Seoul's "Amazing Race"

The Seoul tourism desk here on post provided a fun and challenging opportunity this past four day weekend to get out see more of Seoul using 'urban orienteering'. It sounded like a lot of fun to me, so I talked the hubs into it, found a baby-sitter for the kiddos, and off we went! We were provided with a pre-paid transportation card (good for subway, buses, & taxis, though we were not allowed to use taxis for this) and full page photo hints (including a picture of the nearest subway stop) with a direction, azimuth, and distance.

Example of a clue sheet.

It really wasn't that challenging to find the objects, and when in doubt it was very easy to flash the picture around to people and they were very obliging. We didn't win, and that was okay; I didn't intend to. The prizes were various nights stay at the hotel on post, and what would I do with that anyway? I live here! We did have a lot of fun together, and that was what I intended, though I was exhausted by the end of it! 

Getting some directions.

Lunch! I can read something about vegetables and toast.
We just got the stuff on a stick.

One of our objectives; self-portrait.

The guy who took this for us actually took several pictures; he was trying to be artistic I think!

Seoul International Fireworks Festival

There have been numerous fireworks festivals recently around Korea, and I have been unable to go to any of them no matter how much I planned. So when I found out there was going to be one right in my backyard (almost) I was determined to let nothing stop me! There is not much to describe about a fireworks show; I think it's pretty self-explanatory. The show lasted about 80 minutes and involved three teams from Japan, Portugal, and Korea. Here's an excellent video clip with a much better view than we had. One interesting thing to note: some of the fireworks would explode as English letters; I've never seen that before.

Not the greatest picture, I know. I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to spell out.

The picture below does not do justice to the crowd. There had to be over 500,000 people there, if not more. This made exiting the park difficult, to say the least. My husband and I got separated in the crush (literally) and I was swept along by the crowd to places unknown. This was, honestly, a little frightening. Not being able to control or see where you are going is not a good feeling.  However, it all worked out (after about a 3 mile walk!).

The crowd extends behind me and well past the tall building in the center.

A few more pictures to enjoy. 

Smile!