On Monday May 12, we had a day off because of the celebration of Buddha's Birthday. Jippie hey :).. I was going to meet Ye-in 예인 and Sarra near Insadong 인사동. She asked me if I was interested to see a traditional music performance where a friend of her was performing on a traditional Korean flute called 'daegum' 대금. Three other ladies of the company played the 'gayageum' 가야금 - a 12-string instrument, one was playing on a two-sided drum called 'changgu' 장구, while another one was singing. One song at least I recognize was the 'Arirang' 아리랑 - Korea's most famous folk song - performed in a more contemporary, almost 'fusion', way...
After the performance Ye-in led us through some side streets of Insadong, where you can find some of the most nicest coffee shops, restaurants, eateries ever :). The streets were not so crowded as the main street of Insadong, the surrounding was picturesque also because of the few remaining traditional houses in this area...
We stopped at a traditional 'eatery' where I had one of the most 'heavenly delicious' porridge EVER 단팥죽! It was the specialty of the house, made with red beans, rice cake, chestnuts, ginko nut and cinnamon... The combination of sweetness with saltiness was sublime.... Hmmmmm.MMMM... for the ones who don't know : I am fond of beans too...
After the lunch, we strolled around continuing our sight seeing and visited the Buddhist Temple in Insadong where the celebration ceremony was held for Buddha's Birthday. Under a blanket of colorful lanterns, hundreds of people gathered to speak to one god. There was a very cute little girl - Sarra calls her 'Princess' - playing around in her Hanbok... I borrowed the pictures from Sarra's facebook, because my camera ran out of battery, but I did took the picture of that cute girl while kneeling down with Sarra's camera... and told the little girl how beautiful she was "예뻐... 너무 예뻐" - which she clearly understood, because she posed like a pro :)
Although I am not a 'believer', I always get touched by the sight of so many people gathering together and to speak to one 'god', whoever that might be. It's just amazing, how you can feel the spiritual atmosphere, when everybody's heart and mind is talking to 'one person'... I think, the spiritual atmosphere, is what makes religion, a religion... no matter what kind of religion we are talking about... 'Kindred spirits'. Hear me, being an atheist, talking about religion... ;).And now about a whole different kind of religion - that of the consumer minded coffee... We ended the evening with a very nice evening meal where Kristina joined us - no pictures alas - and an at least 2 hour family stories chat at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at level 5....
We could take the latest subway to Hoegi station where I had to catch a taxi back to my dormitory. On our way back, when the last train was about to leave, we met a completely confused Japanese guy who could not speak Korean, nor English, so with the little Japanese I still have in my head - because I am thinking Korean now - me and Sarra tried to explain him that there was one last train left to his final destination. I don't know if he got it. While our train was leaving, I gestured something at the window with my hands and arms 'next train - ok' on which he reacted even more confused than he already was.... So I wonder now, where he finally ended up that night...
Kyunghee University Festival and IFCC party
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