Entry for April 29th

Another hectic day. I have to wake up by 9:30 and get to my uncle's house by 11am, so about 5 hours of sleep. 11am, get to my uncle's house and eat lunch, then get to a wedding at 2pm. After the wedding, I had to get on a train that left at 4:30pm I think it's my cousin's wedding. Then after the wedding I have to catch a 5pm train which will go to KyungSung province. That train ride would last 4 hours and I'll be at another relative's house at 9pm.

I'm going to spend a little time talking about weddings in Korea. My background on weddings is that back in college, I use to photograph them. I've been to Catholic weddings, Greek Orthodox weddings, Jewish weddings, evangelical weddings, weddings in Renaissance attire, weddings outdoors, in backyards, I've even been to Korean-American weddings. However, nothing really prepared me for weddings in Korea. In Japan and Korea (China and Taiwan I'm not so sure about) there are these things called wedding halls and they are basically businesses and facilities dedicated purely for weddings. Now stateside, as far as I know, there are no buildings where weddings are its sole function. Usually weddings are done in churches and hotel lobbies. Receptions are usually held elsewhere.

In Korea, weddings are done in churches and hotels too, however, there are too many weddings for the available places so there is a whole industry of specialized wedding facilities known as wedding halls. As a side note, wedding halls are a favorite of non-religious or non-Christian religion people. Anyways, I've seen wedding halls with church-like themes, office building theme and even an Arabian theme. The feeling is very Las Vegas like. As if they were having a wedding in a Dave & Busters. To me, this was very new and the biggest bit of culture shock I had experienced in this trip thus far. The wedding hall I was in was two stories. The first floor had a wedding hall and a waiting room. In the wedding hall was a wedding that was taking place. In the waiting room was the NEXT wedding waiting for the wedding that was taking place. In the second floor is a banquet hall, where the wedding BEFORE was having their reception. Once the wedding is over, the next wedding waits for the hall to be cleaned up and the next wedding begins in 20 minutes. There are these female attendents dressed in a cross between a bell hops uniform and the uniform used by cashiers at "Hotdog on a Stick."

These attendents cross sabres for the bride and groom to walk under and fire confetti with an instrument that looked like a trumpet, across the walk way as the bride and groom leave. While they were playing wedding music, there was a bubble machine spewing bubbles and spewing out dry ice fog.

Again, very surrealistic and strange, especially to someone who has seen so many different types of weddings stateside. One more thing. Korean receptions have got to be the MOST boring receptions ever. There is no dancing, no DJ, no chicken dance, no Macarena, no YMCA, no tossing of flowers or fling of the garter belt, nada. There is just eating, the bride and groom and affiliated families bowing and shaking hands, white envelopes full of money exchanged and that's it. For most people, it's not even that. It's just eat and go!

It was my cousin's wedding. Someone I haven't seen since I was 4 years old. Also, most of the relatives there haven't seen me since I was 4 years old so no one recognized me. I felt rather ackward by the whole experience, sort of like a zoo animal being gawked at by onlookers. Hey, look here, it's the long lost relative from America!

Anyways, the whole ordeal is over by 3:30 so we take a cab to the train station. Then we run into the legendary Seoul traffic... on a Saturday afternoon??? The cab driver says at this rate, we won't make it to the train station on time. He suggests that we take the subway and drops us off by a subway station.


Time is not on our side, so my mother, myself and my uncle (my mother's oldest brother) rush to buy a $1.45 subway ticket and waited for the train.

I've ridden the subway in New York on a Saturday afternoon as was expecting the same, however, I was in for a suprise. Our train was PACKED. Shoulder to shoulder I was surrounded by people. My mom told me that it's even worse on weekdays. It was our great race. So we get to the central train station and it was... full of people. Was there some sort of holiday? No, it's just always like this on weekends. My goodness... Korea sure is crowded!

Fortunately, the train was not crowded and I took a nap in my seat.