fun to see, and it was a beautiful day.