Chusok

Chusok is Korean Thanksgiving. It is the biggest/most important holiday and Korea. It is a 3 day holiday day being the 6th of October this year, the middle of the 3 days. Chusok is a Lunar calendar holiday, so the date changes every year. The school is doing all sorts of activities for the holiday. One day last week, all of the kids were getting dressed up in their Hanboks, and playing traditional drum music for a photo, or such. I'm not sure exactly, but the kids seemed to have fun.They also made some traditional Chusok deserts: solpyun(?). It is a rice cake dumpling with a sweet filling. They were making it with sweet potato and other things. Sesame seeds are always included. They steam them, often with pine needles for flavoring.

Chusok gift giving

Chusok is sort of like Christmas in terms of the gift giving. Every store here now has displays of gift packs and such. Everything from cosmetics and soaps to SPAM and olive oil. Yes, they love SPAM here. I'll try to get a picture of one of the SPAM gift sets.
The kindy school gave each of the teachers a gift set. In the gift set, there are:
*3 kinds of toothpaste: Original, Green Tea, and Multi-Vitamin.
*4 kinds of soap: Blue Chip anti-bacterial soap, Moisturizing Milk Bar, and Fruit Essence Soap in Peach and Apple.
*2 bottles of shampoo
*1 bottle of rince
*2 boxes of hair treatment samples.
My boss at LCC says she will talk to the boss at Wooil, as the set isn't exactly suitable for me. I don't really need 6 tubes of toothpaste (not to mention the fact that I only use Sensodyne due to having super sensitive gums), 6 bars of soap or more shampoo (I already have more than a year's supply of shampoo from a set that I got when I arrived here). It's a great set if you have a family to share it with. I think most of the gift sets are more for families rather than single people living alone. I'm not sure what I will get instead, or if I will just keep this gift set.

Chusok activities...

Yesterday and today at the kindy, the classes are doing Chusok activities and games. Half of the classes had their turn yesterday, the rest of them today. As a result, I only have half classes. Yay!!! Too bad they weren't all in a row. All of the classes that had their turn today were dressed up in their traditional clothes, teachers included. I think almost all Koreans own a Hanbok.

There were traditional Korean games and activities set up outside.

[A little relay race of collecting 'chestnuts' in little baskets.][Throwing arrows into a barrel.][A traditional Korean see-saw, done standing, rather than sitting. The participants jump to make it move, trying to go as high as possible.][A Korean version of the hackey sack... basically a bunch or ribbons or string tied together. For the kids, it is attached to a string.][Korean style wrestling.]

The children also did a couple of little performances.

[Traditional Korean drums.][Sangmo- a hat with a twirly thingy attached to the top. The wearer moves his head in a certain way to make the ribbon move around the head and body.]

Professional sangmo performers have very long ribbons on their hats. It is very interesting to watch. Professional performers also do flips and such while twirling the ribbon. The kids had trouble even getting the ribbon to go around, but they had fun, although some of their hats would not stay on top of their heads.

Many of the parents were around to watch the games and performances, and of course, take pictures.

YAY!!!!! and ARGH!!!!!

YAY!!!!
Today I found out some GREAT news. I get October 4th off. October 3rd is a holiday in Korea. October 5-7 is a holiday in Korea (Chusok - Korean Thanksgiving... yes, it is a 3 day holiday). As it was, I would have worked on the Monday and the Wednesday. I had been trying to get the 4th off as well. My boss said it wasn't possible. But today, I guess things changed and my school will be closed that day. That means I have a 6 day vacation!

ARGH!!!
I am stuck in Korea for my 6 day vacation doing nothing. It is now basically too late to book any trips anywhere. Every single flight out of Korea and back again are fully booked. Almost every single train to anywhere else in Korea is sold out. What a waste of a good holiday. And after this one, I will only have my winter vacation and then one 3 day weekend in late winter/ early spring. If I had known before that I would have the extra long vacation now, I would have already booked a trip somewhere. Back to China (Xian) or to Vietnam maybe. But NO... Things just don't work out that way.
What really sucks is that because the entire country has the vacation (at least the 4 national holiday days), everyone is going places. Chusok is a bad time for being stuck here, as everything is closed.
once again... ARGH!!!!

