Chuseok Diary Part 1

Last week, after four very hectic weeks of football, studying Korean and extensive lesson planning, I made it to the big week off. The rest was very much appreciated as it felt like I'd been busy from 7am to 11pm every weekday.

Chuseok is usually translated to me as the Korean thanksgiving, though I think it's more like a harvest festival. For one thing, Koreans aren't celebrating giving the indigenous people smallpox. Anyway, it's a big festival of drinking and eating, and seems to be the most important time of the year for Korean families to get together. It's probably more akin to Christmas in the UK than anything else, if you replace the last mince pie that you force down your throat knowing that you really shouldn't, with songpyeong - a kind of sweet rice-cake filled with sesame and syrup or chestnut. Anyway, here's what I got up to over the week.

Monday

Monday was actually a school day, but all of my classes were cancelled for "physical testing day". I popped out occasionally to laugh at my students running around the school track in the rain, but mostly I sat at my desk and groaned. This was due to spending the entire weekend drinking with my new friend Jae Yeong, and particularly the fault of a couple of bottles of mushroom spirit the night before. Probably not the best start to the week.

Tuesday

I got my first taste of a proper Korean Chuseok today. Having spent the morning working (it never stops entirely, even during holidays) I went to spend the evening with my friend Stacy's family in a small town close to here. This is where I developed the idea that Chuseok here is a lot like Christmas back home. We stuffed ourselves full of delicious food (home made bibimbab and seafood patties) and then sat down in front of the TV for an entire Lord of the rings movie, all the while chugging magkoli and munching songpyeon in a vain attempt to find the chestnut ones that Stacy had made.

Anyway, I had an awesome evening. Stacy's family were lovely to me, despite a fairly significant language barrier. In Korea, food often seems to take the place of speaking anyway, and an appreciation of Korean food, particularly someone's home cooking is often enough to seal good relations with people. Anyway, thanks Stacy and your family for a great evening.

Wednesday

Wednesday was another morning of lesson planning (I'm working on a series of lesson based on the movie Up!) before I had lunch at another Korean friend's house. Once again, the entire family was there, including, to her obvious dismay, one of my students, who is my friend's niece.

Once again, the food was excellent. The entire table was covered in various kinds of food, including galbi ribs, steamed pork, battered shrimp, mushrooms and many different mountain vegetables, which are particularly prevalent around here. At the same time, the honey licqeur, berry wine and good old soju began to flow. I left for the slowest game of futsal I've played in a while, with every player severly encumbered by food and alcohol. There was still time for beer and snacks during and after the game, before I came home for a long nap. See now why this seems a lot like Christmas?

I'm going to post at this point, so that this post gets broken up. Part 2 covers my cycling adventures and will be up very soon.

Caution: May contain extensive moaning about footballers defending properly.

Hi there,

Just back from a nice day and a bit in Gangneung, the closest city to me and handily placed on the coast. I am, perhaps inevitably, a little pink around the shoulders now, but as a wise man once told me, "Get one good burn in and you're good for the whole summer."

Anyway, my room mate from orientation, Jeff, came down to Jinbu for the weekend. We had no real plans for entertainment, so decided to see what opportunities the weekend produced. Having hiked over the hill behind Jinbu, we sat down to a fine dinner of Kam-ja-tang, a spicy pig spine and potato stew, or at least normally it has potatoes. The version we ate seemed to be lacking them, which is strange as the "kam-ja" is what gives the dish it's name. After that we popped to a couple of bars, winding up at my new favourite Jinbu haunt, "Chael-ro". Reason's to like this bar are: 1. A barman who speaks a little bit of English, and doesn't mind me practising my terrible Korean on him, and 2. The sign outside declaring the sale of "Hope & Soju"*. You really can't beat a bar selling hope, especially not alongside cheap liquor. It's all most people really need.

The night got a little out of hand later on, when having consumed a fair amount of beer, makkoli, and soju, Jeff and I declared Korean alcohol to be easier to drink than most countries. Perhaps feeling slighted, the barman then produced a bottle of Chinese liquor and proceeded to treat us to a couple of glasses. At 56% by volume and tasting like drain cleaner, it may not have been the wisest choice at 2.30 am, but we drank it anyway, and I duly woke up with comfortably the worst hangover that I've had here. This wiped out most of Saturday, with Jeff and I spending all our time sitting around groaning, sleeping and eating chicken in an attempt to recover.

