Chuseok

The food offered to the Kang family ancestors

I spent Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) with my host family at their country house that’s about an hour out of Daegu. It’s traditional for Korean families to go to the father’s parents house and then the mother’s, so we spent most of the time at my host father’s country pad. The Friday before Chuseok, I helped  the women clean and cook and then Saturday morning they set up the spread you see on the left as an offering to their ancestors. The food ranged from rice and fruit to octopus and dried squid. Then the men and children did the jaensa, which is essentially a routine of bowing and offering various foods to each ancestor.

Jaensa at the second tomb

After this we headed over to the tombs of two ancestors, a grandfather who had passed away a few years ago and an uncle who had passed away only 3 months ago. At each grave, the men offered some food and drinks, but what I found the most bizarre was that at both graves, my host uncle lit a cigarette in his mouth and stuck it into the base of the grave before they carried out the jaensa. The uncle even got two cigarettes! Guess he was a heavy smoker.

Host mother and father

So I’m glad that I got to hang out with my host family for Chuseok, even though the only English speaker in my family skipped out on the celebration to study (typical), which left me gesturing and using my broken Korean to try to understand what was going on.  Oh and my host family even bought me a hanbok (=traditional Korean dress)!

It was kinda huge, but the sales associate insisted that I have to buy a big size because I am so tall.  I guess my host mom disagrees because she mentioned something about going back to the store and when I left the house, she took the dress (I’m guessing) back to the store. Apparently the colors of the one I choose are traditional but the cut is pretty modern.

As I was leaving the country house on the Saturday of Chuseok weekend, my friend called and we decided to hop onto trains to Busan. Trying to find a ticket on the day of Chuseok was pretty hectic, but my host mom came to the rescue and found a ticket for me. We spent time at Haeundae beach and the Busan Acquarium and luckily the weather was amazing. But since we only had 2 days and because many things were closed for the holiday there’s a lot we didn’t get to see, so I definitely want to go back soon.

I spent the last weekend in Gyeongju for the Fulbright Fall Conference. It was great to see all of my friends from orientaiton again and it was helpful to hear their lesson plan ideas too. We spent our entire Sunday hitting up every possible tourist attraction in the city (Fulbright arranged the tour). Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom and because it is over 1,000 years old, there’s a lot to see. Sadly, most of the historical sites were destroyed by the Japanese, but many sites have been restored. We saw the Seokguram Grotto, Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju National Museum, Anapji Pond, Cheomseongdae Observatory (oldest observatory in the world!), and the Cheonmachong tombs…. all in one day! Interesting but exhausting.

PIFF

After the conference, I headed down to Busan with some friends to check out the Pusan International Film Festival. We got tickets to see an independent Philipinno film, “Lola,” which was about everyday life in the Phillipines (in Tagalog w/ English subtitles). The plot involved the trial against a man who stabbed another man over a cell phone and the main actresses were the grandmothers of the accused and the victim. The movie was very low budget, so it could have used some more editing and the camera was quite shaky, but it was pretty good. So overall, things have been pretty easy lately – I’ve worked only 6.5 days in the past 3 weeks!

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