Jinju Lantern Festival 2005

Well the Jinju Lantern Festval is here again. It started on October 1st and will go until October 12th. It's ver busy around here because of it and also because of the three day weekend that we have this weekend, Foundation Day on Monday. I have been to the festival 3 times already just to walk around and hang around with people.
On Saturday I was able to see the fireworks. Last year I was working when the fireworks were going so I didn't get to see them. It was cool because I was actually able to get pictures of the fireworks.
Here's some of the fireworks. This is taken from the first bridge looking down the river onto the Lantern Festival.
After the fireworks I walked along the river with some Korean friends from church. It was really crowded because everyone who was on the bridges and along the shoreline to watch the fireworks were now walking along the river.
The lanterns were very nice. Some of them were the same from last year and some of them had changed. There was one that I think is very funny. It's a chicken warrior. Talk about an oximoron.
Here's a picture of the chicken warrior lantern.
I think the most crowded part of the river side was where there was a concert stage set up. There were chairs set up for people to sit on and then there were people standing behind them. Then there was the two way traffic of walking people who could hardly move because of the congestion of people. It was crazy to get through and people were pushing and you could hardly move.
From the river we walked over the floating bridge, that is constructed just for the festival. It took us about 30-45 minutes to wait in line. Across the bridge we went into the castle and walked around and talked. It was nice.
This is the group of church friends that I went to the Lantern Festival with.
I was also there Sunday night with friends from Masan, but the crowd of people was too crazy to walk around for long because of the amount of people there. We didn't stay very long to enjoy much.
The rest of the events that I am aware of are that on Monday night there are supposed to be more fireworks and Tuesady there is supposed to be a parade. There is probably going to be more things happening, but I don't really know of them because everything is in Korean.