Chuseok Weekend

Sir John

We had a great Chuseok Weekend!  Allow me to tell you all about it.  On Saturday, our friends, Kate and John drove to Daegu.

Lady Kate

Yes, waygooks* drive in Korea.  This waygook won't be doing that any time soon, but it was fun to feel footloose and fancy free while riding in their cool new car.  After we went out for some food and showed them our neck of the woods, we headed back to Busan.  After getting back to Busan, the guys played cards (Magic The Gathering) while Katelyn and I ran walked errands.  A good time was had by all :)

Sunday morning we had Cake Batter Pancakes (!!!!!!!) and then headed off to church.  It is such a blessing to hang out with another young American married couple in Korea.  After church and a great lunch (American hamburgers!) we headed to the beach (chuch retreat).  Busan is located on the coast of the Eastern Sea (Japanese Sea?  Korean Sea?  whatever you want to call it).  It was a great afternoon for fun, soccer, playing frisbee, fellowship, and exploring the area near beach.

sand + ocean = beach = fun

Sunday night and most of Monday we learned about Christian worldviews (opposed to other worldviews).  It was fascinating to me.  Worldview takes me back to my college days as a math education major.  In math there are axioms and then there are theorems.  You build theorems from axioms.  Same is true with worldview.  We all have ideas about how (and why) we should live life.  From those ideas life is built.  (It all makes sense in my mind).

Moving on....

Besides sitting on the floor Korean style for 10 hours, we also had time to play games!  I played Sequence, Dutch Blitz, and Rummikub.  Yeah!  I love games.  The church (who was hosting the retreat) also provided us with amazing food.  Pizza, hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spaghetti, salad, cereal bars...sigh.  I love American food.

and

they had coffee from a coffee pot (that is, no instant coffee).  Its the small things in life.

We could see the beach from the retreat place (sah-weet!)

Keepin' it real:  there were mosquitoes, they attacked my feet, ankles, legs, and arms.  We got to experience some sleeping on the floor Korean sleeping arrangements.  Thank you Jesus for our bed.  I promise not to complain about my bed ever again. 

The place where our Korean sitting and sleeping experiences occurred

The retreat finished up on Tuesday around noon.  We headed back to the beach for one last hurrah, then back to Daegu.

I spotted this at the beach right before we left, I guess Sity is the new City?

What a weekend (plus a few week days)!  It was a blast.  I so enjoyed our time.

The only picture I remembered to take of us the whole weekend!

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*Have I explained Waygooks before?  Waygook is the Korean word for foreigner.  Small Korean children point at me and say  "waygook seram e-ayo" all the time.  Yes, small child, I am well aware of the fact that I am a foreigner.  So, a waygook is a foreigner in Korea.  There is a special club for waygooks.  We find things hilarious that Americans nor Koreans find funny {case in point, the yogurt adjumas - bahahahaha}.  Move to Korea, you can join the club! 

Happy Chuseok!

It is Chuseok in Korea!  Yeah!  The main reason that I like Chuseok is that we get three days off of school.  (From August 29th - December 23rd, we get four school days off.   Three of them are for Chuseok - it's a big deal to us.)

If you ask Koreans, they will say that Chuseok is like American Thanksgiving.  I do not think it is the same, but we won't get into that :)  If you want to read more about Chuseok, you can here.

We are going to be spending the weekend with friends!  Last year my memories of Chuseok were: get up, take some medicine (I had a really bad cold) go back to bed, sleep, repeat.  We did hang out with some fun Koreans the day after Chuseok, remember?

We are getting a little Chuseok present that I am pretty excited about.  Can you guess what it is?

Chusok Fun

Our host and hostess for the day

So today was my favorite day in Korea so far!  It was a very happy day. One of my amazing husband's co-workers, Mr. Kim, called this morning to invite us to his house.  Mr. Kim is the P.E. teacher at my amazing husband's school and we have heard that he is quite good at tennis.  I was nervous beforehand as I was not sure what we had gotten ourselves into, but it all turned out fine.  So he and his 28 year old son picked us up around 11am and drove us to his home (apartment).  We got to watch some WWF (korean style) and met Mr. Kim's wife, Mrs. Cho (they do not change their names here when they get married) and daughter.  They are really nice people.  We spent about an hour cooking for lunch.  (Really we watched Mrs. Cho cook).  We ate japche (sweet potato noddles mixed with a bunch of veggies that have been stir-fried) bulgogi (steak that has been stir-fried with soy sauce, garlic, and onions) and of course rice.  It was sooo good!  How fun to hang out in the kitchen and chat.  We mostly talked to Mr. Kim's son and daughter as Mr. Kim does not know tons of English.  After lunch, we had fruit for dessert and some turkish coffee.

Riding down the mt. in the cable car

Then they took us to Palgong mountain.  We rode in a cable car up to the top of the mountain!  It was so fun - nice fresh air, the temperature was cool.  We could see all of Daegu City, it was really beautiful.  It was really relaxing and fun!  My amazing husband and I are looking forward to returning some day soon and hiking.

I was really touched that these people would invite strangers into their home, cook us a huge meal, take us to see a mountain, and then drive us back home.  They were so gracious and fun to be around.  Theyey really made us feel like honored guests.  We told them that they spoiled us.  It was so nice to be in a kitchen again and see that Moms everywhere in the world are the same. A funny side note: gifts are a pretty big deal in Korea, so we bought a "gift set" from the store for the Kims.  It was a Spam gift set hahahahaha  :)  If you want to see bigger pictures, just click on it.

My amazing husband and I at Palgong Mountain