I Love You And Buddha Too (May 20)

• We slept in a little bit and then got coffee at God In A Cup. No, seriously, that's what it was called.

• We wandered in the amazing weather towards a taxi, so we could go buy bus tickets for our return trip. Realized the difference between the bus stations, found a perfectly-timed return bus, and discovered where in Seoul we were (thanks, of course, to my handy-dandy subway app). Then we got food and smoothies at the nearby giant mall, enjoyed amazing bathroom facilities, gawked at some HOT tall Korean boys dressed in suits and made our way back to the taxi line. We ended up having a relatively deep conversation and, after getting out of the taxi at our stop, marveled at how it's so easy to do that here - no one understands us anyways, so we don't have to be all hush-hush or go somewhere private. Insadong was where we asked to be dropped off and it was so much fun to shop around there - it is like, the best place to buy gifts (for yourself and others) and I'm excited to go back. And the weather could not have been more gorgeous. We had to cut our time short though, because we wanted to see some of the events at the Lantern Festival before heading back to the bus terminal. So we wandered towards the temple where we ended the parade last night and found like a million white tents, with tons of activities. The booths were centered around Buddhism and featured a lot of what Buddhism looks like in other countries. It was really cool and I wish we'd had time to actually go to all the tents. After walking up the street of tents, we went into the temple where we ended the parade. It was so beautiful! I couldn’t decide whether I liked it better at night or during the day!

Happy 2,556th birthday, Buddha!

• After taking lots of pictures, we had to start heading back :/ There was so much more to see...though we did manage to catch a glimpse of a woman who legit looked like a female Asian Harry Potter – especially because she had circular glasses and was carrying a broom. It was really funny. 
• The bus ride back was relatively uneventful...so we enjoyed dubbing over the K-dramas that were showing with our own hilarious lines. We were very amused :) Also, there were two buses that passed us on the highway that had legit dance parties going on! They were complete with colored strobe lights and ajummas/ajusshis dancing in the aisle (and, one can only assume, soju or makkoli). It was fantastic.