Busan fireworks festival and Halloween

I totally thought I had already posted about this, but I guess I didn't. Whoopsie. So on Halloween weekend, a bunch of Jinju people went to celebrate in Busan. I left Saturday morning with Liezle and we met up with Vera and Carlie later that afternoon. Cindy also met up with us at various times that afternoon/evening. We had all decided to go to Busan because that was the final weekend of their fireworks festival and we wanted to see it. Also, there were a bunch of Halloween parties advertised and Jinju was only having one, so we decided to make it a bigger deal. Halloween is Cindy's favorite holiday and she wanted us to get into it.

Liezle, Carlie, Vera and I shared a hotel room. It was a really nice place, but for some reason we couldn't get into our room until 6pm. We got to Busan at 12 because Liezle and I had appointments, and then we spent the next 5 hours in various coffee shops and at one point eating ramen on the side of the road waiting until we were allowed in.

Vera took our picture because she said we looked so sad sitting on the side of the road.

After dropping off our stuff, we went to Gwengalli (sp?) beach because that's where the festival was being held. The subway was crazy crowded and we had to shove our way on. It started raining right as we got off the subway and continued to rain throughout the festival.

Awful picture of me, but it shows how crowded the subway was...we literally shoved our way on and then more people crammed in after us.

This lady used her beach blanket and a bread bag as a hat to ward off the rain.

It was very crowded and we tried to meet up with different people who had secured some rooftop viewing places, but cell service was down and we couldn't get through to anyone. It was kind of chilly and we were all miserable, but decided to stick it out. Vera and Carlie left 5 minutes after the start of the fireworks because they couldn't see anything and were not having fun. Liezle stayed with me and the fireworks were pretty amazing. I would love to go again and see them not in the rain over/through/under dozens of umbrellas. The fireworks were vaguely set to music and lasers. I took a couple of videos of the exploding birds (you can also see them spell BUSAN if you look closely) and the random Spice Girls song. They also had techno, classical and traditional Korean music.

Big firework

Shot of some fireworks. This was about a third or fourth of the amount of them in the line.

Cindy took this picture from her rooftop vantage point. In some ways I'm glad we weren't with her because she was actually kind of far away. Although she could see the entire thing while we had a limited viewing range.

This is kind of a blurry shot, but it shows a decent view of the bridge which was also lit up

Faces

After the show, we were in another massive crowd to get back on the subway. We got separated for a minute when someone shoved me so they could get down the stairs. The actual trains and underground area weren't too bad because they had police officers organizing and moving people. It was still very crowded, but went quite smoothly. After we got back to the hotel, we all got changed into costumes and set out for the university area.

Our first stop was Thursday party. It was decorated with lots of Halloween stuff and there were tons of people in costumes. We were really happy about that because people just stared at us when we were walking down the street. Halloween isn't a big holiday in Korea and kids don't generally trick-or-treat. There were no candy displays or anything like that.

Thursday Party decorations. We got there pretty early, it got much more crowded as the evening went on.

Jinju girls in costumes: I'm a witch, Cindy is Little Red Riding Hood (complete with light-up skirt) and Liezle is a devil

A bunny, me and some cats. This guy had the best costume all night - you can't really tell here, but he looked like a guy from the musical CATS.

We stayed there for an hour or so, then went to the Blue Monkey for some dancing. It was fun too. Korean people kept wanting to take pictures with me for some reason. I still don't know why. After dancing we went out on the street and watched people for a long time. Drinking on the street isn't illegal (usually) here so people just went to Family Mart and bought beer and went back to the street. There were some really good costumes and I was impressed that people were able to make such good stuff from the materials available here.

Me, Cindy, Liezle, Vera (as a cat) and Carlie (as a school girl)

We stayed out until early morning (3 or 4) then went back to the hotel and crashed. The cab driver who took us home was a jerk and actually made us get out a block before our hotel because he didn't want to have to turn around so we had to walk in the rain again. Because of that we didn't feel so bad when Liezle's kebab fell on the floor of his cab. I got up early the next morning and left the other girls so that I could get back home in time for church. I wish I had written this post earlier because I am sure that I am forgetting some good details, but oh well, the pictures tell most of the story anyway.