Seoul Friendship Festival

Yvonne was off galivanting around with her dedicated coterie of ajjumah, so I took the opportunity to go check out the Seoul Friendship Festival, stag-fashion.  First I walked over there... a jaunt past Namsan which takes just about an hour. I finally stopped and took a photo of the "frog" bus stop that always reminds me of Baxter.^^ Each bus stop around Namsan is themed, and this is one of the most whimsical.

Then, as I descended the stairs adjacent to the Namsan Cable-car, I spotted a bird on the bird statue. Unfortunately, by the time I got my long-lense on the camera, that bird had flown, so I only have this longish shot:

Once at the festival, it was clear that it was better than last year.. way more food booths and much better entertainment. I ran into one of the guys who was in my Korean class last month. He didn't move on to the next class because his girlfriend promised to teach him Korean. I made a joke that the rest of us in the class expected him to come back next month (learning language from a boyfriend/girlfriend has an excellent reputation for failure around here) and the girlfriend immediately stopped talking to me. LOL... too close to home, maybe?

Then I wandered around and ate some kind of Uzbeki pasty and drank a 500 liter English beer. NEVER in the US would they allow vendors to sell bottled beer on the street, but this is Korea, so it's safe.  One of the Eastern European booths (I can't quite recall which) was selling little (bigger than airline bottles, but smaller than half-pints) bottles of vodka, which I wisely forewent.

After about an hour and a half, I became bored and went home, at which point twitter and facebook began to blow up with notifications from friends who had just arrived at the festival. ;-(

Here is the most traditional of Korean athletics: