Seoul International Fireworks Festival 2013

Flowers in the Sky

Wow. I've been slacking a bit on posting. Mostly because I've just been so tired! 

Anyway, last weekend was the Seoul International Fireworks Festival at Yeouido Hangang Park. We only found out about it just a few days before the actual event but in our naïvety we decided to go anyway....not knowing....not knowing...

There was around a million (literally) people going to this event. I cannot even describe to you what being in the midst of that sheer congestion of human beings was like. 

It wasn't bad until we got to Singil Station, which is where we transferred to the purple line only two stops away from our preferred destination of Yeouinaru Station (which is the closest station to where the event was taking place).

The subway was packed.

Like a can of sardines. 

If you can't picture that:

There were areas even more packed than this, if you can believe it.

You just kind of mushed into everyone and then we all flowed together like the sea towards where we boarded the train and by the time we realized that everything was probably a really bad idea it was far, far too late. 

We had to wait down there in the subway for three trains before we were whisked away into one. Everyone squeezed until I'm pretty sure there was a part of my body in all sorts of different locations. Like, it's a miracle I wasn't separated from one of my limbs much less my backpack (an empty bottle of tea in one of the pockets was an unfortunate casualty of the whole experience, however).

Then...we arrived at the station before the one we had originally planned on getting off at but apparently, most people decided it was better to just walk the extra distance to the park than suffer more on the subway so the sea of bodies shifted and we were moving whether we wanted to or not.

I just remember Jenee looking at me through the throng of people between us like 'Do I go? DO I GO?' 

And I was just like 'Go, on! Be free! ESCAPE!' 

Then she disappeared and there was this (THANK GOD) nice and broadly Korean guy right in front of me who I pretty much just latched on to and let him drag us through the mass of bodies, completely unaware that he was pretty much my hero that night.   

Anyway, Jenee and I managed to reunite outside of the train and we found ourselves in another flock of festival commuters heading for the exit. We had two choices, the stairs or the escalator. Thinking everyone would go for the escalator, we choose the stairs.

But...so did everyone else. Pretty much. And then we were stuck in another glob of people moving at the pace of a lethargic snail towards sweet, beautiful freedom. 

We couldn't figure out why the mass was moving so insanely slow until we reached the top of the stairs only to be greeted by none other than what has to be the dumbest invention in the whole world: a revolving door. 

A single revolving door served as the only means of release for thousands of unfortunate subway passengers...ourselves included.

You should of seen it: the door inched around and bodies piled in. Sometimes backpacks would get stuck (which was my greatest fear when my turn came around) and everything would just pause while the hapless soul struggled to free his or herself. 

It was so ridiculous it was actually funny, if you can believe me. 

At long last we did finally make it though and began our long trek to the river. 

At least we had no problem figuring out where to go. 

Once we arrived at the park (which is huge, by the way and runs at least a few miles along the river) we had to find a spot to view the fireworks and...just...wow. I've never seen so many people. 

Families and children, foreigners and Koreans alike...everywhere. To put it simply: we wondered around for nearly two hours before we decided we were just going to have to go a ways away to view the show. It was disappointing (I really wanted to see the fireworks on the river) but ultimately a good decision. 

The miracle of the evening was that we somehow managed to find Michelle. She arrived a little later than us and brought along some delicious chicken and snacks, which pretty much made our night. We walked with her for awhile before deciding to sit on this hill at the park (because it was such a steep slope there wasn't that many people on it). Luckily, we'd brought a regular blanket so if we sat on the end of it we didn't slide around too much. 

It's really hard to see but this is us. On our hill.

When the show finally started, we realized our view wasn't nearly as bad as we feared it would be and other than the rude individual standing in our view now and then it was actually pretty nice. 

Plus, we totally had a merry bad of what we refered to as our "ajumma warriors" (ajumma meaning middle-aged women) that kept yelling at people to sit down whenever they got all up in our view. 

Thank you, grumpy ajummas. 

There was one really funny moment as well when a family noticed how awesome our hill was and decided to try to sit (right smack in our line of sight too) but they had brought the typical Korean park-blanket which is basically this plastic coated (looks like aluminium...words fail me)mat and Jenee was like, "Look! Look! They're gonna slide."

And sure enough they sat down on their "blanket" and started sliding down the hill. It was so funny. Like, really? What did you expect. 

Thank you, inconvenient park-mat-things.

Anyway, the fireworks were aaaaaamazing. I've never seen anything like it. Seriously beautiful. 

Someone also released a lantern near where we were sitting, which was also really pretty and helped contribute to the festive atmosphere. 

Fly lantern, fly!

I'm really glad our evening ending in such a relaxing and fun manner after an extremely stressful commute. I'm really glad we went and I'm even more thankful my friends were there to experience the festival with me. Such a memorable event!

Here is a video I made of some of the fireworks I recorded:

And just as a random, somewhat off topic note: I had my first run-in outside of school with one of my students on the way home today. It was so weird! He's a boy from one of the afternoon classes I really like so it was a pretty fun encounter. He actually went zooming by us on his bike as we were walking and then came to a screeching halt all excited and like, "Danielle-teacher!" 

I was a little befuddled and just said, "Oh hi!" 

Then it got really awkward after we parted and his mom caught up with him and he was just like, "It's Danielle-teacher! Danielle-teacher!" 

And I looked back all unsure what to do and exchanged a brief greeting across the way with his mom. 

The world really is a small place, sometimes.