When the weekend rolls around it’s time to have fun, go places, meet up with friends, and explore. This generally means hanging out with Muang, a friend from Simpson who lives in another district of my city, and her friend Lize, who is now my friend too. We had been told that there was a “lights show” that was “along the river” and decided we should check it out Saturday. However, try as we might, we just couldn’t find it. And we didn’t really know what it was, so it was hard to ask people even if they did understand English. We ended up getting Starbucks and people watching, then going home.
Sunday we found out that we had been in the wrong area, but very close, so we decided to try again that evening. Muang wanted to take pictures in Seoul and meet another friend, Loren, so Lize and I decided to do a little exploring and try to find the place on our own, meeting up with the other girls in the evening. To fully appreciate that decision, you must first understand that Lize and I both … um … struggle with directions… I think when we left Muang she thought she might never see us again (or at least not that evening).
Our adventure took us to a subway transfer station where we were trying to decide which exit would place us closest to the river. We ran into some other foreigners who asked us for directions to another district. We didn’t know, but as soon as we walked away saw a sign pointing to that area. Lize ran back to tell them. They asked where we were going and we said, “To see the lights.” One of the girls said, “Oh, the Seoul Festival of Light?” Lize and I looked at each other, “Yup. That’s the one.” Ends up, they were headed to the same place, but wanted dinner first. They told us we needed to transfer onto another line and go one more stop. Having exchanged helpful directional information we thanked each other and parted ways.
When Lize and I finally exited the subway we couldn’t see a river anywhere. But there was a big square with lots of people and lots of, well, lights. We decided to check it out. We eventually found a tourist information booth and grabbed an English brochure. Come to find out, we were there on the final evening of the 2009 Seoul Festival of Light which had opened on Dec 19th. There was music and light everywhere – lights shining up from the ground, projected onto buildings all around the square, emanating from stacks of TVs and sculptures of TVs, lighted garlands hanging over walkways, and even a lighted manmade river (so THAT’S the river!). We did run into Muang and Loren and the four of us went for a lighted carriage ride and then out to dinner.
All-in-all it was a fun day and Lize and I were quite proud of ourselves for not getting lost.
Here are some of my pictures from that evening. Again, there are more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/scribbledjourneys/.
2 comments:
hey i enjoyed hearing about your adventure and looking at the pictures. that's awesome that you and Muang can hang out!
Good for you for getting out there and exploring. It would be really hard to find things when the writing looks foreign. I thought France was hard because the words sounded nothing like they looked, but Korean would be much, much harder.
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