When I woke up yesterday my plans for the day included meeting Kim for coffee, reading more travel books and packing up more of my apartment. Things turned out to be much, much more interesting.
tattoos and people who get them. They think only gangsters and criminals get tattoos. In the past if you had a tattoo it would exempt you from the mandatory military service, but too many men were getting tattoos just to avoid the army, now you have to have 2/3 of your body covered before you're exempt. There is also a law saying only medical doctors can actually tattoo, making it illegal for most tattooists. The group at the festival is a legal shop, the guy actually went to medical school.
The music was good, too. :)
We kicked off the day making candy necklaces.
Then we ran a relay. The girl's won.
Then everyone got their faces painted.
Then threw water balloons.
And to top it all off, had a big buffet for lunch.
Sunday the Olympic torch passed through Seoul on its way to Beijing for the Olympics in August. While there were some protesters it was mostly Chinese students. Lisa and I went to the Olympic Stadium to see the torch handed off. When it arrived there were bicycle cops, running cops, police buses and hundreds of Chinese students surrounding it. It was kinda cool, but only lasted a few minutes and it was off down the street. Reading stories about it later sounds like we really missed the excitement. There was a man who doused himself in gasoline and was going to light himself on fire, but the police grabbed him so he couldn't. Another man tried to jump on the torch bearer to put it out, but he was stopped, too. What I saw was peaceful, just a bunch of people really excited about China.
