Teaching English in Korea: HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2009!

First of all... HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU! Let 2009 be the year that blesses and elevates you immensly!

On New Year's Eve I went to the center of Seoul, South Korea... which happens to be a few blocks from where I work. The area is called Jongno. Across from my favorite building (the Samsung Building) is a big bell that they traditionally ring on the New Year. Supposedly, there are LOTS and LOTS of people there.

So I figured... hey, if I were in New York - I'd have to go to Time Square for New Years just once. Since I'm in Seoul, I'll go to Jongno. And actually, I was in Korea for New Years LAST year, too... but I just can't remember for the life of me what I did - which probably means I did nothing of importance at all. :)

All my students and pretty much everyone I talked to said, "Oh no! Don't go to Jongno for New Years! There's too many people!"

And I said, "There's too many people everywhere in Seoul. There's too many people in Jongno normally."

And they said, "but it's different. There are even MORE people!"

And I said, "oh. So it's like Myongdong." (Myongdong is the most famous and popular district to shop in all of Korea, I'm guessing. It's immensely busy year round.)

And they said, "No... more people than that!"

Sure, when I got there, there were lots of people. But it was just like the mosh pit if you've ever been to a concert. You stand shoulder to shoulder and move with the crowd and follow the flow of it and share the energy. It was fun.

One thing that was funny was that they had police men EVERYWHERE. But they weren't actually police men. I mean, their jobs weren't to police anybody. Their job was to make a wall - a human baracade - so people could only go where there were no "police". It was crowd control, more or less - but there were THOUSANDS of police men, I'm not joking. I wanted to take pictures of them but I only snapped a couple because I felt rude.

I made it pretty close to the bell... perhaps 100 yards away or less. I was told that when they ring it, you can hear the bell in Dongdaemun (which is probably a 30 minute walk or longer. I'm not sure because I never walked there). I found a nice spot to stand and there was a huge building nearby with a large projection on the front that displayed the countdown from 2 minutes.

Okay - up until this point, I had a lot of fun. Now let me tell you about two pretty big dissapointments.

1) When the clock struck midnight... I was utterly shocked at the complete lack of enthusiasm. I was in the middle of a HUGE crowd (pictured below), and nobody started yelling at the top of their lungs and nobody started jumping up and down or such like that. It's like... I felt like everyone was expecting something EXTRAORDINARY to occur at the stroke of midnight. They just stood there, relatively quiet. I'm used to concerts where you go nuts. Otherwise... what's the fun?

2) I didn't hear the bell! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT! I have a conspiracy theory that they didn't actually RING the bell. I was told it would be loud! I was maybe less than 100 meters away! And I didn't hear it ring! Man... bummer!

Afterwards, one thing I realized is how meaningul a new year is to people. I passed one young man who had red watery eyes. I thought to myself, "was he crying?" And then as I walked, I started to notice that LOTS of people were teary-eyed. I mean... I guess I understand. There have been years where I have felt like that. I guess I was just surprised because this wasn't one of those years for me and I forgot about that particular reaction.

Okay - now for some pictures! There were lots of people dancing traditional Korean dances, banging drums, and wearing the traditional white costumes. All in all... it was a good, fun night.