11/13: Thanksgiving in Korea

Some of the kindergarteners at kimchi making

Our Thankful Tree

Thanksgiving with the Americans

Flea Market at School

Some of the kindergarteners at kimchi making

4th Grade Audrey making a heart for the Thankful Tree

Me making Kimchi with the 4th and 6th grade

Making ddok at school

4th Grade Antonio with a heart for the Thankful Tree

3rd and 4th Grade after our candy hunt

Making ddok

Eating meat and kimchi with the students

The funny 6th graders: Jacktonio #1 and Ryan

3rd/4th grade scavenger hunt

European Christmas Market in Seoul

This upcoming week is Thanskgiving and it will be the second Thanksgiving in a row that I have not been home with the family. Last year I was in Mozambique enjoying my time on the beach with my friend Anthony right before I was set to come home from studying abroad in Southern Africa. Our dinner was on lawn chairs in a completely deserted restaurant on the side of a palm-tree lined roads and we had a baby crab and some other seafood dishes. It wasn’t the best meal but the company was awesome and I remember just chilling on the beach that night enjoying the ocean and each other’s company.

Although I was still not home for this year’s thanksgiving it is nothing like it was last year. Although there are a lot of Americans here everyone is pretty busy during the week so instead our Thanksgiving celebrations were going to be on Friday and Saturday.

For Halloween I had the kids learning about the holiday for a couple of weeks beforehand; they watched Halloween themed TV shows, made pumpkins, made gravestones, played powerpoint games, etc. For Thanksgiving I still wanted to celebrate it but it definitely wasn’t as big as I made Halloween. Instead I introduced the foods we eat and football and we played a couple of powerpoint games with Thanksgiving vocabulary. The fourth graders also made turkey handprints that they decorated the classroom with. On the actual day of Thanksgiving I made the third and fourth grade participate in a Brice Thanksgiving tradition of a candy scavenger hunt. In the Brice household for Thanksgiving we go to a cabin and after our huge feast, my mom hides mints all over the cabin and we are responsible for running around finding them. I did the same with my third and fourth grade afterschool kids. I made them wait in the hallway as I ran around the room hiding the candy. THEY HAD A BLAST! They were sprinting around the room and within 2 minutes had found most of the candies (we did lose about 2 or 3 that were found about two hours later). I also made them write a thankful leaf, a little leaf where they wrote what they were thankful for and we put them on our “Thankful Tree.” I can trust my fifth and sixth graders a little more so I had a scavenger hunt for them like I did at Halloween. I cut up a paper turkey and put his body throughout the school and they needed to use clues to find all the pieces. After they finished finding the turkey they got to put it together and we watched some football highlights. I’m not sure how much English education was actually involved in the activities but all the kids really enjoyed it and had a good time celebrating the holiday.

On Thanksgiving evening I was supposed to play volleyball and went to the gym with another teacher but no one else showed up because they were so busy so I just went home and had a quiet evening to myself.

It was cute that I had the kids celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday because on Friday I participated in making a traditional Korean dessert (ddok) that they usually eat on their Thanksgiving in September. My school is really small and they enjoy doing agricultural activities with the kids so in the morning different grades gathered in the gym to make ddok (rice cakes, similar to mocci in Japan). Basically how it works is they take a special kind of rice they cooked and then basically knead it and knead it until it becomes like flour. Once it is in this stage they put it on a low table and take this really heavy, huge hammer and pound it. This was where the kids (and I) got to participate. We each took turns banging on the ddok with this mallet. Sometimes the mallet was bigger than the actual kid holding it!! After beating the dough for some time, you bring it over to a cookie sheet and cut it into 2inch slices/cubes and roll it in some sweet flour coating before eating it. I love ddok so I was in heaven. As I was helping cut this little kid comes over and stuffs a piece in my mouth. I look around and all the kids are feeding the teachers. In Korea it is not as rare for people to feed each other and when kids do it, it is endearing and a sign that they like you. Every time I ate a piece from a kid it was weird for me seeing as how we don’t do this in America but at the same time it was really cute and I felt really loved by the kids. There were some times though where the pieces were so big and different kids kept feeding me. I felt terrible rejecting a kid so my mouth was stuffed with ddok the whole morning!

It was also a great morning because we had third grade make leaves for the Thankful Tree and a lot of them wrote things like family, friends, but some wrote “Julie and Juny teacher” along with Jesus Christ, haha. The tree turned out to be so beautiful and we left it up for months and months.

