Chinese New Year

  With our first four-day vacation in the entire span of our time in Korea (outside of our measly five vacation days), we chose to go to China, making what we thought would be a cliche trip to one of the world's most populated countries. Upon leaving, of course we knew not what to expect, having heard etchings in both positive and negative light as to what would be contained inside those tight borders.

  We left unsure of our timing, hearing the travel would be horrendous, as hordes of people made a mass exodus from Korea in the name of the Chinese New Year, the Asian equivalent of January 1, but of course, as with everything in comparison to American tradition, more extravagant, time consuming and, for lack of a better word, holy.

  But much to our surprise, the travel which we expected to be a cyclone turned out to be a breeze, while our time, which we thought would expire much more rapidly as we scampered from one household monument to the next, turned out to be anything but cliche. Despite the narrow two days we had to absorb the essence of China (and the Chinese), both the expected and the unexpected took place, making one post not nearly enough to sufficiently describe the happenings of our trip.