Adventures With My New Lens

I bought a new lens for my camera a couple of weeks ago and have been shooting every weekend. It's a great upgrade from the lens kit my camera came with, although I'm already itching to upgrade again, maybe before I go to Tokyo. I have a lot of photos from weeks ago that I'm still going through and playing with on photoshop. Even though lenses are expensive, I justify their cost by the amount of money I'm saving by spending my weekends shooting around Seoul instead of burning cash partying like so many foreigners here do. 

Here are the photos I've been working on.  I have a lot from the Friendship Fair and a Han River boat tour that I haven't really gone through yet. I'll post those later. 

The Yellow Sand Blues

Yellow Sand season starts in the beginning of spring and lasts till summer (then, it gets replaced by monsoon season). I didn't notice it too much before, except for a handful of days where the skies were hazy and slightly yellow and I got headaches just from walking outside for ten minutes. This week was pretty bad. I usually have a nice view of Surak mountain from my desk at work, but all I saw yesterday was yellow. There's a site I go to check the concentration of yellow sand in the air, and the levels had gone from "moderate health concern" to "hazardous to your health". I've basically had a sore throat for what seems like forever and I barely had a voice this week (teaching all day doesn't help). The yellow sand definitely won't help.

I didn't take a photo yesterday, but it wasn't as bad as the above photo (i really hope I never have to witness that) but it was a little worse than the one below.

Lantern Festival's Eve Celebration Pt.2

This is one of the giant gold buddhas at Jogyesa Temple.

There was a group of little monks. Here is one of them walking around before the parade. They were too cute. 

Lantern Festival's Eve Celebration

Yesterday, I spent the day around Insadong and Jogyesa Temple. I watched the performers get ready for the parade.  There were performances and everything was decorated so beautifully. Next Monday, the 12th, it is Buddha's Birthday, so these events are part of the celebration. 

I think she is supposed to be a clown. She had a great energy and was dancing all over the place and grinning.

Lanterns in the park.

I wanted a picture of this guy so bad, and he kept turning away, but I finally got him!

Everyone was really nice and kept offering to take my picture with the performers.