Chuseok = Family, eating, and naptime

Man, I've been a lazy, lazy blogger. I uploaded these pictures a while ago but its taken me a couple of days to get around to writing about them...I've had visitors though, so it's not totally all my fault!!!

These are pictures from Sept. 25, my first Chuseok in Korea! Since we never really celebrated Chuseok back home, I guess its technically just my first Chuseok period. Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving and I don't really know the history of it, but I've gathered that its pretty much like American Thanksgiving in that you go to your hometowns to get together with your family, eat a lot of delicious food, and then experience some major food coma. The main differences are that in the morning, you do something called "Jjul", where you make kind of a memorial with lots of food and bow or pray to your ancestors. Also, the food is obviously different...no turkey or stuffing, more like normal Korean food but in larger quantities. And instead of pumpkin pie, a traditional rice cake called songpyeong.

Its one of the major holidays in Korea so we got three days off, including the weekend so a total of 5 days off. I could have taken a trip to China or somewhere else, but since I wanted to experience Chuseok with the fam, I decided to stick around and just...hang out. My cousin Jae Un and I had aspirations to take a short three-day trip to either Jeju Island, a city in China, or the one mountain in North Korea people can visit...but all that pretty much fell through because traveling during Chuseok is totally crazy. Trains and plane tickets are booked months ahead, and traveling by bus or car takes about two or three times longer than normal because of the traffic. And in a total reversal, since everyone goes home for Chuseok...Seoul empties out. So instead, we opted to take a day trip the day before Chuseok to a small island off of Incheon that you can take a ferry to, called Deok Jeok Do. Here's the view from the ferry!

No, not really. So we got to the ferry dock place at like 9:15 am - which took about an hour and a half to get to - and discovered that there were no tickets left for the 9:30 ferry and the 10:00 ferry left early because of the water level or something like that. NO DICE. booooo. So instead, we decided to hang around by the Incheon shore and have lunch at the Chinatown in Incheon. This picture is from the random boat ride we took.


Cousins on da boat


The awesome entertainment on our boat - kinda like karaoke hour. There was also dancers and acrobats, but we didn't feel the need to partake. After Incheon, we headed back to Seoul and went shopping. Always a good plan B.

Chuseok afternoon with my Mom's side. My Dad's side went to Jeon Ju for Chuseok, so I spent the morning and afternoon with my Mom's side. These are aunts and uncles sitting down for big meal of the day #2.

More aunts and uncles and some cousins thrown in - and more food.


My cousin's kid, Jae Hyun, making a face for me. He's 3 years old and he says the cutest things. He's a crazy, super energetic little boy too.

Chris, my cousin Hye La's kid, and my cousin and his kid watching some obligatory Thanksgiving TV.

Seriously, this is something you'll never fail to see after a family dinner: the women cutting and peeling fruit. These are my cousins, my aunt, and two of my cousin's kids cutting, arranging, and toothpicking apples, kiwis, pears, etc. Three generations, doing their Korean female duty. I would've helped, but I probably would just have gotten in the way since I haven't been trained since I was a toddler like little Yae-Won here...

Aunt #3 and Jae Hyun :)

Overall, it was a good Chuseok break and I ate a lot. The end.