Seoul Adventures, Part 2: New Years Eve

So all week leading up to New Years I kept asking the Korean teachers “what quintessential Korean thing is there to do on New Year’s?” They all mentioned two things: the ringing of a giant bell in Seoul and going to the east coast and catching the first sunrise of the year before most other people have even gotten into it. I am still very nervous about traveling, especially on my own, in a country where I do not know the language (and you will see with good reason why later), so I decided I WAS going to Seoul for the bell ringing since I already knew how to get there and back. I proceeded to run an aggressive campaign to get people to come with me, but all my attempts failed (subliminal messaging, completing people’s sentences with my answer, answering other people’s questions for them, and the mother of all Jewish weapons: guilt), so I was going in on my own.

On New Year’s Eve Eve, I went out with my coworkers and stayed out quite late, making waking up after only 5 hours of sleep to trek all day not so fun. Regardless, I was on the bus with Amanda around 11:30. When we got into Seoul, we walked around Insadong for quite a while. She had a list of things to buy and was determined not to leave empty handed. I was still “just looking” since I still have 11.5 months to buy these things. After we spent a good two hours walking up and down the main street and into a few alleys, one of which led us to the tea house from the previous weekend by complete accident, Amanda was ready to head back home.

An alleyway off of Insadong's main street

At this point she walked me to Myeongdong. She told me if I decided to back out of my Seoul New Year’s, I could meet up with her and Katie for a quiet New Year’s celebration. I put it in the back of my mind as a reliable back up considering how determined I was to see the bell ring, but also just in case I found out about issues with transit or something.

A cool ice thing we passed while walking to Myeongdong

From there I walked around the market. It had tons of familiar and unique stores. I tried walking in every shoe store in hopes of finding a good pair of slippers for my apartment but everything was too small for me or they didn’t have what I was looking for. I did stumble across a really cool watch but the guy wanted $15 dollars for a plastic watch that was really cool, but definitely not worth more than 7 so I left it.

Food stand in the market. The long leathery straps at the bottom are dried Octopus tentacles

Now around 3:30pm I was ready to eat. My meal times have been thrown around by my sleep and work schedules that 3:30pm almost seemed normal time to have a meal. I got SoonDooBoo, a spicy soup filled with tofu. I know you may be surprised I am eating tofu, carnivore of all carnivores, but Korean tofu is a different ball game. It is actually amazing, not a block of inedible junk. While there I did some school work and watched some Korean Basketball. This took me until 5pm. I’m already tired and there are still 7 hours until the bell will ring. Already considering going home, but I was not giving up so easy.

So I walked some more. If I had a pedometer or something to track my distance, I would guess I walked between 7 and 10 miles throughout the whole day. I walked from Myeongdong, through a bunch of alleys, turned out right behind the giant bell by accident, walked again through Insadong, this time in stores I hadn’t before, and that brought me to 7pm. I knew I needed to eat something even though I was not hungry, considering I would likely pass out of hunger while standing for the bell if I didn’t. I decided to find someplace that had small food, not meals, but I unfortunately ended up at Dunkin Donuts, not so much because I dislike their place, because I love Dunkin Donuts, but more for the fact that I couldn’t find a Korean place that served non-meal food.

The bell

While there, I decided to get some work done. I needed to finish reading Treasure Island for one of my classes. This proved to be a problem because I kept on falling asleep while reading it. It was one of those falling asleep in lecture type things where you are asleep for two minutes and you wake up and you realize you’ve been out for a bit. It is barely even 8PM and I am already falling asleep. Wonderful. I was considering giving up, but I thought after how hard I lobbied for people to join me. I would be a disgrace if I did not stay out for the bell, so I convinced myself to stay.

I went outside around 9:30 to scout out a spot, and it was still relatively vacant. I was concerned about travelling back home so I asked some cops who told me all the subways would be open until 2AM. Given that news I was reenergized and decided to stay out.

While standing on the corner, I heard some bells going (not the big one but a bunch of hand bells). I looked and saw the Blue Man Group, Korea. They were all wearing blue suits with blue face paint and were not talking. Then a man dressed like a cat jumped out and started doing magic and juggling. He was not a very good juggler, but it took up time so I wasn’t just standing for 2.5 hours.

Blue Man Group, Korea

The "Magician"

After that ended, the crowd started to form. There were times when there were so many people around that I could lean a bit and nobody would notice and I would be held up. It was nice to get some rest considering I had been walking all day.

All of a sudden, I felt this surge of people from behind me. I started to freak out. Considering I was larger than everyone, I just started to box people out so I wouldn’t get trampled. I soon realized that they had closed off the road and were letting people onto it, so I slowly moved with the crowd to end up with a nice spot to stand on the elevated curb on the far side of the street from the bell. Still about an hour until the bell, I decided to take out my iPod and play some final games of FIFA for the year (Seongnam Manager Mode and Korea vs Cameroon). The games finished just as they started the festivities. There were a few singers and presentation of bell ringers. Of course I did not understand anything, but I used sense to figure it out.

My vantage point to see the bell and stage.

In the crowd, somehow managed to get a picture taken.

Then the countdown began, in Korean. I tried to join in, but I just learned the numbers earlier that day in my vast amount of extra time, so I couldn’t keep up. When the bell rang, it was the first time in the past three weeks that I have had any homesickness. Every year I have seen my family within several hours, but this was the first time it would be 6 months before seeing any of them.

Now this is where the fun begins, and by fun I mean nightmare. To be continued tomorrow...