Jinju Lantern Festival

Last week we were able to go to the Jinju Lantern Festival which is a large international festival held every year in Jinju (a city about an hour away NW of us).  This is a very historic city with a large river running through it.  It was the location of many Japanese/Korean battles.  Along the river is a large fortress E and I went to back in June (see this post).  Along both sides of the river were several booths with traditional foods, carnival games, lanterns, lantern tunnels, games, etc.  The river was full of huge floating lanterns with 2 floating bridges to go across.  It was quite impressive...photos can do it no justice.

View of the river from the fortress.

Lantern prayer tunnel.

Close up of some of the lanterns.

There was a kid's area that had several kid lanterns, traditional games and activities.  We made a doll out of rice straw.  We also saw E's Uncle Mike (the red Teletubby...don't ask).

It wouldn't be a good Korean festival without a herd of middle school girls attacking E.