Chuseok at EWAS

I've been a little overwhelmed in the past few days from Chuseok. I've received several gifts from parents, including a box of 10 giant pears, a large box of grapes, Skin Food (which is like Bath & Body Works), and some sort of rice cake, all of which are all apparently very expensive. I don't know why the parents think I'll be able to eat all that food by myself before it goes bad, but it's still been very nice.

Chuseok is a big holiday here in Korea. It's based on the lunar calendar (it occurs on a full moon), and is when the harvest takes place. It's similar to our Thanksgiving, but with different traditions and customs. At school, we had a half day with our kindergarten kids, who all wore their hanbok to school, the traditional Korean dress:

(Cherry class L to R:Michelle, Flora, Amy, Irene, Elizabeth, and Lewis)

(Elizabeth, Irene, and Amy)

(Lemon class L to R: Tony, Michael, Sarah, Ashley, Daisy, Julian, Nathan, and Jake)

We didn't have any lessons in the morning on Friday, which was nice. First we made clay syeong-pan, which is like a dumpling that's filled with mashed chestnuts, sesame seeds, or other similar fillings and then boiled. They say that if a woman can make syeong-pan pretty, then her daughter will be pretty as well, so girls practice making them look nice. We combined Cherry and Lemon class to do this (I'm guessing it's because the American teachers had no idea what syeong-pan was or how to make it with clay).

Then we had snack, and headed to the funhouse for traditional sports. The first thing was "chicken sport" (I don't remember the Korean word. The boys each held one foot with both hands and hopped around on the other foot. The object is to get the other person to let go of their foot. The first one to do this or lose their balance and fall over loses.

Nathan from Lemon class (the one on the right) was the final winner after each boy had gone at least once, and then all the winners were pitted against each other. After the boys were finished, the teachers did it too, with Gina being the final winner.

The girls, during all this, were either watching passively or cheering on the boys, chanting to encourage their classmates.

After the teachers were finished, it was the girls' turn for arm-wrestling. They started with Cherry class, and when Gina first tried to explain the rules to them (in Korean), the girls thought they were supposed to swing their arms back and forth on the table instead of push each other's over. It was incredibly cute.

Gina continued to referee, until all the girls had finished and there was a final winner. Then they did the same for the boys.

By this time, it was time for the kids to go home, so after lining everyone up and bringing them to the buses, wishing everyone a happy Chuseok on the way, we went to Home Plus for lunch on Julie. Since our next classes didn't start until 2:30, and the morning kids left at noon, after lunch James and Cherita and I sat down by the river and talked until it was time to go back to work.

The rest of the afternoon went fine, with classes going normally, though a lot of the kids were ready to go home (many of them hadn't had school at all that day and it was their first lesson all day). After work, James and Cherita and I met a few other ex-pats a few blocks away for galbi, and then we all headed back to James's house to watch "Withnail and I", a rather cult-classic British film, that I only found funny after having watched it twice with the script in front of me.

Saturday night I went out with Emily, one of the girls from the ex-pat group, to downtown for a reggae night in one of the clubs in Seoul. We had a really good time, and got back at a relatively decent hour (meaning we didn't wait for the metro to start running again and took a taxi home).