Chusok, Korea's Thanksgiving

This is our third Chusok in Korea, but the first one we've ever really 'celebrated'. The date of Chusok is set by a lunar calendar, so it can fall anywhere in September or October. It is a celebration of the harvest, and they give harvest offerings to their ancestors and spend time tending graves. I don't know how many people still give offerings to their ancestors, but everyone still goes to their hometowns and tends graves and gives honor to their parents/grandparents.
This year, Chusok fell on a Monday. On Saturday our family went to the National Folk Museum where they had some performances and booths set up to make traditional style crafts. They also had an area with traditional games set up for anyone to participate.

samulnori, with buk & janggu drums

painting traditional style masks

too-hou, throwing arrows

On Monday, we went out to a Korean folk village to see the founding activity of Chusok, the harvest time. I didn't see what I expected, but we still saw many other things and got to participate in some hands-on activities. (This was also our first time taking a bus somewhere in Korea! With dozens of buses coming and going every few minutes this can be rather daunting.)  

grindstone

pounding grinder

selling rice candy

making 'dok' (or 'tteok'), traditional rice cakes

threshing

You can take a boat ride around the small lake. I'm not sure what the barge looking thing in the middle is.

N Seoul Tower

The major landmark of Seoul, N Seoul Tower. No, the 'N' does not stand for north. It is pronounced in Korean "en Seoul towa". Why the 'N'? Perhaps because it is located on Namsan mountain, although of course they have a different alphabet than us. Who knows. Regardless of the name, the tower can be seen from just about anywhere in Seoul, except maybe the outlying areas. We have quite a good view of it from our house and found our house easily from the observatory. It is not really that tall, 777 feet (compare to Washington Monument at 555 feet or the Empire State Building at 1250 feet), but being on the mountain top gives it quite a boost.

 In the very center of this picture you can see the "Blue House" nestled against the mountain side, which, as you can guess, has the same purpose as the American White House. Notice how rocky the mountains are.

The Hangang, or Han River.

You can see our house! Red roofs on left, near the big rectangular bluish building.

Only foreigners can drive, or taxi as we did, to the parking lot at the top, some sort of goodwill tourist policy, which our taxi driver told us Koreans complain about. Can't say I blame them. The path is very shady, but also very steep. You can see (highly repaired) parts of the Seoul Fortress Wall along the way.

As you can tell from the pictures, Seoul is surrounded by mountains and crossed by the Han river. This makes it a good location for a capital city, especially in ye olden times, which we learned from our visit to the Teddy Bear museum at the base of the tower. A wonderfully cute, very basic overview history museum, with depictions of life using teddy bears. In each set-up, some of the bears move, and they have music/sound effects also. Fun for kids, informative history for foreigners! It was great because with as much history as Korea has, a history museum here can be quite overwhelming for someone ignorant of all things historically Korean. I don't understand all the dynasties and kingdom eras and etc they refer to at most museums and get brain block and don't want to look at anything else! This was super cute and fun!

ancestor memorial ceremony

traditional wedding ceremony

market scene

royal court

the Blue House

Americana at the gift shop!

KINTEX

The KINTEX, Korea International Exhibition Center, a massive building with multiple exhibit halls, ballrooms, and meeting facilities. They are also getting ready to open a second building nearby next month. It is quite a long subway ride out from Seoul, but was well worth it for me. This past month they had several interesting exhibits. For our first trip out there we went to see the "Rhythm of Africa". It wasn't a very big exhibit, but the show they had was great. There were, of course, the drums, and everyone in the audience had a drum to participate as well. Some singing, dancing, a little flute playing, great fun. 

After the show the performers came down and of course we took pictures with them!

There wasn't a large amount of things on display, but what they had was interesting. A little bit of everything: jewelry, weapons, burial items, masks, and others.

A few days later I went back with the girls to see the "Hi Dino" exhibit, and to have some fun at the "Happy SpongeBob World". The dinosaur exhibit was fantastic! It had numerous full scale dinosaur skeleton replicas, and many smaller real fossils, plus a few robotic dinos. There was a place for the kids to "dig up" bones, make their own fossils, and it also had a 3-D movie.

digging up bones

Dino Last Supper -  their caption, not mine!

