part 5 - happy birthday buddha

Today is officially Buddha's burthday. His birthday changes every year because it goes by a lunar calendar. And the lantern parade is always the sunday before. I am afraid I will have to postpone the lantern parade until sunday, unless I have some spare time magically appear.

Anyway, the pictures for today are a diverse lot.

First up - lunch.
We had a very lovely lunch in Insa-dong... I don't remember the name of the restaurant. It was a very nice atmosphere, they had a little courtyard with bamboo and they served our meal very fast.
We had a ton of food, but what I took picture of was the chigae (soup) the kimchi (lots of pickled side dishes) and the pancake which had green onions and mussles inside.




Then we took a little trip over to the COEX mall. It is huge and I think we were only in about 10 percent of it. We were hoping for a good movie, but there were none in English that we wanted to see. And it was very very crowded. Crowded in Asia is way different than crowded anywhere else. So we abandoned that plan and got a snack and watched this:



kids playing indoor virtual soccer. They were having a blast and I think that this could be the future of home enertainment for kids. Hey kids why don't you go downstairs and play some soccer while I read this book? Wear out your kids easily!

when we returned from COEX Mall, we participated in some more street sights and sounds... we even saw a mime in a segway.


here is me...



and here is Harland giddy in anticipation of the parade. Isn't he just adorable?


And finally just so that you can sleep at night I will give you one parade picture. Here is a lantern made to look like buddha.