Buddha's Birthday

This past weekend was Buddha's 2554th birthday! I had Friday off from school (woo hoo!) so I traveled down to Busan early in the morning. It was a bit of a fiasco trying to get there because I hadn't realized so many people would be traveling that day and almost all of the bus & KTX tickets were sold out. I ended up finding some though and got to Busan in the afternoon. I had lunch with Seth's host family and then met up with some friends at Haeundae beach. Last time I went there was in September and at that time we were pretty much the only people on the beach. This time was the complete opposite and a bizarre experience because the beach was FILLED with foreigners. I felt like I was at the Jersey shore, not in Korea. And let me just say that after not being large groups of white people for almost a year now, we are quite an ugly and fat bunch of people...or at least the white people in Busan are. I'm anxious to see if I feel the same way when I go back home. I'm already expecting to because Korean people as a whole (or at least the young people) are thin, mostly attractive if not beautiful and dressed very well most of the time.
Friday night my friends and I went to the most famous temple in Busan, Beomeosa temple, to see the decorations that were put up for Buddha's birthday. It was just as pretty as I'd hoped it would be. I really love the Buddhist lanterns here. After the temple we went out to dinner and had some drinks at a beach before we all went to be relatively early. Saturday the weather was horrible so Seth and I mostly hung around our motel area. We met up with our friends again for some Shabu Shabu (one of my favorite meals here even though it is technically Japanese). After dinner we went to Beer Mart which is a pretty cool place for us since the alcohol selection here is pitiful and small. Beer Mart is a type of bar where you go and choose whatever bottles of imported beer you want from the coolers as well as some snacks and give it to the worker. They then bring your drinks to the table in a bucket of ice. We also went to another favorite Busan bar of mine that we call "Bamboo Bar" because the entire inside is made out of bamboo/wood/wicker. It's got a really good atmosphere and the other patrons there are usually cool. We ended up meeting a Korean guy who spoke very good English who had biked from South Africa up to Egypt with his friend. He'd also been to more places in America than I have been, as well as South America. Pretty amazing guy.
Here are some pictures from the weekend: