Chuseok

Yesterday was a national holiday in Korea, Chuseok (추석). One of the best parts about living with a host family is that I get to experience Korean culture firsthand, and yesterday I was lucky enough to celebrate Chuseok with my host family.

Chuseok is a day for honoring one's ancestors. The day before, on Monday, everybody makes rice cakes called ssongpyon (I really don't know if that's romanized correctly at all, so I apologize). You take the dough and fill it with sesame seeds, red beans, or other mixtures I didn't recognize, then fold the dough up like dumplings. Here are some of the bowls of ingredients:

This picture's a shot of my host mother kneading the dough:

Here's the ssongpyon before it was cooked, and then after:


Tuesday was Chuseok itself, and we woke up veeerrry early to drive to Gochang, a nearby town, to see my host father's parents. I don't have any pictures from here on out, since I felt so grateful already just for being allowed to come along at all. Anyway, my host father's grandparents' house was filled with relatives (and a ton of adorable little kids). Once everybody was there, lots of food was set out on a table in the middle of the room, and the men stood in front of the table and bowed to it. This is the food that would later be placed on the graves of the family's ancestors. It's interesting to note that Chuseok is a holiday dating back to Confucianism, and part of the Confucian philosophy is a distinct separation of men and women. As a result, only men are allowed to participate in the rituals.

After the men bowed to the food (I wish a better way to put this, but I only have a limited knowledge of what was going on and don't want to say the wrong thing) we sat down to a big breakfast. We ate fish and the usual plethora of Korean side dishes. The men then spent the morning visiting the graves of their ancestors and leaving offerings of fruit while the women hung out at the house and the kids played.

We ate lunch at my host father's parents' house and returned home in the afternoon. A few hours later, we drove out to another town Boseong (which is famous for its green tea!) to eat dinner with my host mother's parents. Her parents live on a farm with a few cows, where they also grow red peppers and, I think, harvest rice. We ate Jahb Chae (again, forgive my poor attempt at romanization), a buckwheat noodle dish with veggies and meat. Once it was dark, we drove out to the middle of the rice paddies and lit off fireworks, mirroring Monday night, when huge fireworks were let off in Hwasun, like many towns in America do for the 4th of July.

All in all, I really enjoyed spending time and bonding with my host family, not to mention getting three days off of work! But, I have to admit, it made me miss home just a little bit. It was wonderful meeting my host family's relatives and seeing how they spend their holidays, but I couldn't help thinking about Christmas at my grandparents' house, and that sort of thing. It really sneaks up on you - "This is just like how my family acts on the holidays! Oh...my family..." And driving out to the middle of the rice paddies, with only farm houses and mountains in the distance, naturally made me think of Iowa (except for the mountains). Much as I love cities, farmland has a great way of relaxing you.

Finally, it's cool to note that even though holidays like Thanksgiving and Chuseok are radically different, they're also very much the same. The family gets together, eats a lot, talks about everything. That's one thing I've notice a lot in Korea - everything is different, but so much is the same.

Pictures! From Hwasun

As promised, here are some pictures of my school, of Gwangju, and of my host family. I wish I had a good picture to show you of the town of Hwasun itself, but honestly, it's such a small town (and I never have a good enough view from the bus). Just imagine a cluster of high-rise apartments and brightly-lit streets, seemingly surrounded by rice paddies and, just a little farther out, green-blue mountains.

Now on to the actual pictures!

First up, here's my school. The long white building on the right is the main school building, while the red brick building in the back is the cafeteria and boys' dormitory. Behind that building is the girls' dormitory.

This is the view from the front entrance to my school. You can see the dirt field where the kids play soccer during phys ed classes and the gym in the background, to the right.

This is a bad picture of some of my students outside. They do mandatory stretching with the students everyday between 4th and 5th period. I tried to take a surreptitious picture from the teacher's room, and it's not a very good one, but you can at least catch a glimpse of some of my students.

Host family time! I haven't wrangled my host parents into taking a picture yet. But I do have some excellent pictures of my host siblings!

Here's my host brother, Yeo-nu (pronounced Yaw-nu). You might be able to guess from this picture that he's around four years old that he's noisy, always moving around and pretending that he's some sort of superhero, beating up and climbing all over the rest of us. Or maybe you couldn't guess that. But if you did, you'd be right. I've successfully taught him "hi!", "bye!", and "oh no!". I also taught him "water," briefly, but I think he forgot it. Besides, I think he generalized water to include the fish bowl that was surrounding the water at the time. Language learning in little kids is cool to watch.

