Happy Chuseok!

Today is Chuseok! Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. Traditionally, Koreans spend Chuseok with their families, just like Americans spend Thanksgiving and/or Christmas with ours. It's one of the 2 biggest holidays in the Korean calendar, with New Year's Day being the other important one (or two, considering Lunar New Year is a different date than Solar New Year and families celebrate one and/or both of them).

I've heard a bit about the holiday from my friends in Korea, but since I'm not Korean, I have a limited understanding of Chuseok. I knew from last year that it's tradition to give gifts, celebrate your ancestors, wear Hanbok (traditional Korean dress), eat songpyeon (rice cake), etc. I know that the women are expected to do most of the cooking and cleaning during the holiday and therefore rarely look forward to the 5-day weekend. On Tuesday afternoon, I had a class full of boys and I asked my students a few questions about what they were doing for the break. Only 2 out of 20 boys said that they'd probably help prepare food. I have so much respect for Korean women. I don't know if I could handle the pressure.

To supplement my limited understanding, may I present some more official explanations of this holiday?

From Visit Korea - National Holidays

Chuseok is one of the year’s most important traditional holidays. It is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. Chuseok is often referred to as Korean Thanksgiving Day. It’s a celebration of the harvest and thanksgiving for the bounty of the earth. Family members come from all over the country to visit their ancestral homes.

From Visit Korea - Travel Highlights

Although Chuseok itself is a single day, the holiday period includes the day before and after, involving an array of traditional activities. Early on Chuseok morning, the family gathers together to perform traditional ancestral rites. A feast of traditional Korean foods is prepared for the memorial service, after which everyone enjoys the festive meal and exchanges gifts.

During Chuseok, people nationwide leave the city in order to return back to their family's hometown for the holiday (traditionally to visit paternal relatives). With an amazing 75% of the population on the road during this mass exodus, highways and roads throughout the country are extremely congested. Since train and bus tickets are sold out at least a month in advance, careful planning is an absolute must for anyone planning to travel during the holiday period.

On Chuseok day, everyone gets up early to arrange food on the small, low table set aside for the ancestral memorial rituals. The memorial foods are usually prepared by the women in the days preceding Chuseok.

During the Chuseok holiday, women spend countless hours rushing around working in the homes of in-laws, preparing holiday food, and washing dishes. These taxing chores often lead to physical and psychological symptoms that manifest themselves during the weeks before and after the holiday. Koreans have gone so far as to coin a special term for this set of symptoms: the Chuseok Syndrome. To solve this problem, there are more and more houses where men help preparing food. Moreover, women go to the sauna or spa to release the fatigue and stress.


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As I mentioned yesterday, this year I get to experience Chuseok in Korea, rather than spending the break gallivanting around Asia. I'm even sorta glad my travel-in-Korea plans fell through. I'm taking advantage of not going anywhere, for once. My August holidays were spent all over the country, so a break to do nothing but read, watch shows I wanted to watch all summer, do laundry, catch up on work, go hiking, dine with friends, do whatever I darn well please? That sounds perfect right now. I managed to go to the grocery store today, which was a madhouse. Think day before Thanksgiving at home and you've got the day before Chuseok here. Same same.

Since Chuseok = Thanksgiving, lets get some of that going up in here.

Thankfulness.

I'm thankful for this city. I didn't want to leave Gwangju last February, then this job came up and felt so ordained-by-God that I jumped and trusted the Lord with the rest. Material blessings and the intangibles, it's been beyond what I expected.

I'm thankful for the friendships I've been blessed by. I have a cloud of witnesses around me who encourage, admonish, uplift, love, and point each other toward Jesus. I have a lovely family of friends in Gwangju, I have a lovely family of friends in Jeonju, and I have a lovely family AND family of friends across the Pacific. I'm a blessed, blessed girl.

