New Year's Eve and the First Sunrise

We kicked off New Year's Eve with dinner at an Indian restaurant in downtown Ulsan. After eating and having a few beers, we headed to Ulsan Grand Park to see the midnight performance countdown and fireworks.

Being on the east coast of Korea and being on of the first time zones to experience the New Year, it is a very common activity to watch the first sunrise "of the world" at the beach just 30 minutes south of the city. After hanging out at a bar until about 3am, we took the public buses from the park to the beach and began the long, cold wait to morning.


Near the beach they had two giant tents set up, with chairs and heaters inside. One of them had a movie playing, but was already packed when we arrived, so we went to the other one and huddled around a heater to keep warm.


In no time, the place was PACKED, and everyone was carrying around balloons saying "희망 2015" (meaning "My 2015 wish").



At about 6:30 am, the sky began to light up and we left our warm tent to venture into the cold and climb the hill next to the beach. Here there were thousands of people gathered to release their "wish" balloons and watch the first sunrise. It was incredibly cold on the beach, especially with the wind blowing off the water. I got what I thought was a good spot in the crowd, standing on a rock so that I could get some good pictures of the sunrise, but the rock sucked all the warmth out of me through my feet until I could no longer feel my legs.



There were a few early birds and a few stragglers, but the majority of balloons were released all at once with the countdown and quickly floated away in the breeze. Nearly every person present had at least one balloon. It was really cool to see, but we decided not to take part in this horrible act towards the environment.



As soon as the sun was about to rise, everyone pulled out their phones and cameras to get a shot of it. It looked pretty neat to see the same tiny picture a hundred times in front of the big scene that it was trying to capture.



There were a few more balloons released when the sun finally cracked over the clouds.



As soon as we saw the sun over the clouds, we didn't wait around. We ran to the bus stop to try and be one of the first in line. Luckily, we only had to wait for about 10 minutes or so. As we were racing up the hill towards the parking lot, I noticed the sun peaking between some trees and decided to split off from the group and risk missing my spot on the bus for this one last beautiful shot of the first sunrise of the year.

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