Next, these are my host sisters. Mi-na is the one who has her hands blocking her face. (The peace sign, by the way, is done by almost all Koreans when they take pictures. It's extremely cute. I've already started doing it myself.) Anyway, Mi-na is in her first year of middle school, which corresponds to seventh grade in the United States. She's very sweet, and although her English is still limited, I think she's quite good given her age. Furthermore, she tries very hard and is usually not shy about just trying to talk, which is the most important part of learning a language anyway!

Beside Mi-na is Ji-eun. She's in, I believe, fourth grade. She's this incredibly sweet, energetic little girl, and she ALWAYS has a smile on her face. She's only been learning English for a few months, so between the both of us, we usually communicate in smiles and giggling. But you'd be surprised how far that can take you!

This is a picture from downtown Gwangju, where I spend a lot of time. It's nice to go into the city and relax. Anyway, the fountain in the picture is a famous fountain in memorial of the May 15, 1980 uprising against the government. This is the only picture I managed to get without a car in front of the fountain. I just love that you can see the mountain in the background. My favorite thing about Korea is that no matter where you are, you feel like you're nestled in a little valley, a little more alone but a lot closer to nature. I'm feeling a little mountain-obsessed these days. Can you tell? I think I need to start seriously hiking again.

Finally, my room. The first is a picture of my chair and desk. It's very messy in this picture, and rest assured that I've since cleaned my room quite a bit. (I took this picture while I had a nasty cold and wasn't motivated to do much other than sleep). But if it wasn't a little messy, it wouldn't really be my room, right?

Here's my bed. My comfy, comfy bed. And my bookcase. Which now contains a copy of Le Petit Prince in both English and Korean! I'm hoping to improve my Korean skills a little with it. I also have a copy of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales with Korean definitions on the bottom, so that will help too.

This coming week is Chuseok, a major Korean holiday, so I'm off of work until next Thursday. It looks like I'll be spending lots of time with my host family and participating in traditional Korean Chuseok rituals, and I'm very much looking forward to that!

Pictures! From the end of Orientation

Hey all!

Sorry it's been so long since my last blog update. I really wanted to show you pictures of where I am and what I'm doing, but I was having camera problems. Basically, my new camera came without a cable to plug in the battery charger, and I couldn't even get my old pictures off my camera until I finally tracked a replacement cable down. But I'm back! And before I show you pictures of Hwasun, here are some that I had left from Orientation in Chuncheon.

Most of the time in Chuncheon, we ate in the cafeteria at Kangwon University. But here's a picture of a traditional Korean meal. It involves many, many side dishes, most of which are spicy, and everyone sharing from the same dishes.

This picture is simple. I ate, therefore I'm happy.

One weekend of Orientation we went to Songnisan, a mountain resort in central Korea. The exective director of Fulbright Korea billed it as a chance to relax and forget about the Korean language for a while. Here's a picture of the river from Songnisan, with the mountains in the background. It was gorgeous there. The fresh air did its job and purged my mind of all the Korean I knew.

In Songnisan there's a Buddhist temple called Beopjusa. Beopjusa is famous for having one of the tallest statues of Buddha in Asia. It's amazing.

The entire temple are was very beautiful. It had this peaceful energy about it that's difficult to explain. But I think anyone who's been to a historical religious place, whether it be a church, a temple, or just a spiritual area, will have an idea of what I'm talking about.

I haven't had the heart to look up what the Korean on this sign actually says. But in my mind, it says "Beware of squirrels," and I giggle and think of Grinnell.

Actually, at one place I visited in Chuncheon, I saw Koreans taking pictures of a squirrel in a tree. Maybe squirrels are really rare in Korea? I haven't figured that one out yet.

While in Chuncheon, I had the chance to learn about Dado, the traditional Korea tea ceremony. I'm a dedicated tea drinker, so naturally I signed up immediately for this activity. It's a very beautiful, precise process, but I think its precision has an effect almost like meditation. I felt quite serene at calm by the end of the cereomny. Here's a picture of our teacher, followed by one of me trying not to spill hot water all over the place:

We drank green tea at the ceremony. It was goooood!

Those are all the pictures I wanted to show you for now. WIthin the next week: Hwasun! Students! Host family! My messy, messy room!

But before next time, I should tell you one more thing: I got a straight-perm for my hair. See, the weather in Korea so far has ranged from hot and humid (not good to my naturally-curly hair) or constant rain (even worse for my naturally-curly hair). So I made the difficult decision to get my hair straightened. Here's the "after":

It will stay this way for about 5 months. It's very straight and very thin, and honestly, I prefer the volume my hair had before, which you can see in some of the previous pictures I posted. But it's definitely been easier to manage! I step out of the shower, give my hair a quick towel-dry, and one hour later it's dry, neat, and frizz-free!

Thanks for reading!