Oh, Chuseok, why must you end? I write having just come off a lovely
five-day vacation. This past
Sunday was Chuseok, one of the biggest holidays in Korea. Saturday and Monday
were also celebratory days. Wednesday was another holiday called National
Foundation Day so most schools also closed on Tuesday to create a whopping
five-day break!
Chuseok is a harvest celebration in Autumn and is based off the lunar
calendar. Koreans travel to their
ancestral homelands making it a nightmare to get in and out of Seoul throughout
the weekend. The holiday includes
huge feasts of traditional Korean food so the holiday is often described to foreigners as Korean Thanksgiving. My students all mentioned a rice dessert called songpyeon, which I take to be the pumpkin pie to our Thanksgiving. Visiting the ancestral tombs is another important component of
Chuseok celebrations. National
Foundation Day is a smaller holiday that happens to fall right after Chuseok on
Wednesday this year because it is based on the solar calendar. It commemorates the founding of the
first Korean state in 2457 BC.
Let the festivities begin! Friday evening we kicked off Chuseok
at WILS. After work, we gathered
around the reading room table for a WILS family Chuseok dinner. The cleaning later prepared bibimbap (veggies mixed with rice) and japchae (sweet potato stir-fried noodles). As many grapes in Korea do, we ate grapes
that ACTUALLY taste like grape flavored candy.
The president of the school each gave us a bottle of wine that she had
waited for hours in an extremely crowded E-mart to get due to the holiday. (Gift giving is very customary during
Chuseok. Earlier that week Bethany and I received a canola oil and spam gift
set from our neighbor, despite not having met other than the night he told us
to turn our music down…)
Had I not just arrived in Seoul five weeks earlier, I may have used
Chuseok break to spend a few nights traveling outside of the city. Coincidentally, I had relatives in town for
the weekend and I spent Saturday and Sunday exploring the city with them. I would like to say I had been their
tour guide, but by and large everything we saw was brand new to me as well. In the course of two days, we visited
Namsangol Hanok Village, the American Embassy, Gyeongbokgung Palace, Insadong,
Jogyesa Buddhist Temple, Cheongyechenon River Walk, the Gangnam and Apgujeong
areas, Hangang Park, and the National Museum of Korea. Due to the holiday, fewer people were
out than normal. Apgujeong felt
like a ghost town, but conversely it was a great time to visit the museum!
I also enjoyed incredible views of Seoul from the 40th floor of their hotel. I had not seen Seoul
from this vantage point yet...and it was incredible. The view looked directly out toward my part of town, marked
by the TraPalace and Hyperion Towers.
This, combined with delicious and unlimited western breakfast, fruit,
and lattes in the morning made for two killer brunches. If only my stomach could have been
bigger! In the evening, the club level had a delightful happy hour and dinner
to be enjoyed as the sun set over the city. Also a huge thank you to my relatives for bringing an entire
suitcase filled with Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods goodies. It was as if oatmeal, maple syrup,
funfetti cake mix, canned pumpkin, quinoa, black beans, trail mix and much much
more just dropped from heaven. Left the family to rest and Sunday night ended up being a very late night (at least by my standards!) hanging out at bar with coworkers.
My top priority for the long weekend was climbing a local mountain in
Seoul. There are so many places to
hike in the city that are subway accessible. Unfortunately plans fell through
on both Monday and Tuesday, leaving me two open days to fill. Monday ended up becoming the ultimate
relaxing day, and probably much needed.
After a lazy morning spent at home and a midday jog at the park, I spent
the afternoon with a coworker at a jimjilbang,
also known as a public bathhouse and sauna. It was incredibly thrilling and relaxing at the
same time. Definitely a great
experience to have here, so much so that I will dedicate an entire post to the jimjilbang later. The day was capped off with a pizza and
movie night with coworkers.
Tuesday, again, opened up last minute so I visited two adjacent
palaces, Changdeokgung and Changgyeonggung, in Seoul with a coworker on her
last day. The palaces all seem to
have similar looks and feels, but they are beautiful and interesting places to
visit nonetheless. I will have to
make a return trip at some point since we missed the Secret Garden due to
inconvenient tour times. In the
evening we met for a goodbye
dinner at a favorite dakgalbi restaurant,
which I have become an avid fan of despite it being cooked with chicken. Dakgalbi,
cooked on the table and eaten communally, is typically cabbage, chicken, and a
tasty sauce. There are many
add-ins such as noodles, rice, cheese, and sweet potato. I am a fan of the particular restaurant we frequent since there
is also an unlimited self-serve kimchi, carrot, macaroni salad, and seaweed
soup bar. Despite being a
vegetarian, I always leave the restaurant bursting at the seams. I cut out of dinner to see an old
Semester at Sea friend that I had planned to meet for a drink. He has been teaching here seven months and
is already is convinced that he will being staying another year. It was great to see an old familiar
face!
Wednesday was spent biking around a lake in Chuncheon with a meet-up
group. We could not ask for
sunnier or bluer skies or a better temperature. It took a bit of subway and train time to get to this area,
but I had a nice time. The scenery
was more natural than I would find on the Han River, but just an hour or so outside
of Seoul we were by no means in the wilderness.
We biked for over four hours, but at a leisurely pace and stopping for
lunch and whatnot. Dinner followed
at another dakgalbi restaurant (no
complaints!) and it was interesting to try a new place and new variations than
on what I have become used to having. A couple hours later I arrived back in Mokdong, completely
exhausted, and lamenting the end of a fun break!
A lovely 40th floor view
Jogyesa Buddhist Temple
Entrance to Changdeok Palace
Bike trip in Chuncheon...there's me!
I was picking up fruit at the Korean grocery store last Saturday and overheard a lot of people wishing each other "Happy Holiday"
ReplyDeleteAllie -- I figure out how to comment!
ReplyDeletewhat? you, wishing your stomach was bigger? weird.
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