Children's Day!

Hi there. We've got Mothers Day (coming up soon too!) and Fathers Day back home. Well here in Korea people celebrate Children's Day. It is a national holiday! That's right, the whole country shuts down on May 5th and sends everyone home to play with their kids. What a great excuse for a holiday! Seoul is also in the midde of celebrating its "Hi Seoul" festival. So, in addition to the usual stuff you can do with the kids (amusement parks, zoos, pools and the like) there are also lots of mostly free events going on all over the city.

Before telling you about all the fun we had, we have big news. Jin lost her fifth tooth yesterday! It was one of her big front teeth. And it's the second tooth she's lost since we got here. Here is a shot of her gappy grin. And here is Lili showing off all her teeth too. She can't wait for them to start falling out! Say, did you know the tooth fairy pays out in Korean won too?!

The weekend started off rainy and cool. We went out to see our friends from INKAS (that's them in the white raincoats) who had a booth at a pre-Children's Day event in Yeouido Park (remember, the one with the cherry blossoms a couple weeks ago?). The rain kept the crowds away, but we had a good visit and met some new friends from Australia. We also met a nice lady who showed us how to make cool jong-i-jeopgi (Korean for origami) tops.

Sunday was nicer, weatherwise, so we explored some of the Hi Seoul festival offerings. First stop was Seoul Plaza, a large grassy square in front of Seoul City Hall (currently behind silver wrapping while undergoing a major renovation). The plaza was decorated with huge white steamers symbolizing something...I forget, but looked very cool. We took part in a mask making event. They gave us cardboard (like paper plates) masks that you decorate with colourful but wierd foam-ball goop stuff. Check out our funky results.

Then we walked down the street to Cheonggyecheon, an old stream that was recently restored and is now the center of a public park. We'll have more pictures of that later. At one end of the stream/park there is a giant striped snail (a gastopod!) statue that was the center of a coin tossing fundraiser for something. You could also make origami, I mean jong-i-jeopgi, cranes and throw them into the pile of coins. Cranes are a special symbol in Korean and other Asian cultures and symbolized hope in this event. Deb and Jin made and tossed a couple of beautiful cranes. They also had a stage set up to showcase mostly amateur (?) acts. In this case a group of cute kids who could really sing and dance.

We then walked down the street to Gyeonghuigung Palace to check out events there. Many of the Hi Seoul events are located in the five palaces located in the center of the city. On the way there we found "Hammering Man", a giant steel statue that moves, hammers actually. Something about the un-ending effort of work (work??? what's that again?). And they have neat stone benches that you can relax in while you look up to watch him hammering.

The main event we were going to see at Gyeonghuigung Palace was called a Taste of Korea (always thinking of food!). There were displays of royal cuisine (that is a photo of stacks of fancy rice cakes) and an event for children, where they help prepare a meal for a king. Unfortunately we got there just a little too late to register for that. Too bad! So we looked around the palace grounds and then headed back home via the Buddhist Temple we visited last weekend during the Lantern Festival.

Gyeonghuigung gate and fancy rice cakes fit for a king or queen.

We stopped into a Buddhist supply place to buy some the special paper we'll need to make lotus lanterns back home. And then walkd around Jogyesa Temple grounds, the day after Buddha's actual birthday. Lots of lanterns!!! And 2 little baby Buddhas on elephants that looked kind of familiar.

Tuesday was Children's Day. Our friends at INKAS reserved tickets for us at a Children's Expo out at the end of a subway northwest of Seoul. It was held in a huge exhibition hall called Kintex.

It was mainly a showcase of new toys, books and even furniture for kids. The girls enjoyed the toy demonstrations (even the good old bubble machine!). One thing I liked was a map of the world from an Asian perspective. The Pacific Ocean is in the center, not the Atlantic or North America. Here is a photo of the girls pointing out where we came from and where are are now.

We then went back downtown to Cheonggyecheon to check out Hi Seoul festivities there. Along the way we picked up some fried squid and sweet potato fries from a street vendor. Mmmm good! That's a little squid tentacle hanging out of Jin's mouth.

The stream is sunken below main street level, so when you walk along it you sometimes almost forget you are in the middle of a city of over 10 million people. The stream was decorated in shades of pink, the theme colour for this year's festival. It was warm, so people were wading in the water and resting in the shade under bridges along the way.

Under one bridge there is a photography gallery! Cool! Really.

There were various pieces of installation art along the stream. In one, the artist had hung pieces of traditional Koran clothing, Hanboks, on lines, like washing hung out to dry.

We are back to the new usual for the remainder of the week. Kids at kindergarten and Deb and I taking Korean language lessons for a couple hours each day. Now we all have homework! Hope to check out more festival fun this coming weekend.

Talk to you later,

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili