Lotte World

This Sunday, I woke up really early to get to Seoul on time for Palm Sunday Mass. One thing on interest: the palms were Juniper branches.

Empty subway station early Sunday morning

My juniper branch

After a lunch of street food, I met SAPA, the photography club, at Lotte World, the largest indoor amusement park in all of Korea, and the largest indoor amusement park I'd ever been to. There was an event called the Festival of Masks going on, complete with a parade and annoyingly repetitive music playing at full blast. There were many floats and dancers in costume, most of them caucasian. It made me wonder how the park had hired them, from overseas, or domestically, though a visa is required to live here. Who knows?

A "gargle" dispenser at the Lotte department store

My group

The huge indoor area

Kids waiting for the parade to start

Hooray! It's a masked cruise

Poor kids probably had to wave until their hands felt like falling off

Mask princess

Two ladies leaping

Creepy masked lady

Giraffe!

Riding an elephant

Pinocchio themed group

The little kids got to dance too

Wizard of Oz

Peter Pan pirates.
 I didn't get any pictures of the Alice in Wonderland group :(

The little girl was so cute!

After the parade, my group set off on a picture scavenger hunt. We only got to one item before getting distracted by rides but picked up several others on the way.
The lines were predictably long, but we had fun anyway.

Scrat and his female version

The first photo spot

There was an advisory to stretch before the roller coaster
It wasn't even that bad

Kiddie Ferris wheel

The enclosed part of the park

Another view of the castle

A scavenger hunt item

 I also went on an indoor roller coaster that was almost more fun than the outdoor one. They had the photo spot like most US ones do. Mine turned out posed perfectly, not even on purpose. One other thing: most of the rides had a 190 cm height limit. There's no way they could get away with that in the states.

Today I got to play soccer with Le Foot, the soccer club I have been trying to join for several weeks now. I had to leave for class before they really got going, but all the members seem really nice so far. They did after all put up with my rusty passing skills without complaining.