Lunar New Year

This weekend I enjoyed the splendour of one day off work thanks to the lunar new year. Unfortunately 2 of the three national holidays fell at the weekend, but one day is better than nothing.

After doing a bit of research I decided the actual New Years day, Sunday, was the best day to go to Seoul if I wanted to see some colorful displays. So on Sunday morning my buddy and I set off. The train was surprisingly crowded. Lunar New Year is a family oriented holiday, with the main 'business' consisting of younger adults and children performing deep bows to their elders, and then getting money in return. [Note to my parents - I think this is a ritual the Ridd household could do with including, for spiritual succor of course.] But once the bowing was over with I suppose there was nothing to do at home, so Koreans go and visit other people they wish to pay respects to.

Lunar New Year didn't have quite the build up or big lavish parades I was expecting. The main difference around my little town was an increase in food shopping activity and the appearance of many gift sets. Traditionally Koreans give gifts of meat or fish, and so the more practical gift sets tend to include tinned tuna, dried fish, or meat of some kind. My favorite by far was the Spam gift set, though I can't see this taking off in the UK. Great to see though, especially for a Monty Python fan such as myself.

Once we arrived in Seoul my buddy and I toddled off to the National Folk Museum, located within the grounds of Gyeongbokgung Palace. The palace itself was alright, but nothing particularly special I'm afraid to say. You can't really blame the palace or the Koreans though. It has rather a troubled history, including being burnt down few times, enduring years of neglect, and being torn down so that Japanese invaders could erect a government building for Korea's Governer-General. When they occupied the country the Japanese took very few pictures before they tore the ancient buildings down, so modern historians have a hard time of trying to reconstruct representations fo the old palace. I didn't get to see the gardens and lakes though, so maybe a second look will reveal some beauties.

The palace was made better by the Korean adults and children running around in traditional Korean dress, Hanbok, who gave it an 'oriental' kind of feel. Hanbok looks rather like a large tent on the women, and the men wear large parachute trousers and tunics. It may not be particularly flattering but they use bright colours so the clothing is exciting none the less.

During the afternoon we enjoyed a performance at the Folk Museum of what was described as fusion music. 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' played on traditional Korean instruments (including lap zithers called Gayageum, wooden flutes called Juggeum, and odd string things which I think are called Haegeum) is an odd sensation but not entirely unpleasant. The big drums were the best part, but unfortunately they were only allowed to get really loud and riotus once.

The museum also hosted a variety of traditional craft tents, at which children could try out activities like kite making, flute making, and mask painting. All for a small fee of about 2 or 3 pounds. The kites weren't particularly big and were simple wood and paper affairs, but some of the Korean blokes managed to get them really high in the sky, even above the roof of the three story museum. Jolly impressive. The palace's surroundings were also impressive as they included many striking hills and mini-mountains.

After the museum we went to one of the cities big malls to visit a bookstore called Bandi and Lundi's which has a great English section (classics 20% off, thank you very much) and we caught a film. Flags of our Fathers. I've seen better war films but I've also seen many worse. The mall was packed full of teenage Koreans out to spend the money they'd been given that morning. They all looked rather pleased with the world.

Later we went to a few bars with the assumption that the college aged kids would be out spending their money, but not many joined us. Maybe they were allowed out for the afternoon then herded back home for an evening meal. Still, they can't really complain. Aftyer all, they were just given a wad of cash for simply bowing. [Hint hint Mum and Dad...]

Korean 6 year olds with talent?

Last weekend I was denied my Saturday (again) in order to participate and watch a talent show featuring the kids from my kindergarten classes (6 and 7 year olds). I was asked to welcome people at the beginning and to compare a faux beauty pageant.

Mostly it was ok, the kids were quite good with theirs lines, even though some needed a bit of a prod in the right direction. The only problem was the insistance on using radio mikes. They "miked" (can that really be a word?) me up for the first thing I did, and I stood on stage with the kid I was welcoming everyone with. I said my first line and - you've guessed it - nothing. Faulty mike. So, rather than let me use the regular-on-a-wire microphone I grabbed I was forced to stand on stage whilst some geezer rushed on to change the microphone and it's transmitter, which involved undoings of jackets and many an embarrassed look towards the audience. I managed to make a joke out of it though, so not all bad. One of my colleagues caught it all on my video camera, so I can replay the cringiness again and again, joy.

