Lantern Festival

I went to the Lantern Festival, which is a celebration of the Buddha's birthday, today. It was pretty neat, but nothing amazing. I got out of the subway station and there were a bunch of tents that lined the street for about a mile. There were tables under all the tents and different activities and information at each one. For instance, at one I made my own incense, at another there was information on staying in a Buddhist temple for a time, at another there was traditional food, at another was a tea-making ceremony. Many different branches of Buddhism (perhaps all, but since I'm no scholar I can't say for sure) were represented. The biggest attraction was making your own lantern to display in the parade at night. We got to go into the main Buddhist temple in Seoul. It wasn't all that big, but Buddhism only accounts for about 1/4 of the population, with another 1/4 being Christian and nearly 1/2 claiming no religion.

I should say who I went with, but I couldn't figure out where to write it in the previous paragraph, so I'm just sticking it here. When I had to go to Atlanta for my visa interview I met a few others who were there for the same thing. We exchanged emails, and as it turns out I live about 2km from one of them, Holly. Once we figured out we were really close we had been trying to meet up at some point, and we finally did for this Lantern Festival. She brought her co-worker Nicole. The whole reason I knew anything about the Lantern Festival was a MeetUp group I joined from meetup.com. We joined the group there which consisted of only a couple people, Sarah, Rob, and Dave. I didn't get to talk much to Dave, but Rob was in the military. He had been stationed in Japan previously for a few years, but has been in Seoul for a year or two. Sarah was born in Seoul, but her parents immigrated to Sydney, Australia when she was young. She decided to go back to Seoul about 7 years ago and teach, and has just stayed ever since.

Here're some picture of the event: <http://picasaweb.google.com/jmphry/LanternFestival#>.