New Years Eve in Ulsan

This year's New Years Eve was a different one than I have had in the past, but it was quite possibly the best in my books.

The day started off with a 3 hour meeting for class placement of the students in the new year. This was a really good meeting and I am now a homeroom teacher to four classes. The rest of the day was fairly normal with teaching classes and having fun with the kids. My passport arrived that day too which was a nice surprise. I may have hugged it when I opened it haha.

When Kelly and I got home from work we packed for our upcoming trip to Seoul. When she said that she thought we should take only a knapsack I thought she was kidding, but she was not. Trying to figure out what to pack for 6 days in one bag was tricky but I made it work. Then we went to the Buddhist Temple that she goes to here in Ulsan, it's about an hour away and the president was nice enough to pick us up. When we got there, Kelly took me into one of the prayer/bowing rooms and she showed me how to bow properly and we paid our respects. Then we went to help hand out candles for the ringing of the bell ceremony. Midnight quickly approached and we lit our candles and went outside where this giant bell was being rung 33 times. We set our candles on the steps of the temple and participated in ringing the bell a couple times. This was really cool and seeing all the people together ringing in the new year was great. I forgot my camera at home and was quite upset about it. Unfortunately you will have to picture it in your minds.

Afterwards we spent some time with Kelly's friends from the temple who were really nice and decided that we would go downtown for some drinks. Its interesting how comfortable I feel going out with people who don't speak any English. It's amazing how much you can read from body language and intonation and of course laughter. In Korea people don't go drinking without having snacks or some kind of food along with it so we had some good eats and the girls drank pineapple juice and soju which was delicious. Later Kelly and I drank somae which is beer with a shot of soju in it. We ended up going to a couple places and before we knew it, it was 4am. We had planned to get up and see the sunrise and at this point we realized that there was no point in sleeping so we stayed out and then drove around trying to decide where we should see the sunrise. I ended up falling asleep in the car and before I knew it we were back in Namchang driving up the mountain that is behind our apartment.

At the top of the mountain they had fire pits to keep us warm, free coffee, soup, hot packs, and sweet bread. When we got there it was still dark, but people had already started rolling in and before we knew it you could see the sky get lighter and then the sun was beginning to rise. I can't explain how beautiful it was to see but I am glad we stayed up to see it.

Driving down the mountain to go home was quite an adventure with all the people and we took a detour down a road that wasn't completely car friendly. We all had to pile out of the car at times to reduce the weight and guide the driver to miss major potholes or rocks. Eventually we made it home but it was after 9 and we figured that we had better get ready and head to Seoul or we would surely fall asleep.

All in all it was quite different but a really great experience.