Happy New Year!!!

Happy (late) New Year to everyone!! The first 17 days of 2009 have been a blur... however, it won't take me long to get you all up to speed: I celebrated the New Year in Seoul where I was surrounded by thousands and thousands of excited Koreans and millions and millions of hand held fireworks (the words "fire" and "hazard" don't seem to translate into Korean), I have successfully placed a food order without using wild hand gestures or pictionary type skills a grand total of 0 times, I welcomed twenty, korean speaking, 6/7 year olds to their first day of school (ever!!), I caught my first of many colds from those 20 walking, somewhat English talking, incubi of germs, I have made at least 10 children cry just by saying hello and a hot water pipe exploded in my apartment at 7 in the morning a few weeks ago. It is going to be a good year!!

This is the temple at the NY celebration.

I managed to take some videos at the New Years celebration in Seoul. The videos are great but like all amazing experiences, you just had to be there!! The celebration was similar to the one in Times Sqaure. They had performances by the WILDLY popular korean groups The Wondergirls and Big Bang (however, I didn't know who they were until after when my kids freaked out) and instead of a ball dropping, a huge, historic bell rang 33 times (don't know why). You really can't hear the bell in the video, but it was there!

Count Down:

Listen closely.... you will hear my friend Chelsea trying to give me a crash course in Korean numbers... and you will hear my giving up at the end and just using the standard 5-4-3-2-1!!!

Here is a video of lanterns being lit and let go. Really cool

Here is a picture of my friend Chelsea and I waiting (in the cold!! Don't worry... not MN cold) for the celebration to begin!!