I'm thankful that I'm ever-changing. As I seek him, God's constantly pruning me, disciplining me, teaching me, growing me, changing me, renewing me. It's so fun! I love that I can look back even 6 months ago and see a lot of progress. The things that change, the things that remain, the balance between them. I feel like a tree. A tree is always a tree, but it doesn't look the same from year to year.

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To everyone, have a blessed day of thankfulness, where ever you are. Happy Chuseok! 

Last year. This year.

This week is Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving. For Chuseok, most foreign English teachers have a (rare) long break from school, so a ton of people travel out of the country.

Last year, I went to Japan, so on that note...

Ah, nostalgia. 

A year ago, I was on my way to Japan for a crazy 4 days with one of my closest friends. That trip was an adventure. Summer was ending, the air was cool, fall was on its way. Can I go back please?  The weather is perfect this week - with the added bonus that there are no typhoons on the horizon this time!

Yesterday, I wore the skirt I bought on a whim in Japan. It's plaid, funky, it's grunge, it's not my typical style at all. Every time I wear it, people compliment it. Every time I wear it, I recall that afternoon shopping in Shijo Dori with Jennifer. I recall being stunned by the skirt in the window, admiring the green one, trying it on, deciding on the blue, hemming and hawing over the price... walking away... thinking about it for an hour... going back and buying it. I mean, how often do you go shopping in Japan? An impulse purchase on vacation isn't as critical as an impulse purchase where you live, right? (I love souveniers that I can wear. The memories that flow when you put it on again can't be beat. Like the time I was in London and found the most beautiful purple pashmina, or the time I was freezing and underdressed in Scotland (WHY is late June so COLD there? You can't call that summer) and bought an (overpriced) wool sweater out of necessity. I still have both. I wear them all the time.)

Yesterday, I wore the perfume I bought at Duty Free in the airport on that trip. I'd been wanting Acqua di Gioia by Giorgio Armani for months, so I finally splurged on it. It's been a year, but every time I take a spritz from that slim turquoise bottle, my nose takes me back to the first time I opened it in the hostel in Kyoto. I'm sitting on my sleeping mat with my giant backpack next to me, clothes strewn about, phone plugged in to the outlet strip in the middle of the room next to the small lamp. A girl we'd just met sits across from Jennifer and me, we're talking about going to a temple the next morning. She hurt her leg wwoofing in northern Japan and we'd seen her limping past the subway station the night before. What a coincidence that she'd end up in our room at the hostel down the road. The way scent triggers memories is astounding.

Now I want a chocolate marshmallow cookie from Starbucks in Japan ("make it hot?" they asked. "yes please!!"). And a crunchy caramel frappuccino. They're not on the menu in Korea or the USA. I hope they're on the menu next time I cross the sea toward the Land of the Rising Sun.

It was a great trip, even when things went wrong. Who doesn't want a story about being out of money in a foreign country and sleeping in the airport? Check that off my bucket list. Oh Japan. The endless red arches at Fushimi Inara. Kyoto. Gion. The Golden Pavilion. The typhoon. Jennifer's umbrella breaking. Nara deer. The bike rides.

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And yet, as great as last year was, this year I get to experience a new kind of Chuseok. The Korean kind. Under my contract at Jeonju University, I'm not technically allowed to leave the country during the semester. Most of my friends in Jeonju also work for JJU, so they're staying around too. Yay! I've got buddies. We might go camping, we might just chill. Abby's coming down for the weekend. I'll call it a stay-cation!

Summer is ending, the air is cool, fall is on its way. Maybe Chuseok is the tipping point for fall the way Easter is the tipping point for spring. Doesn't it seem like the last cold snap hits right around Easter every year?

I'm going to make the most of this long weekend. I will say goodbye to summer, hello to autumn. I live in the most adorable city I've seen in Korea. We have our own Hanok Village. I'm sure we can find some cool Chuseok events going on if we try!

All my friends who are traveling this week? Stay safe. The roads are gonna be CRAZY.