ba de ya...Say do you remember..ba de ya..dancing in September....

 September was actually a very busy month and because I waited forever to write about it I am going to give the water downed version. Some things will be forgotten, and I know at times my writing will be rambling.

First I will talk about Chuseok…This is Korean’s fall harvest festival, much like Thanksgiving, you visit family, eat a lot of food, give thanks for blessings etc. This was a very interesting and fun cultural experience for me. I learned a lot about it so I could talk/teach the children about it. I impressed my school/boss with my awesome puppet skills, I gave a puppet show explaining what Chuseok is…the plot: Korean girl runs into non Korean friend, Korean girl can’t hangout with friend because she is getting ready for Chuseok…she goes on to explain what Chuseok is to her non Korean friend. In the end she invites her friend over to make traditional Korean food…and they lived happily ever after : )

We made songpyeon, they kind of look like potstickers, they are a rice dough filled with either sugar, honey, bean paste, dried fruit. You make the dough and fill them and then you steam them. For ours we filled it with sugar and seeds, they are super good when they are warm because the sugar is melted. I think I remember having these at my cousin’s first birthday party (she is half Korean) but I don’t think I fully appreciated them at the time.

The kids all wore their traditional clothes (it’s called Hanbok) it is always super cute to see kids dressed in clothes that you aren’t used to seeing children in. I still get a kick out of seeing my 3/4/5 year olds in suits haha. They all looked so adorable in their Hanboks and I was super jealous I didn’t have one of my own. In all honesty I think I am going to purchase one before I leave Korea, I don’t really know why I would ever need one but I feel like it is an important thing to have in my life also knowing me I will invent reasons to wear it. 

my crazy 3 year old boys

my 6 year olds

Songpyeong (you don't eat the pine needles)

My 10 year old boys (I never want to hit them upside the head...)

children in their Hanbok

Along with Chuseok comes vacation days!!!! I went to Hong Kong for a few days, got in Saturday night and left Tuesday afternoon. I was trying to visit my cousins in China, near Hong Kong but that plan was ruined when the people that they are volunteering for took them to the middle of China (aka 20 hours away) that weekend. :( I am still upset and sad about this so  I don’t want to talk about it anymore…

However I had a friend from back home that was working/living in Hong Kong at the time. We’ve know each other since middle school; he was nice enough to put me up and show me around the city. I think we ended up having a pretty successful adventure.

Highlights of the trip:

World’s longest escalator.

   

Taking the sky tram to the top of a mountain and looking down into the harbor

Randomly stumbling upon a tourist information center that told us about all this fun free stuff happening in Hong Kong that weekend. (It was inside this fake trolley car)

World largest fish lantern (it’s in the Guinness book of world records)

Fire dragon. They had this super long dragon that they had covered in incense and lit, they had a huge team of people running/dancing/carrying it, while someone was hitting drums…it was super cool to see but the pictures didn’t turn out very well, it was sooooo long it was crazy

Disneyland Hong Kong!

I hadn’t actually planned on going here but when the option came up I figured why the heck not! Now it can make it a goal to  go to all the disneylands (Tokyo isn’t that far, and I’ve been wanting to go back to France and after Harry Potter world opened in Florida, you know that’s on my to do list)

Now this Disneyland is very small compared to California, but it was nice to be able to do literally everything in one day and still enjoy it. I was able to see my Disney boyfriend Stitch, it was fate because he was both on my ticket and when we went to the Stitch show he picked me to be his girlfriend.

After a long not planned adventure of walking in the opposite direction we made it to the Avenue of Stars…China’s Walk of Fame if you will. We were able to see such stars hand prints such as Jackie Chan, and Jet Li…I was also able to do some Kung Fu moves in front of Bruce Lee’s statue (I did gather a bit of a crowd doing this).

There were some more fun things here and there and lots of inside jokes. Thanks Matt for being a good host!

Last thing to wrap up September

These are just some pictures of a little outing in Seoul. Some friends and I went down town on a weekend and they were having some festival preparing for Chuseok. We got our faces painted and walked along the river. Saw the statue of the King who invented the Korean alphabet. The weather was still nice…it was the perfect weekend outing : )

I know I have some catching up to do, but I am still enjoying every minute of Seoul. I love Korea, I have made some really great friends, that will be my excuse for my lack of blogging, I’m so busy enjoying life that I don’t have time to stop and write about it ;) haha. I love you all. I hope you all are doing well!