After this scientific exploration we had some fun at the SpongeBob place, the place the kids were really wanting to go to. It had some jumping balloons, a ball pit, a few games, a bubble show, and several pools set up with different activities: little boats, water slides, small wading pools. 

Deoksugung Palace & Seoul Museum of Art

It finally stopped raining (at least for 36 hours), so we had to get out the house and do some sightseeing. Seoul is home to five Joseon palaces of ancient Korea, according to one source forming a palace compound like a Korean "Forbidden City" of sorts. My first palace visit was to Deoksugung the palace of virtue and longevity. Deoksugung was inhabited by royalty until the beginning of the 1900s, then used for official business till 1919, though it was not always the seat of power. It is composed of several buildings, and also includes a more recently built art museum inside the palace walls. I can't find much good history information on this palace, so I'll just have to suffice with pictures, though I didn't take very many good ones this day.

We arrived in time to see the changing of the guard ceremony & pose for pictures!

Jeonggwanheon Hall, 1900. Said to be the first European style architecture built in a Korean palace. This was the king's 'party hall'.

Love the juxtaposition of old & new. Such a lesson in preservation!

Junghwajeon, throne room. Used for official business until 1919.

Roof of the throne room. Each wooden tile has the same image as that of the two large gold dragons in the recess.

Funnily enough, the visit to the palace was unplanned and inadvertent. The original destination was to the Seoul Museum of Art, housed in the old Supreme Court building. Currently they have a fake facade in place advertising an upcoming special exhibit, so I had to borrow a photo.

There is currently no special exhibit running, so there was little art work on display. Just a few pieces from prominent Korean artists.

This statue display is near the entrance to the art museum, and abuts the palace wall. You can't tell from the picture but because of the way they are shaped, they really mess with your head! You feel like you can't quite focus on them, and it makes your eyes go fuzzy. It was pretty awesome.

Children's Grand Park

What an awesome time we had today! I'm quite sure adults have as much fun at Seoul's Children's Grand Park as kids do. There are numerous playgrounds, water activities, animal shows, a zoo, and plenty of other things to keep you occupied and entertained.

After walking around for a short time, we chose to see the "Aladdin" show with a full cast of animal characters. It was adorable!

Jasmine with some birds.

Aladdin with monkeys.

There were also guinea pigs, ducks, a raccoon, a cat, and many other birds. It was really a lot of fun!

The zoo at the park is also very nice. We were fortunate that most of the animals we saw today were active, and those that weren't were napping in the open. My personal favorites were the polar bears. I don't think I've ever seen polar bears in person before.

Massive paws!

We had a good natured laugh at the jaguar's expense. There was a worker on top of his cage, the roof of which is just a type of metal netting. That jaguar was stalking that man, ready to pounce. I was glad to see his animal instincts haven't deserted him in captivity.

"I'm ready!"

The lions, leopards, and tigers were all out and pacing in front of the glass, so we were able to see them very well which is always a lot of fun!

And what would a trip to the zoo be without a camel ride!

Before leaving we took some time to cool our feet in the wading area. Now I know to bring clothes next time!

Movin' on Up

This blog entry is of a more personal, reminiscent nature, so feel free to skip over the ramblings and rantings below if you've no interest in reading about my feelings!

We've begun our move north to Seoul, I say begun because we've been stuck in a hotel for over a week now waiting on the reconciliation of some housing issues. We are present in Seoul, but not exactly living here yet. I'm excited and disappointed all at the same time. Excited to be in this massive city with a thousand and one things to do, but incredibly disappointed in the Yongsan garrison here. To be the largest post in Korea I expected so much more in the way of family services and standard of living, especially since they brag on this post so much. Please do not take this as a rant against all things army; I truly enjoy the army lifestyle most days, but I am appalled at what they expect families to accept as 'just part of life in Korea'. Since I have lived in Korea under the army's care for 20 months now, I know that what they are peddling up here is, quite frankly, crap. Part of me is more than a little ticked off.

I'm also a bit melancholy for the small town environment of Waegwan and my neighbors and Camp Walker. (Wow, truly never thought I'd say that!) Of course some of it comes from having to once again say good-bye to people I've grown to love and not having anyone to fill that space right now. In time I'll adapt to the services and command climate here and learn to navigate around. But for now I'm going to wallow in my memories, already burnished by distance if not time, and hope the silver lining comes out soon.