"Christmas" and the Sunrise Festival

Christmas has always been an interesting holiday in my family but always one of my favorite holidays, because as long as I can remember, Christmas has involved the aunts, uncles, and cousins mixed with lots of yelling, hard liquor, and finger food. Nothing says Seasons Greetings like a gin bucket and cocktail weenies on toothpicks. I mean, c'mon! But in Korea, the closest I came to feeling the Christmas spirit was hearing Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" approximately five times a day in just about every public place imaginable. There was no snow aside from a 15 minute flurry, there was no hard liquor aside from some all-you-can-drink sangria at a local ex-pat bar, and there were no cocktail weenies on toothpicks! As a vegetarian, I didn't really miss the weenies, (and yes, I am still 90% vegetarian here!) but I did miss my loud, inappropriate family gathered around an array of crockpots, drinking mysterious concoctions out of red solo cups, and the hum of indistinguishable but happy conversation.

Typical Christmas Eve scene. Note the solo cups.

Typical Christmas Day scene. Wine before noon. And more solo cups.

Christmas Eve came and went, and my academy still had class, and Christmas Day came and went, and my academy still had class, so I defrosted some cream cheese left in the freezer from the previous tenant, mixed it with honey and cinnamon, called it "dip," and headed to a pitch-in where my other foreigner friends played a three hour game of risk as The Departed aired on a projector in the background. Not the most exciting holiday, but without snow or The Christmas Story or inappropriate family, Christmas was just another day in Korea. The cherry on top, however, was asking students what they received as Christmas presents, and the saddest/greatest answer I got was "cups."

This sums it up quite well.

In the weeks following Christmas, life got pretty hectic at work. Students' finished their normal school terms and began winter break, a much deserved break knowing how hard they work. Yet to my surprise, the kids were a) not NEARLY as excited as students (and teachers) at home feel when there is an impending school closure, and the reason is b) THEY TAKE MORE CLASSES. Who teaches this daytime/break time class, you ask? The answer is me. In addition to my regular evening classes, I began teaching what is called a Winter Intensive class twice times a week for the next four weeks, just in time for my Korean students to shuffle back to their regular schools for spring term. Whenever I think I'm worn out or overworked, I just try and imagine my students' little brains processing a three-hour class...in a foreign language...two times a week...during Christmas break....Gah! Someone give these kids a Ring Pop! STAT!

Since education is serious stuff over here, it came to no surprise that all the teachers needed to be at school at 9am on New Year's Day. Our early morning definitely put a damper on the would-be ridiculousness of New Year's Eve, so a few co-worker friends and I decided to take the cultural route to 2014 rather than the "drunk and crying" route we're all so familiar with...no? Just me? Well, anyway, many people in Ulsan attend the Ganjeolgot Sunrise Festival which begins on the evening of December 31st and carries on until the first sunrise of the new year. Throughout the night, people celebrate by watching traditional Korean dance, music, and not-so-traditional fireworks, and by eating tteokguk (rice cake soup). We all figured this festival would be a great way to experience Korean culture and stay relatively sober for class, so we synchronized our watches and planned to meet up in the wee hours of the morning to catch a cab to Ganjeolgot. For the first time in probably fifteen years I slept through midnight on New Year's Eve.

4:30am (4.5 hours to school check-in)
I suited up in my work clothes, leggings, thermal shirt, hat, scarf, jacket, gloves, sneakers, and magkeolli (rice wine, to keep the blood warm. You know.) Tim, Dez, and Dan, our newest addition, met outside of the apartment and, after a coffee stop, we caught a cab to the coast. A half-hour cab ride cost about 24,000 won, so split amongst us it was no more than $6. Quite a bargain.

5:00am (4 hours to school check-in)
Our cab driver got as close to the festival as he could, but once he realized the road was blocked he motioned for us to hop out on the curb. It was about this time that I applied the first of what Dez calls the "waygook face" (waygook means "foreigner" in Korean). Why were we left on the sidewalk? Where were all the people? Why was I outside in the dark at 5am? So many unanswered questions. Nevertheless, our fearless leader Dez led us to a line of Koreans standing by a promising trashcan fire. They were bundled up like us, and they were warmer than us, so maybe we're all waiting for the same thing? Turns out we were right! The line grew longer and longer, and sure enough a parade of charter buses came rumblin' down the street to take us to the coast.

5:30am (3.5 hours to school check-in)

We finally made it to the Ganjeolgot coastline, although it was still very dark and hard to make out anything beyond a haze of lights in the distance. Hopes were high, spirits were good, so we ventured towards the light like moths to a flame. I remember comparing it to the scene in Finding Nemo where Dory and Nemo kept looking into that lightbulb string of the horrifying electric fish and saying "It's so beautiful...I feel so happy." Yeah, that's pretty much what it felt like. With absolutely no idea what we'd find other than loads of electricity I slapped on another waygook face and just kept walking.

6:00am (3 hours to school check-in)
Lights! People! Soju! Food! Drums! So much action, so many bundled babies! Hidden away among the rocks was a sprawling festival of people partying in the dark. But it all seemed so strange.

Spotlights shone on drummers and "dancers." 

(I put dancers in quotations, because they may have only been overly-confident drunk men.)

Dez, Dan, and I, happy to have made it beyond the trashcan fire.

As we walked I kept wondering if things were strange because I couldn't understand anything or anyone, or if it was all literally very strange for everyone involved, Korean or otherwise. I felt like I was missing the punchline to a joke that all the Koreans understood. Oh, well! When in Rome...

...eat food on a stick!