In the evening we decided that going to watch my beloved (well, I've now been to two games and I own a baseball cap with their badge on it) Gangwon FC was a good idea. Turned out that it was, as we were treated to a very exciting game, but one that was marked by defending so schoolboyish, it seems unfair to the youth of the world to use that adjective. I've said before, Korean football is usually exciting to watch, unsurprisingly owing most of it's counter attacking and rapid changes of possession to a style of play modelled on the English Premier League. Sadly, changes in possession are so frequent (at least at the Gangneung stadium) because no-one is good enough to keep the ball for more than a couple of minutes. La Liga this certainly ain't. I lose count of the amount of times a pass is left by one player for another, while an opponent nips in, takes the ball and quickly gives it straight back. However, in attack some impressively slick passing is evidenced by both Gangwon FC and their opponents Cheonbuk, though with little class in front of goal.

Match action!

A Korean crowd.

All this changes 5 minutes before half time, when GFC get a free kick a full 35 yards out, and our midfielder steps up and smashes a swerving ball past the goalkeeper and in off the bar. It was rather reminiscent of Gazza vs Arsenal in the 1991(?) FA Cup Semi. Shortly after half time our winger, not for the first time, finds himself in about 20 yards of space on the far side, and has an age to advance into the box and pick his spot in the top corner. 2-0 up and seemingly coasting, but this is Korean football and you're never entirely safe, no matter how big the lead. Honestly, the defensive play in this game was probably the worst I've ever seen in a professional or semi-professional football match. The forwards and the midfielders on both sides were lazy, offering no protection to their backlines, and frequently putting them in danger. Clearances were shanked straight up in the air in the area, the fullbacks played so tight that the wingers were left with almost half the field to work in, yet still balls were getting down the channels. The ball flew over the centre-backs' heads so often I thought I was back watching England's world cup side. It was almost beyond belief, and I found myself studying the benches to see if I could spot Kevin Keegan's slivering barnet, such was the all-out nature of the attacking play.

Cheonbuk fans, with "Mad Green Boys" banner and Che Guevara flag. Possibly auditioning for extra roles in the forthcoming "Hulk: The College Years" movie.

Even at 2-0 up, Gangwon looked as if they were hanging on, seemingly unable to accomplish the simplest of defensive tasks. So it proved, as two simple goals were rolled in in 5 minutes, leaving the score at 2-2. Then Gangwon wasted two golden opportunities (both created merely from being in the opposition half) to win it, before in the dying seconds a long punt goes over our center back's head again, leaving two Cheongbuk players through on goal. Our center back gets back into a position to provide a match-saving toe-away, and promptly falls on his back. The Cheonbuk striker slides it under the goalkeeper, and Gangwon have lost. Once again, I'm left with the feeling that I might well have been able to do a better job. I wonder if I can get a trial. One thing's for sure, the Korean FA needs to look at the defending part of their coaching manual again, if there even is one.

Perhaps Gangwon's longest spell of possession of the entire game.

The previous night's excursions left Jeff and I unwilling and mostly unable to conduct an assault on any Gangneung nightlife, so we grabbed a Mr Pizza and headed off to Motel "Bally" (you do wonder what the thinking behind naming a Korean love motel after the Korean word for quick was). We spent the following morning at the beach, got sunburnt, then retired to a "makkoli jib". Makkoli is my favourite kind of korean liquor. It's a creamy rice wine which seems to be the equivalent of microbrew here. Each city has it's own varieties and fairly distinctive tastes. It's also most usually found being peddled by kindly "ajummas" (old ladies) in the old town markets of cities. Served with an array of delicious, high-carb side dishes (potato omlette, buckwheat dumpling, kimchi pancake, fried noodles) and a big smile, Makkoli makes an excellent lunch. A Makkoli house is probably not somewhere most foreigners go, owing to their often run down nature, but I can assure you that they're well worth popping into.

A Makkoli Jib

A Makkoli Hound.

I'll finish with the usual promise to write more soon. It's probably falling on deaf ears by now, but the photos from lots of recent adventures are sitting on my desktop waiting to be sorted, and I am on vacation this week, so you never know.

Laters,

A

* "Hope & Soju" is a miswriting of "Hof & Soju", "Hof" being one way bars advertise the availability of beer. This is a strange decision given that the Korean language has no F sound, and so replaces it with a P, hence the mistake above.