Lotus Lantern Festival

This post is heavy on the pictures. We managed to get better spots for the Lotus Lantern Festival a couple of weeks ago. There seemed to be less people than when we went to the festival a year ago, and Elena's camera is better about taking pictures than mine was last year. So, here are some images from the event, which is held in honor of the Buddha's Birthday, which this year was on May 24.

After the festival....

During the festival...the peacock was definitely a highlight.

The lanterns at Jogyesa Temple in downtown Seoul. At night, all the lanterns are lit to create a beautiful nighttime ceiling.

Walk Through Samcheong-Dong

I've had a few days off from work because of some university festival going on. All I know is that afternoon classes are canceled, which means I've had Wednesday, Thursday, and today off, and that the festival includes job fairs and musical performances. Anyway, this break is coming at the right time for me, with only a few weeks left in the semester and both me and the students getting tired.

Anyway, last weekend Elena and I were able to walk around Insadong and Samcheong-dong. Elena snapped some pictures of Jogyesa, the Buddhist temple near Insadong, and some of the lantern decorations hung up for Buddha's Birthday, which is a holiday next week. The Lotus Lantern Festival is a Korean tradition where there is a parade of brightly colored and lit lanterns that are marched by many people along the street during the course of a whole evening. We got a kick out of the monk climbing up the tree outside the temple here.


Also, we got a chance to walk through a neighborhood we hadn't seen before: Samcheong-Dong. Up past where the trendy restaurants and galleries thin out near the Seoul's largest palace Gyeongbokgung, there were a bunch of houses with traditional architecture, and a nice, peaceful quiet walk. I relied on Elena's photographic skills to capture some of the images that we saw:


To see all the photos, follow this link.

Eastern Market Blues

I didn't get a chance to write about this until today, but it's something that I had been thinking about off and on all week. I was really shocked to hear about the inside of the Eastern Market in Washington, DC, being destroyed in a fire earlier this week.

Actually, I don't remember too much about the building's historic exterior. My connection with the Eastern Market comes from my time in DC during the summer of 1999. At the time, I was doing a mostly unpaid internship with a magazine and then a small newspaper in Virginia. Being 20 years old, I didn't know how to do basic things like prepare food and cook for myself, other than using my overly -used Foreman grill or working from a recipe where I had all the exact ingredients. Cooking was more like a safe chemistry experiment for me rather than anything intuitive.

The Eastern Market was the one refuge in the neighborhood of the eastern side of Capitol Hill, of which there were some rougher parts. I remember one of the bitchers in the Market had the most delicious cold cuts, and I went there so often, that not only did I gain about ten pounds, but I remember a night of serious heartburn when I overdid it on some of the spicier salami. Eastern Market saved me with its more ready-to-eat food. I wish I could be back there now that I actually know how to cook and actually like eating vegetables and fruits.

I also remember how hot and humid it was in that summer of 1999, and how stepping into the cool and expansive Market made me forget about how hot it was, even if I couldn't find a use for most of the things inside. I hope Eastern Market comes back soon and better than before.

Blaze Guts Historic Eastern Market (washingtonpost.com)