"Forward, ho!" our fearless leader yelled as we continued our disorienting journey through the night. The journey quickly came to a screeching halt when we turned a corner and became trapped in an extremely long line of people. Cue waygook face number three! Dez and Tim sort of shuffled around trying to figure out why people were in line (it must be something good, right?) while Dan and I tried to find a place to trash our sticks from the stick-food. Aside from the mystery line, the most puzzling thing about this entire scenario was the 100 ft. illumination of wild horses in the background, which cast an eerie glow on everything and everyone in its wake.

It's a bit difficult to see, but there are definitely white, wild stallions in that glow bulb, and all of those people are definitely standing in line for something not worth standing in line for.

With more oddities to discover and time to kill before sunrise, we plowed through the line and rounded another corner of coast where we were just in time to witness an actual traditional Korean dance performance. The girls were probably middle or early high school, and their performance took me back to my days in winter guard...Waking up early for competitions, doing hair and makeup, sucking it up and performing as a team even when it was frigidly cold outside.

Their dance included finger cymbals, too! 

(Shout out to my Bloomington bellydancing babes!)

Dez has a perfect waygook face going in this photo. So unaware yet so ambivalent.

7:00am (2 hours to school check-in)

We had just over a half hour until the festival's big finale: the sunrise! Having explored most of what Ganjeolgot had to offer (I think) on a cold, January morning, the gang decided to search for the perfect sunrise spot. The people who weren't standing in a mystery line or asleep on coffee shop tables began to line up along the walkway to secure a good location for the sunrise. Our clock was ticking with only two hours until school's check-in, but there was no way we were leaving without witnessing the main event. Having existed under a pitch black sky for the previous two hours, the dawn was quite noticeable, and cell phone selfies seemed to be the true test of sunlight. 

Waygook family selfies!

 Korean family selfies!

The view from our spot. 

As it neared 7:31 I filled with excitement! Sunrise is sort of like sunset. It happens so quickly you don't really realize it. But here I was, focused and waiting to witness the glowing orb that would usher in the new year. Maybe it was silly of me, but I imagined some huge Lion King sunrise on the serengeti where a gigantic orange ball of gas would rise from the horizon line, captivating the attention of its overnight audience. Unfortunately I was wrong and it didn't really go down (or up) like that, but I wasn't disappointed. Although it was a bit cloudy and could not initially see the sun, a giant bell tolled at 7:31 and I witnessed one of the most beautiful sights. Above me floated a single paper lantern, then one white balloon, then hundreds of white balloons. The sky was filled with pink and blue and balloons.

One paper lantern.

The first white balloon. 

Hundreds of white balloons.

Turns out that ridiculously long line had been for wish balloons. Each balloon had a New Year's wish attached at the bottom, ready to catch the breeze and fly over the ocean towards the sunrise. So sweet, so beautiful, so environmentally unfriendly. I breathed in the fresh coastal air and briefly reminisced upon all the amazing experiences and growth I'd had over the past year. However, my thoughts were cut short as an excited Korean mother motioned for us to pose with her embarrassed teenage son in a photo. I can only imagine her saying, "Look, honey! Foreigners! Let me get your picture!" and the kid is all, "Mommmm, do we have to? Nooooo." For all our hard work posing in her picture she gave us this bag of dried seaweed.

 GOOD DEAL! Thanks, Korean Mom!

8:00am (1 hours to school check-in)

Sun or no sun, we had to catch a cab and quick. The masses were done balloon floating, and we knew the coach buses would fill up fast. It was tempting to stick around and eat some rice cake soup for good luck, but we'd need more than good luck if we showed up late to school. Thankfully Dez is amazing and managed to lead us back to a mysterious line which we all hoped would take us to a bus, to take us to the curb, to take us to a cab, to take us straight to school. As I was about to enter panic mode because time really wasn't on our side, I turned around and spotted this: 

The first sunrise of 2014 looked just as beautiful from over my hurried shoulder as it would have looked from any other place. Even without rice cake soup and luck we boarded an extremely slow moving bus towards the direction we had began four hours prior. Dez and I sat silently in the seats of the bus, awkwardly smiling and casting nervous glances at the time on our cell phones. We're going to be late. We're going to be late. Oh, shit, we're going to be so late. 

8:30am (0.5 hours to school check-in)

When we jumped off the bus I sighed with relief. One bus trip down, one taxi trip to go. Traffic was starting to pick up, and I immediately regretting my earlier decision to down a bottle of magkeolli. Although it did warm my bones, it also filled my bladder, and public restrooms are few and far between in Korea. But luck was still hanging around us and I spotted some outdoor urinals. NO, of course I didn't pee in an outdoor urinal. But I did pee over my first squat toilet in some shady little ramshackle bathroom next to a gas station, and I have to say, I doubt any pee of 2014 will even compare with the greatness that was the squat pee. Emptying my bladder enabled me to feel like a new woman, so I had the guys wait at the curb corner while I ran down the street to spot an empty taxi. Taxi finally spotted, we clown car-ed ourselves in and demanded the driver to put his pedal to the metal, we had children to teach! (Of course this message was neither delivered or received. Stupid, language barrier.) The pressure to arrive on time was now off my shoulders and in the lap of our driver, so I promptly fell asleep against the window with hopes we'd make it through the stop-and-go traffic along the coast.

9:05am (0 hours to school check-in)

I woke up to a cold rush of air along the right side of my body where Dez and Dan kept me warm in backseat incubation. Frantically, I grabbed my phone. 9:05! We made it! The four of us were bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and we practically collided with our drowsy head instructor as he met us at the crosswalk. Not only did we have an awesomely cultural New Year's Eve, but we made it to the school before our superiors arrived. Double New Year's bonus! Yep, 2014 is lookin' pretty awesome.