Tried going to church in South Korea, over 9000 people!!!

All around the world you can find the so called Mega-churches, and Yeouido Full Gospel Church in Seoul South Korea, is one of them.

If can hold up to 26.000 people at one mass, and is the biggest protestant church in the world in terms of membership. 1.000.000 members are associated with Yeouido Full Gospel Church.

Last semester a friend told me about this giant church in Yeouido, capable of holding more than 20.000 people. I had already decided that I wanted to experience a mass here in South Korea. And since I used to sing in a professional choir for 11 years, which brought me all around the world visiting a variety of both known and unknown churches, and a good friend of the family back home had asked me if I would be so kind to buy him a Bible in Korean, I thought: "why not try and do both at once!?"



I had some accidents with finding my way to the church, but essentially it just comes down to looking on a map.
I walked from Yeouido station on the purple line, but it can also easily be done from Yeouinaru station (same line)
Walk through and past the park towards the river bank. If it is a problem to find it ask some people on the street, 90% of the people there know about it!

The easiest way to get there would probably be from Yeouinaru station, and then walking with the bank of the river towards the church (you can also take a bus from the station, but I have no clue which number).

Me getting lost in Yeouido Park  

The church has seven masses each Sunday with each more than 10.000 attendants. If you would ever want to visit this place, which I greatly recommend, if not for belief then just for the experience!




On Sundays language barriers and being short of time should not be too big a problem:
Mass:
 - 7, 9, 11 am
 - 1, 3, 5:30 and 7:30 pm

Here are some pictures from inside the church!

Unfortunately you cannot see it properly on these pictures, but they actually have both a band (normal in a gospel church), and a well sized classical orchestra! This added to the more than 150+ person choir makes for some really good musical additions to the mass!


I am going again just for the music haha! :P

Cherry blossoms (벚꽃 축제)

As taken from Yonsei Campus

Every year all over the world people celebrate the cherry blossoms, mainly Asia though, which luckily means that it can also be found here in South Korea!

Cherry blossoms: A cherry blossom is the flower of any of several trees of genus Prunus, particularly the Japanese Cherry, Prunus serrulata, which is sometimes called sakura after the Japanese (桜 or 櫻; さくら). (taken from Wikipedia)

Being that this is South Korea, this piece of information is actually really interesting. During the colonization of Korea by Japan, the Japanese also brought cherry blossom with them, and the celebration as well, which means that some Koreans actually despise the festival. Not that many years ago a lot of cherry blossom trees were removed from historical sites here in South Korea, due to the sole fact that it was the Japanese that brought them there.

Despite all this, I would say that almost everyone loves this time of year. Taking pictures and joking around, or going to cherry blossom festivals is a really popular thing to do. It gives great opportunities for taking fantastic pictures, and being outside with friends or family in the now nice weather. This of course also involves hiking - just to add it in there.

Besides joking around on campus, some danish friends and I also went to Jinhae (진해), a place really famous for its cherry blossoms festival! If you are in South Korea at any point in time during the cherry blossoms, I would definitely recommend that you go there.

The Jinhae Gunhangje Festival, as it is called, is the biggest cherry blossoms festival in South Korea with more than 300.000 trees, and attracts more than two million visitors every year - just for the sake of viewing this spectacular sight.

Here are some pictures from my trip to Jinhae

The weather was a bit sad, rainy and cloudy, but still a really nice trip with lots of food, interesting booths and some entertainers ass well, all adding to a joyful experience. Personally I enjoy the eating aspect the most. Some of the things I recall one could have was tons of seafood, fast-food of different kinds of sweets. My personal favorite was fresh coconuts with a straw in them, opened as you bought them - <3

I do not know what happened here, I guess the lighting changed every once in a while.

As you can see I am a victim of the weather and having no actual camera, so I will give you some links to how it actually looks in Jinhae during the cherry blossoms - at least how it looks through a camera!

http://www.google.dk/search?hl=da&biw=1505&bih=678&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=jinhae+cherry+blossom+festival&oq=jinhae+cherry+blossom+festival&gs_l=img.3..0i19l2.4533.4533.0.4765.1.1.0.0.0.0.213.213.2-1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.12.img.Tkagl_9Yl9A

Definitely go and check these pictures out on google! (or just imagine the campus pictures in the ones from Jinhae, that should work as well)