Gooam Village

The "Colorful Daegu" metropolitan government graciously provided us with a free day trip to Gooam Village this past Saturday, complete with several translators and a couple of press people as well. Unfortunately, someones mistake at work prevented our husbands from coming with us as planned, but we wives still went and had a great time.

Gooam Village is a farming community and also includes traditional style craft workshops. From March to November there is a different crop in season that you can pick. October is for radishes, Chinese cabbages, digging sweet potatoes, and picking apples. We picked apples on our trip. There was a short walk to the harvested rice field, where my oldest found a stalk with grains still on it that she proceeded to eat. So I tried one too; it was like chewing a tiny pebble!

'sheaving' the rice stalks

After this stop, a tractor picked us up and drove us to the apple orchard. We were given our instructions and set loose! It was pretty fun, though I wish we could have picked more.

While we were in the orchard I found these prickly things, which I looked up when I got home and discovered they were chestnut shells. I tried to pick one up to bring home, but they are extremely sharp!

The itinerary we were given said we would be digging sweet potatoes, but for some reason we didn't do that. I was kind of planning on cooking them for dinner, and Korean sweet potatoes are awesome, so that was disappointing! Our next stop was glutinous rice cake making. It's simply rice flour mixed with water to make a play-dough like dough, then you fill it with whatever. We were provided with what we were told was crushed dried Korean red beans to use as filling. Fun to make, not to eat. My oldest did a really good job, once we figured out what to do, but the youngest thought it was play-dough and kept making a huge mess! Still, they had fun.

This Korean lady kept talking and talking trying to tell us what to do, and I'm thinking "I have no idea what you are saying!!". Finally another lady came over and slowly showed us each step, which was considerably more helpful. One of the translators told us that when he was a boy it was a family affair to get together and make these before their version of Thanksgiving, but they don't do that anymore. I'm not sure if he was referring to his family specifically, or Korean families in general.

Next stop, lunch! Delicious! I don't really know what it was; something with bulgogi, mushrooms, noodles, among other things. It was kind of like shabu shabu, but not. Of course there was also rice along with the Korean style side dishes (collectively called banchan) to include bean sprouts, tiny dried anchovies, fishcake, and obviously kimchi.

After lunch, we could choose to participate in using natural dye derived from a root of something (I never did quite catch that part) to dye a handkerchief or we could make some natural soap. The dye was my personal choice, but the idea of staining two small children overrode that desire. Soap it was. I believe they used glycerin, melted it in a large metal pitcher which we then poured into a cup, added flower petals, honey, orange extract, mixed and poured into a silicone mold. Simple.

demonstrating the soap making

the dying

While we waited for the soap to cool and harden, we watched a re-enactment of a traditional Korean wedding. Two members of our group participated as bride and groom, and one was her bridal attendant. In olden days the bride and groom met for the first time during the ceremony. She kept her arms up over her face (see picture) during the entire ceremony except for about two seconds where the groom was allowed to see her face for the first time. The table was set...

...the chickens are bound to represent no fighting between husband/wife and to bless with many hatchlings.

The groom was carried in on a chair......then the bride was led out (since she couldn't see)......there was bowing between mothers and fathers and bride and groom......and talking and that was that. The end of our day here. It was really great and I'm so glad they had this for us. Here are a few other pictures of what we experienced.

with a loofah plant

Learning Festival: Dongchon Resort

Ever on the lookout for something new to do, I found an advertisement in the local English magazine for the 9th Lifelong Learning Festival in Daegu. Of course I immediately started making plans to go. We were able to plot a rough location on our Daegu city map, but we had to trust the rest to luck. Fortunately, we saw the balloons they use at all these gatherings in Korea and some people standing to directing traffic to the parking. 

the Suseong Lake area of Daegu

the fan dance

It was a large festival for the area, with booths set up displaying local artisans and some local businesses. The first thing we saw upon entering the gate was a group dancing and drumming. I don't know what it's called. It's pretty standard at every event we've been to in Korea, but still entertaining.

It was hard to take any pictures of the booths because it was so crowded. Here is one, but I have no idea what was really going on. There were no English translations to help me out this time!

some sort of basket making

There was a large tent set up as the food court, mostly Korean food of course, but a few international cuisines were there as well. I ate from the Bangladesh booth and it was great!

Turkish ice cream stand; always up for a joke!

There's not much to say about it really, though we did have a good time. We watched several dancing and music performances on the main stage, and walked through the international tent which had booths representing various countries. Once again, everything was in Korean with very little to no English signage. We passed by the American booth which had a guy (I assume an American) dressed up like a cowboy; long live the wild west! Hilarious! There were many craft booths with lovely items, but not for sale - disappointing!

playing the hayaguem

touring Italy

firewoman!

Missing Top Ten

Since I haven't posted in a while, I thought I would commemorate the passing of our one year mark in Korea with a list of the top ten things I miss the most.

10. A free Interstate Highway System

9. Price tags

8. Being able to throw toilet paper in the toilet, not the trash can

7. Not having to share walls with other people

6. Eating food that I can identify and pronounce

5. The ability to make left-hands turns without waiting for a green arrow

4. Drive-thrus

3. Going out in public without being gawked at or accosted for photos

2. Being able to communicate without grunting & gesturing

And the number one thing I miss..........(Letterman style drum roll please...)

1. Appreciation of other people's personal space!

안녕히 가세요 (Good-bye!)