seoul lantern festival

we took the kiddos to seoul yesterday for the seoul lantern festival. it was held on the cheonggyecheon river which means clean stream. this river used to be dirty and smelly, but the president paid nearly 400 million dollars to clean the river. the river hosted 1,000 paper lanterns, which are more comparable to parade floats in america, except made from paper, of course. they were beautiful. each had vibrant colors and elaborate details. there were lanterns from korea, china and japan. our chief complaint was the amount of people. it was packed. awful. we didn't even venture down below to the waterfront, but stayed above where we weaved in and out of traffic. it was congested to say the least. my personal bubble was invaded for 3 hours straight. ugh. chris was jabbed by an 80 year old lady. the older people are by far the worst. i am not sure why that is, but my personal opinion is that the younger generations are more exposed to american culture than the older ones are. who knows. anyway, the festival was nice. the beauty of the lanterns outweighed the pushing and shoving. our children were once again in the spot light. the fascination with them never gets old. i find it so interesting. people take pictures, shake their hands, try to get their children to interact, and greet them over and over again. i was joking with chris that we are a tourist attraction, except we are the tourists. he decided a better name would be native attraction. pretty funny. at one point, claire started to say 'anyo' which means peace. the korean people LOVED that. i was pretty proud. they also love it when claire and mya wave and speak.  i will capture a picture of the mob one of these days. i just get caught up in it all and forget.