Seollal Games

Seollal (Lunar New Year)

Seollal (Lunar New Year) was February 14th this year. I had planned to go to Seoul with a friend to see some cultural demonstrations, but she couldn't make it at the last minute so I went on my own. The tradition is to hike up a mountain or to the beach, stay the night, and make a wish for the new year as the sun rises... but it was still cold and snowy so I didn't do that :)
Instead I went to the folk village in Seoul and saw a few of the traditions associated with the holiday. Hanboks are the traditional dress of Korea for any important celebration like weddings, holidays, ceremonies of government or at schools and such. On seollal they make wishes for the new year usually by writing them down on little slips of paper... at the folk village they tied them all on hanging lines, it reminded me of the prayer pouches lined up in the monasteries. They also make ddeok (rice cakes) and ddeok guk (a beef and rice cake soup) to eat on the holiday. They play traditional games like yut nori (the stick tossing game I sent home for the boys,) a little hackey sack like game called jaegi, making and flying paper kites, see saw (which they jump on instead of sitting... (amazing watching the older women flying through the air on these,) and a hoop game where they roll metal hoops using a stick to guide it... much harder than it looks! They also have their fortunes told for the new year... I was luckily able to find someone willing to translate for me from the Korean. Apparently I will have great fortune in my profession (which here means being something like a doctor, nurse, or teacher) and will find luck in love around November or December of this next year... good to know :) A very fun day trip to Seoul! (And much warmer than sitting on an icy mountain all night!)

Dinner at Sue's

Pottery

After winter camps were over, one of our students invited all the teachers from camp to come visit her at her house. Her father is a famous potter who lives here in Sangju. Apparently he's ranked as one of the top 5 potters in Korea. We had tea and snacks with their family (grilled sweet potatoes and local dried persimmons,) got to see his studio and some of his famous show pieces (some of which are enormous and sell for upwards of $3000 a piece,) and even got to make some things of our own. He does this amazing pottery, his wife paints incredible intricate pictures and designs on some of his pieces, and they sell their work out of their home. Their daughter was one of our students at camp, and their son is in his third year of middle school. We were each able to make a pot of some sort on the wheel with a little- okay a LOT- of help. We also had the chance to make little rolled platters which we decorated with imprints of persimmon leaves since our town of Sangju is known for its dried persimmons. It made for a very fun afternoon and I'm excited to go back next month to pick up the pieces that we made.
After we were finished there, we went across the street to see the farm of one our Korean teachers from camp. Her husband is actually the farmer of the family. He grows persimmons for drying, a very rare kind of mushroom, and a rare and special root used in herbal medicine. Their daughter was home visiting this week- she's a first year teacher up in Seoul- and had been with us this week at camp and doing ceramics and playing ping-pong and all. Sue and her daughter made us dinner before we went back home. We had roast beef cooked right on the surface of the pot-bellied stove that warms the persimmon drying shed. It was yummy with grilled sweet potatoes, rice, grilled glutinous rice cake rods, cucumbers, and homemade duen jang- a paste made from fermented red soybeans and commonly served with beef and pork cooked in this style. Everything was fresh and local- the cucumbers had been picked that morning from an organic farm next door- and so incredibly good! And of course we finished off the meal with a little soju- a new kind for me flecked with bits of gold leaf and flavored with preserved plums- and some of the amazing dried persimmons from their farm. Such a great day! :)

Teachers

We all had a lot of extra time in the afternoons during break because we didn't have as much to plan for camp classes as with our normal lessons. It was nice getting a chance to rest some, but also to have time to hang out with the other teachers and see things that we hadn't done before. We had a few dinners out with Korean teachers for different reasons, we got to spend an afternoon playing yut-nori, and another playing ping-pong. I even got to go to my co-teachers house for lunch one day and meet his wife and brand new little baby girl- so cute! (My co-teacher is actually taking the picture, in the picture are me, his wife and daughter, and another teacher from our school.)

Talent Show...

Winter Camps

Three weeks of camps at English Town went by fairly quickly. A bit unorganized and frustrating at times, but the kids were adorable and more than made up for it and I had the chance to work with a number of Korean teachers from nearby elementary schools whom I had not met before. In my classes the kids learned how to make their own snow globes, how to make s'mores and sing campfire songs (when we couldn't get the ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies at the last minute,) spy games and how to write secret messages, American folk games including a really fun native American game that is very similar to the Korean folk game yut-nori, and an overview of the circulatory system. So, a scattered but interesting week. And I definitely learned a lesson on perspective... yeah, turns out that as much fun as kids have playing spies in America, it's bit more of an emotionally charged topic for some students this close to North Korea. Oops. Other teachers taught about nutrition, the five senses, photography, making puppets and putting on a puppet show, making cookies, and all kinds of other games and neat things. We were running around and all quite tired by the end, but I had a lot of fun seeing my students in a different setting and getting to meet many other students from neighboring schools. The talent shows at the end of each week were the most entertaining and I'm going to try to post some videos from them on here; sorry there's no sound on my camera. We also had the opportunity to be filmed while we were teaching and were shown for a few minutes on the Andong MBC news here. I've always heard that if you're a foreigner in Korea and stay here long enough you will end up on TV at some point, guess it was our turn now. :) We were able to watch the newscast here, but I haven't been able yet to figure out how to get hold of a copy to share. I'll post it if I can.