Chuseok and fall things

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am woefully behind in keeping things up to date.  But I’ll try to work on it this week, so if you are bombarded by posts, that’s why.  If there is an embarrassing lack of posts, well I can only say that I am ultimately slacking in my duties… I have the time this coming week, so I really should get caught up. 

   This week is Chuseok.  It’s a three day holiday that is looked forward to with the same mixture of excitement and dread as the American Thanksgiving.  Chuseok actually follows the Lunar calendar and so the date changes every year, but the celebrations are the same.  Families return to their ancestral family homes.  Usually children return to their parents or grandparent’s home.  There they have a ceremony that pays respect to their ancestors as well as celebrates the harvest season.  Most of the family looks forward to it, in that there's a variety of delicious foods, some of which are only prepared during Chuseok.  Daughter-in-laws and mothers dread it.  There's a ton of work to be done in preparing said foods.

  This is actually only one day, but nationally Korea gives three days and makes it a “sandwich” holiday so that families can travel a little more easily.  More, easily, is actually a misnomer for this holiday season, because there is no easy about it.  Trains and buses are fully booked often months in advance in preparation for going to and coming back from family homes.  If you are traveling by car to or from one of the bigger cities, well, good luck.  Everybody, and I mean, everybody, is traveling on those days.  Which is why I’m staying in Iksan, visiting friends here around town and generally just relaxing during my days off.  We are actually given an extra day off this year, because the actual holiday fell on a Monday and people didn’t get their full three days off of work.  Kinda nice!

   Our school served songpyeon today, which is a traditional treat for Chuseok.  It is half moon shaped rice cakes that some in pink, white, green, and yellow.  Inside is a paste of slightly sweet sesame, or honey, sometimes red beans.  I like it, but not everyone likes rice cake as it can be very dense.  Regular rice cakes come in a variety of flavors … well not so much flavors as ingredients.  Sometimes its just rice cake, other times it is drowned with varieties of beans and jujubes and mashed sweet potato.

  My schedule has been getting busier this fall.  I was finally brave enough to sign up for piano lessons.  In Korean, no less!  I must be crazy!  I’m going three times a week, for an hour each time.  But my teacher is very kind and helpful.  She doesn’t speak much English but she carefully shows me what she wants.  And I’m slowly learning more Korean, and have been able to have very small, very short, very elementary conversations with her.  She is excited to have me there and the kids are always stunned when I come in the door!  Children have this cute habit where they are happily playing and then something intrudes on their consciousness.  They suddenly become very watchful and interested, but their little bodies are still moving as if they are still playing, but they just don’t remember that they are!  Some of them are braver than others and offer a shy hello.  Then as soon as I’m out of sight (not out of sound though!)  they start arguing over whether they should say hello, or hi instead!  Once in a while I have a little audience.  A tiny head will pop into view through the doorway of my practice room and then quickly duck back out!

School, of course, is a full day.  I usually leave a little before 8 and get to school about 8:15 or 8:20 to get settled in.  School ends at 4:30.  Which gives me about an hour before piano lessons begin to study Korean in a coffee shop somewhere.  One of my middle school English teachers has offered to help me with my Korean, so three times a week we meet and I attempt to learn Korean.   My Korean class should start again in a couple of weeks, but we will be down to one lesson a week 8:00 PM on Thursday evenings, since our Tuesday class is no longer available.  But my classmates are considering doing private exercises together in place of our lost class. Plus I may be beginning a language exchange with an elementary teacher from Jeonju, who is teaching here in Iksan.  An hour of English, for an hour of Korean.  When we will do that I don’t know! 

Once a week some of the foreign public school teachers here in Iksan meet for our Diner’s Club.  Every Tuesday evening 4 or 5 of us (depending on who’s in town and available) will meet for dinner around 7:30 -8:00.  Our only rule is that we can’t eat at the same place twice.  This week we are celebrating our 100^th week!!!  I think for all of us, it’s just about our favorite night of the week!!  Only once, (that I know of) have we had to resort to plan B – McDonald’s.  That’s a story for another post.  I’ll talk more about Diner’s club another time!

This last week I've barely had to cook or buy dinner at all!  I had two retirement dinners and a welcome dinner in one week for an elementary teach, my middle school principal and vice-principal, and a welcoming dinner for the new principal and vice principal.  I met with a co-teacher for dinner another evening and had dinner with a friend the next night.  When I finally get an evening to cook, I ended up buying microwave rice and packaged kim for a lazy dinner.  After all that food during the week, I hardly needed another big dinner!

For now this will be all.  I have to collect my thoughts on my recent trip to Vietnam!  There’s so much to tell there!  As well as a few other posts that are floating around the back of my mind!

Love you all!