The fun didn’t end with the Thankful Tree or the ddok making because right before lunch we had a flea market! That’s right, a flea market! It started with a school assembly where all the kids brought a small bag of rice. After some announcements, all the kids lined up and deposited their rice in a bigger bag that would be donated to the elderly of the neighborhood. Once we finished our rice donation it became mass chaos. All the kids lined up around the perimeter and laid out a blanket and all the goods they had brought from home. There was everything from stuffed animals to clothes to comic books to toothpaste. It was anything the kids didn’t want anymore and wanted to sell. They said go and the selling started; little kids yelling prices as you walked around and chasing you with their goods, kids bartering with each other, the PTA was selling ttopoki and fish cakes. It was chaotic. I walked away with toothpaste, an English book, colored pencils and facemasks. My 6^th grade girls told me that if I put the face masks on I would be beautiful afterwards. At the end of the market the students had to donate half of their proceeds to the school and other charities.

Then we had lunch even though I was stuffed and then we had a huge kimchi making party. A couple of weeks ago was the time of year when families get together and spend the whole weekend making kimchi for their families for the entire year. Since our school has so many crops and fields, the principle harvested the special type of cabbage (baechu) needed for it and all the grades got to come down and make kimchi, kinda. Most of the process had already been done by the lunch ladies so the kids go to take the red, chili pepper seasoning mixture and rub it on the cabbage that had been salted. It only took like five minutes but the kids were all decked out in long gloves and they had brought their kimchi containers. The kindergarteners even had aprons and hats on. Although this was meant for the students the staff was so happy that I was there that they pushed the kids out of the way so that I could get a spot to make the kimchi. Once we finished the lunch ladies helped to pack up the kimchi for the kids and they even gave me extra even though some of the kids wanted more, whoops. Then we all sat down together and ate steak and kimchi together, even though I had just had lunch!!!

Overall it was a fantastic day at school!!!! And that was just the start to my day. Later that night was the Americans Thanksgiving dinner at a bar by one of the universities. Some of the Americans are good friends with the bar owner so he lets them use the entire bar for different events which was great because it turned out that like 30 people showed up. It was potluck style too so there was so much food, such GOOD, American food. Someone even brought a turkey which is a major accomplishment considering people don’t even know what turkeys are in this country (Thank you Costco!). There was apple pie, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes,  chicken, casseroles, apples, kimchi (brought by yours truly), it was delicious! It was so great to have some good, old fashioned, American food!!

The next day, started my Christmas celebrations so I headed up to Seoul for a Christmas festival but first stopped to meet a friend for brunch in Itaewon. Itaewon is a neighborhood in Seoul where all the expats go and hang out so it is very Westernized. I am not really a fan of the neighborhood but they have American food and I had a fantastic omelet and eggs benedict breakfast, FOR ONCE! I forgot how much I love breakfast!!!! Koreans do NOT do breakfast well. After stuffing ourselves with breakfast, we headed to a different part of Seoul where they were supposed to have a foreigner Christmas celebration. We got there and the place was packed. They had it in a really small square and there were so so many tourists and foreigners. Basically different European embassies had shown up, set up booths and were selling various foods from their countries. There wasn’t too much Christmas stuff in the booths but they did have a huge Christmas tree and a Santa walking around. And they had Christmas music playing. Although I had just ate I did go over to Poland to get some goulash (which was alright).

Since the festival was a bit of a bust, my friend and I went to Dongdaemun which is supposed to be a huge shopping area in Seoul. I had never been there and didn’t know what to expect but we ended up in this like 7 story building that has a million stalls all for crafting. You can buy anything you need there to craft and make jewelry and trinkets. It was interesting but so confusing with all the stalls and we kept getting lost.

I left Seoul Saturday afternoon and made it home in time for another Thanksgiving dinner. This one was being held in the basement of a church in town and was really quiet but very enjoyable. The food was great here too and it was nice to have a smaller group of people. After eating we ended up playing Settlers of Catan. I had never played this before but it was actually a lot of fun and required so much strategy. I’ll for sure have to play it again and think it through better.

Sunday I got to relax and just hang at home-the usual protocol for a Sunday.

                It’s so hard being in Korea and missing things back home. I am experiencing a lot of great things here and have come to realize just how much I know about Korean culture. Through other teachers and being with Juny’s family I have really learned and gotten to understand this interesting culture. They are a very proud and boisterous culture that wants to keep its pride and heritage while advancing in the world and striving to become a world wide powerhouse. It’s interesting how they value respect and diligence and hard work but all my kids have a smart phone that their parents just gave them without having to pay or earn it. The society to me feels very ‘Stepford Wives” like where they do everything by the book and are always concerned with their image making a lot of Korea seem insincere and fake. It’s really hard to describe without shining Korea in a negative light.

                I know that in twenty years I will say “Remember that time when I had Thanksgiving in some Korean guys bar with pictures of naked women plastered all over the walls” but for right now I am really hoping that this is my last Thanksgiving away from the states for some years.