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.