Sorry... needed to vent.

Beomosa Temple in Busan

I never did post the pictures that I took at the Buddhist temple I went to on the Saturday of my shark diving excursion to Busan.
Here are a few of those pics.

Because it was not long before Chusok (Korean thanksgiving), there were a lot of things going on to do with it. There were lanterns everywhere. These lanterns say Beomosa, the name of the temple.Inside one of the temple buildings. Bamboo. Roof tiles. Who does THIS remind you of???? There are 4 of these little guys, each crouching at the feet of one of the 4 kings (North, South, East, West).

a street in Korea

Walking home from Cheonho Station. This street is parallel to the Han river, and goes past the Olympic park (in the direction of the photo). The trees are Gingko Biloba. Yes, the cars park on the sidewalk. The street wasn't very busy yesterday, due to Chusok. All of the businesses were closed.
Once it passes the Olympic Park, it curves to the right and goes on to Jamsil, and then to the Sports Complex. The trees on the left are, again, Gingko Biloba. The trees on the right, I'm not sure what they are, but they have GIGANTIC leaves. I keep thinking I'd love to take a leaf home to press, but I have nothing big enough to press it in. Maybe put it under the glass on my dresser?

Saturday

I did finally make it to Busan. The train ride went fairly quickly, though I was half asleep for most of it. The KTX is really fast. I think it averaged around 295 for most of the trip.
Once in Busan, I made my way to the hostel to meet my friends. We all then went for some much needed coffee. They hadn't slept much, either, although for different reasons. Most of them had started drinking on the train ride down there and hadn't stopped once they arrived. They were up until the wee hours of the morning, I think. Thank goodness for Starbucks. It was a nice walk to get there. After we had our fix, we headed for the subway.
Only some of the group were diving Saturday, so the rest of us that were there that morning went to see Beomunsa Temple. It was a very nice hike up to the temple, but my body is still feeling it. The temple was very busy due to Chusok coming up in a couple of weeks. There were lanterns hung up everywhere and craft tables for people to make mini lotus flowers and such. There were also displays of Korean art and photography. After wandering around for a while up there, we made our way back down and then went for a visit to sauna.
The sauna we went to claims to be the largest sauna in Asia. I had never really been to a sauna here before. I had only been to a jimjilbang, which is a co-ed sauna, where you are given a tshirt and shorts to wear. The other saunas are segregated. Basically public baths. Yianni was the only guy with us at the time, so he was on his own. The rest of us (only 4 at the time) had a great time jumping from bath to bath. It is like hot tubs all over the place of varying temperature, size, aroma or feature. We tried out the pepper aroma bath (looked kinda like tea, didn't smell like anything, comfortable hot), the jasmine bath (purplish water, no smell, warm but not hot), a salt bath (salty, very hot), a cold water bath next to the salt water bath (kinda icy cold, good for circulation?), a yellow mud bath, a few other baths inside as well as a couple of the open air baths (outside with shades all the way around): we tried the VERY HOT, and comfortable hot pools, but avoided the VERY cold one. We then had a nice scrub down. A body scrub, face massage and hair shampoo was I think 20000 won(? I forget). It was a bit strange at first, since you are completely naked. Not to mention the fact that the little old ladies that are doing the scrubbing were also naked. They are quite rough, too. They give you a good scrubbing to get all of the dead skin off. It rolls off, actually, in what some of my Korean friends refer to as skin noodles.
When we were finished at the sauna, we felt so relaxed. It would be nice to do that before going to bed.
We met up with the rest of the group, those that had gone diving that day and those that had arrived that day or were doing other things for the day. We all went to a nice little dwaeji kalbi (marinated pork) restaurant that overlooked Haeundae beach. Sorry... no pics of the meal.
We finished off our day down on beach doing some good old drinking.