Since the mass freeze weekend in Seoul, we returned to Seoul the next weekend in hopes of going to LotteWorld - a theme park in Seoul. It was a long weekend for celebration of Chuseok, the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving. Only their Thanksgiving is not all about pilgrims and new found land and friends, all the Korean people go to their home towns to visit the graves of their ancestors and bring offerings of food and deep bows to show their appreciation for those who have passed. I think it's an excellent holiday. Despite our best efforts, I began getting sick and we ended up leaving Seoul without accomplishing our goal of visiting a theme park. I went to the hospital and they gave me plenty of mystery drugs to get me through. I only missed one class and started feeling better pretty quickly. I don't like being sick, especially when it robs you of your ability to laugh. You know, when you start laughing and it just turns into a wheezy cough- yeah I was that guy.
The next weekend I went to Daegu to visit a friend that I met on my flight back to Korea after David's funeral. He has lived there long enough to know what to do so we embarked on a short mini tour of Daegu. It's the third largest city in Korea and is beautiful. It's in the mountains and has a lot of great places for hiking and sightseeing. We visited a temple called Donghawasa that had a large Buddah and happened to be having a celebration when we showed up. We were some of the only foreigners there so naturally we were made to pose in front of the buddah with our heads bowed and smile in front of water fountains and all the lovely poses that make Korea look foreigner friendly. It's like being a celebrity, but without real control. I can see how famous people are easily annoyed by having their picture taken so often by random people. But we were good sports about the whole thing.
Here is the Buddah statute -
This past weekend Stormy and I had a quite night in Iksan. Stormy wasn't hungry and I was really wanting Kimchi Jijjae (basically Kimchi soup). As we walked to the restaurant I became brave and decided to try a place I had been once before. I ordered off the only Korean menu, then as I sat back and read it again I looked at Stormy and said, I think I just ordered fish - oh well. NOT OH WELL. THIS is what I ordered.
Needless to say, I paid the $6 it cost and we went to another restaurant. At least I tried!
We ended up going bowling and we bought some new shoes then woke up early the next day to hit the Kimchi Festival in Gwangju. I was pretty pumped about going because of my unnatural love for the fermented cabbage and Stormy was kind enough to humor me.
Once in Gwangju we had to get a taxi to get to the festival and the first two cabs had no idea what we were talking about and there happened to be a sweet little Korean woman who was also waiting for a cab who went out of her way to help us explain where we wanted to go the cab driver. When we arrived at the festival we weren't sure what to expect but we found a place where they show you how to make Kimchi for $5, of course we did it! We had a lovely interpreter who did a great job explaining everything the master Kimchi chef was explaining.
Finding out how it is made is not as exciting as I thought...It was a little more depressing. It includes blended pickled shrimp, blended pickled anchovies and a lot of other spices. It was not ready for that. BUT I still love it - I can't complain. It was fun making Kimchi, but like before we were asked over and over to pose with our kimchi and the chef. It was a good time, but that was pretty much the highlight of the entire festival.
Here's our lovely Kimchi -
Here we are outside the festival, aren't the flowers beautiful!
Storm and I with the radish - Korea's mascot is a vegetable.
Here are some pictures Stormy took of the food you could buy at the festival **Warning- This is not for those with weak stomachs**
A few different varieties of Kimchi
Random pig parts :(
After the festival we went to Osan and met a lot of new people and had a great night. On the way to Osan, Korea started pretending to look like Oklahoma, isn't it beautiful?
This week has been an easy teaching week (only 15 hours this week). I'm enjoying it and getting prepared for my last adult session before I come back to visit Oklahoma in December!
