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Seoul International Fireworks Festival 2007

Yesterday we went to the Seoul International Fireworks Festival 2007. This even is held every year in Seoul, more concretely in Yeouido, an island made by the Han river on its flow through Seoul. This year Japan, United States and South Korea were participating in the festival.

What impressed me the most was the huge amount of people that went to this festival. I knew Asians love fireworks, but never before in my live had I seen so many people at the same place. According to the news, over one million people went to the island to see the fireworks. Here are some pictures:

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They stopped the subway escalators to prevent accidents.

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Subway exit. I stood there for 45 minutes waiting for my friends and for the 45 minutes the subway exit looked like this, people wouldn’t stop going out from the subway (and there were 4 exits!).

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We left like one hour before the event finished because we were scared of the mass of people, but this is what we found: many people had thought like us and started leaving, even though South Korea’s fireworks were next and they must have been the best ones. That’s the main avenue, it has six lanes if I remember well. Thank god they closed the roads for the event.

And of course, to close this post, here is a video of the fireworks:

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Spain’s National Day

Yesterday it was October 12th, Spain’s National Day. To celebrate this day, the Spanish Embassy in South Korea organizes a reception to which all Spaniards living in South Korea are invited, so there we went! 😀

This year the reception was at Lotte Hotel, one of the most luxurious hotels in Seoul. Unfortunately, I don’t have any good pictures to post here (all of them are blurry:S), but I can say it was a very nice reception, with representatives from many embassies wearing the official suites and all that stuff you can see in political official acts. There was also lots of food from Spain: jamón, cheese, wine… and also Korean and Chinese food.

After that we went to have some beers, and at night we went out in Sinchon area. It’s jut unbelievable how many bars there are in Sinchon, and all of them were crowded. Seriously, it was something I’ve never seen in Spain or in the US. At 5 in the morning streets and bars were crowded with people and roads crowded with taxis taking people home. It reminded me of Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve in Spain, but in Seoul it seems to be like this every weekend!

I didn’t have my camera with me last night, but just to post some picture of a bar, here is one of our international soccer team socializing after practice:

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This bar is also in Sinchon area and what you can see on the walls are all pictures people took in this bar.

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Meeting Blaire

Today I met with Blaire! From now on I’ll call her Yoon-Jung, as it’s her Korean name, and I’m now in Korea:P I was so nice to see her again! She cut her hair a little shorter, which makes her look even cutter, and of course she’s as charming as always:) It’s just awesome to see how I keep seeing people I thought I would never see again. The world is much smaller than it seems;)

We went to Sinchon area to have dinner with the guys from the office and some other spaniards currently living in Seoul.

Here is a picture of all of us (with some Yonsei students) after having dinner:

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And this is Seoul’s Ballyhoo, I think I’m going to spend many hours in this place:

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First Day?

This isn’t really my first day in Seoul, but I’m as excited as if it was. I came with four more Spanish guys and all of us will be working at the Office of Foreign Trade of the Embassy of Spain in Seoul. During the first three months we will be studying Korean at Yonsei University, traveling as much as we can, and enjoying life in the capital city of South Korea:D

View from my room

This picture is the view from my room, just awesome!