Lantern Festival 2011

Seoul does a lantern festival every year and I thought it already happened earlier this year but i guess that was some thing in conjunction with Budda's birthday because the other week was the actual, offical 2011 Seoul Lantern Festival.

There is this stream that pops out of nowhere in downtown Seoul called the 청계천 (Cheonggyecheon) River  and most of it is lined on either side with walking paths. For the Lantern Festival they place large shaped lanterns (characters, figurine, etc.) over the river and people can walk down either side and view the magnificent artwork. It really is artwork, some of these lanterns. They are all made of paper and some of them very intricately painted.

It was fun to get out and walk the river and see the many beautiful (some odd) lanterns that were on display. at one point in the exhibit there were trees they made out of lashed together branches with different lanterns from across the world hanging on them. That was neat to see all the different styles of lanterns from all over the globe. It was a cold night but we found a moment of refuge from the cold as we huddled under an overpass next to a space heater as we took a moment to paint our own little paper lantern that we had purchased. We painted a blossoming tree on one side of it and Bee decided that the other side needed a scene of a waterfall and mountains on the other side so she did that and we added the year to a blank spot between the two masterpieces. It was fun to do together and it gave us something to take away from the experience.

Below are some pictures of the different lanterns.