The insistance on trying to use radio mikes continued for quite a while before they realised it wasn't happening and thankfully switched to oldfashioned microphones. Technology is not all good by any stretch.

This week is plodding along. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and we're doing some activities at school (any excuse to not teach seems to be the sentiment here). The weekend brings the excitement of Lunar New Year, and a day off work! I hope to enjoy some festivities, so maybe I'll get some good photos.

Last weekend.

Unfortunately I was required to spend Saturday at a teacher training thingy in Seoul. It was incredibly dull, full of people talking about different series of teahing books (a lot of sales pitches disguised as teahcing method lectures) and I didn't really listen much. I wouldn't have minded if it hadn't meant getting up at 7 am. That may not sound too bad to you but it's over an hour earlier than I get up to go to work!

Getting up that early, and catching the 8 o'clock train, only had one advantage: I got to see the sun rise. And it was good. As we sped south it rose on my left hand side over the cold and barren landscape of northern South Korea. The area is hilly, with a few big mountains in the distance, and I expect it is used extensively for crops in warmer weather, but at the moment it is rather bleak. Running alongside the train tracks there are many small allotments, and they are also squashed into small patches of ground in towns and cities. Street sellers and market stalls tend to sell a lot of this small production stuff.

The landscape has two main features other than the hills; electricity pylons and large congregations of blocks of flats. I hope, in warmer weather, to travel more around the country and see some of it's beauty, but for now my Korean world is dominated by man made objects. Not surprising, perhaps, as South Korea is the 19th most densly populated country in the world (480 people per square kilometre). Most of the countries that are higher on that list are tiny ones like the Vatican, Gibraltar, Macau, Bermuda and Monaco. The only large countries that have a higher population density are Taiwan and Bangladesh. All of this is to say that South Korea is a crowded country, so it's not suprising there are so many blocks of flats and infrastructure objects.

[Geek that I am I actually find the list of high population densities quite interesting, for example the population desity of the UK is almost exactly the same as that of Jamaica. All this thanks to Wikipedia.com. I love that site for facts and figure.]

Anyway, despite the industrialism I still think it's beautiful, but then again a great sunrise can probably make anything look beautiful to me.

Food etiquette.

(This is a long one, but I was bored during a two-hour break at work. Sorry.)

There seems to be a strange fascination here with food. It is polite to continually offer food around workplaces and homes. Though this is kind and, in a busy school environment often sought after, it does tend to give a foreign visitor the impression they are being fattened up for something.

Such was the case when I first arrived in the country. Being of a rather large frame I couldn't believe they truly thought I was malnourished. Instead I began to assume they thought I required lots of food to sustain myself and I would faint without it.

I have now realised, through my own experiences and some outside reading, that they are simply being polite. To show concern for someone else's welfare by concentrating on whether they eat enough food dates back to time when most Koreans were so poor they could often not afford enough rice to eat breakfast everyday. So by inquiring in fairly intrusive detail after my food habits, and constantly feeding me, they are simply showing care and concern for my welfare.

One of the traditional morning greetings in Korea used to be "Have you eaten rice today?" It is a practice that has sadly fallen out of favour in modern Korea (I think it has rather an adorable ring to it). I hadn't experienced that polite inquiry until a few days ago. I was in the middle of wolfing down some lunch in the school cafeteria (well, school shed really) during my horribly short lunch break. The school's male director (we also have a female one) was eating and, using one of my colleagues as a translator, he asked me whether or not I had eaten breakfast that morning.

I was bang in the middle of enjoying a mouthful of rice and gimchi, and my Western sensibilities led me to assume he was asking because he thought I was stuffing my face and being a bit piggy. To tell the truth I was rather stunned and only managed to reply with a confused "Yeah". The minute I left I recalled what I'd read about polite food-welfare enquiry, and felt like a right Charlie.

I can now only hope he asks again some day so I can reply in a more courteous way. It is just one of a number of Korean manners that are tripping me up. But, being of a clumsy disposition anyway, it's not too much of a break from the norm.

------- In other news in snowed a little bit here, but it is now too cold for it. The wind has picked up and is really biting. I've taken to walking the mile and a half home from school with a friend of mine, rather than sit in a crowded bus. It doesn't make much difference time-wise, and it gets me out in the fresh air. Always good. I really want it to snow again though, as we haven't had much and it makes the world look so pretty.

(I've only just discovered how to put photos on here, so expect a few more!)