Lotus Lantern Festival

This past Sunday we went to the Lotus Lantern Festival in downtown Seoul. This is a huge annual festival to celebrate the birthday of Buddha (which is actually on next Saturday). He was born over 2550 years ago!

The festival is centred on the Jogyesa Temple which is located in Jongno District of central Seoul. The street in front of the temple was blocked off for a large city block or two and there were booths lining the street. The booths offered various Buddhist experiences (like trying out meditation for 5 minutes), arts and crafts (like making prayer bracelets or paper lotus flowers), demonstrations (like tea ceremonies), food and information about Buddhism in Korea and around the world. There were also musical and dance performances.

Jogyesa Temple grounds are set amid the highrise buildings of downtown Seoul. It was all decked out for the big birthday celebrations with canopies of lanterns covering the temple grounds. There were perfomances and various ceremonies on the large stage of the main temple building. Note the swastika on the small building with the drum and bell. This was an ancient Buddhist symbol, long before the Nazis used it.

Our main activity at the festival was participating in the Lotus Lantern Making event, a free event organized for foreigners. The hundreds of participants were welcomed by the head of the Jogyesa Temple. Then volunteers showed us how to prepare and glue little pieces of coloured tissue paper to lantern forms.

Deb and the girls even won prizes for their lanterns! Deb's lantern was judged to be one of the ten best and the girls' were among the best of the kids! Here are shots of my prize winners.

Once Deb and the girls collected their prizes we took our lanterns and went to check out the rest of the festival. Jin and Deb got a lesson on how to make Buddhist prayer braceletes.

The girls coloured a wish card that was laminated and now hangs on our wall. There were all sorts of crafts for sale. Here is a photo of Deb and Jin trying to decide which little balancing dragonfly or butterfly toy to buy.

It was cold (note the fleeces and toques!) so after an afternoon of festing we looked for a nice hot bowl of soup. Note the happy campers below. Then we went to the nearby Tapgol Park to catch the Lantern Festival Parade. They had a section reserved for foreigners who particiapted in the lantern making and we got front row seats. It was great!

As the sun set, small lanterns provided by the organizers were lit along the route and the parade began. Groups of people ranging from kids to women in traditional Hanboks to Buddhist monks carried lit lanterns of various shapes and sizes. Music was provided by numerous pungmul groups and a few marching bands. Then there were the large illuminated paper lantern floats.

The best float of all was the smoking DRAGON!

Some were a bit odd....

It was a grand parade! The girls were getting sleepy and, even with the blankets, we were getting cold, so we decided to head home before the end of the parade. It was a fun day, but Monday was a school day.

Here is a website that has some really good pictures of this year's lantern parade: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/AytX_UbBWlx/South+Korean+Prepare+Buddha+Birthday

Before we sign off I should tell you about our trip to the Flea Market on Saturday. We heard there was a foreigner's flea market every month or so in the Sinseoldong area, east of Dongdaemun (downtown Seoul). Since we still needed a few items for our apartment (like forks and plates) we thought this would be the ideal venue, seeing as how forks and plates are relatively foreign items here. Unfortunately it turns out it was just a regular flea market. I don't think we saw another foreigner there. It was an interesting trip nevertheless. And we did find forks!

Here are a few photos of the place. The approach was encouraging with flags of many nations strung across the laneway. But inside it was mostly standard fare flea market stuff. Pretty neat, but not what we needed. Anybody need a VHS player? Or a Super8 movie projector?

SUCCESS AT LAST! And only for 1,000 won (about a buck) each!

We've been managing with chopsticks and spoons and the girls use the small plastic picnic forks we brought. But we sure can use a fork from time to time. Now we need to find affordable plates.....

Well that's all for now. Bye for now.

Jin and Lili's School in Korea

Annyeong-haseyo! This is Jin and Lili in Korea!

We are going to tell you about our school here in Korea. Every morning we take a shuttle bus to school. It is yellow. We get to wear special uniforms every day, except Friday when we can wear whatever we want. When we get to school we take our shoes off. No one wears shoes in the school!

We are in separate classes. There are about 15 kids in Jin's class and about the same in Lili's. There are 5 girls in Jin's class and about 6 in Lili's. The kids only speak a little bit of English. Everyone speaks Korean, except us. We are just learning how. Our teachers can speak a little more English. Every morning we say hi, I mean annyeong-haseyo to the teacher. we get to play. before lunch we sing a song. we bring special lunch trays with chopsticks, forks and spoons. a special lady makes lunch for us at school. usually we have rice and soup and a spicy thing like kimchi. sometimes we have mushrooms that we grow at the school. once we had eel! and we liked it. sometimes we have a little salad with carrots, peppers, and korean lettuce. sometimes lili comes to jin's class and sometimes lili comes to jin's to practice writing hangeul (that's korean writing).

here is a picture of jin's lunch tray. lili's looks just the same.

somedays we play musicals instruments like korean drums. and somedays we get to go on a field trip. last week Jin went to the flower market. it had lots of flowers and they smelled really good. they were in a special greenhouse. Lili got to go and pet some baby ducks. I also saw some nabis, I mean butterflies. we got to eat gimbap on our field trip. it was great.

our school is smaller than RL Beattie, but our classrooms are bigger. daddy took a picture of our school. here it is.

bogoshipayo means I miss you in korean. and we do.

love Lili and Jin xoxoxoxoxoXXOOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOXXOXOX

Weekly Update: Korean Folk Village, Bibimbap and Bicycles

Hello!

Has it been a week already? Have been meaning to write.....so much to say and things to show you. We settled into a good routine in the past week. A couple of mornings, after Jin and Lili caught the school bus, Deb and I walked down to Hangang Riverside Park for a run and workout in a free outdoor exercise area. Here are a couple of photos of our "fitness club".


We then either walked up to Itaewon for a leisurely latte at Starbucks (likin' this semi-retired life!) or came home to do some chores or went out to do some grocery shopping. I did a little more exploring around the neighbourhood and found a nice little playground for the girls (yeah!) and a small mountain park with great trails, exercise areas (populated by retired folks on weekdays) and a pavilion with a great (although hazy) view of the city. Check it out...




The girls each went on a school field trip last week: Jin to a flower (or ggot) market and Lili to a butterfly (nabi) and insect exhibition. They will tell you more about these trips and their adventures at school in an upcoming blog. I'll assign it as homework....


We found a nice little pizza place in our neighbourhood. It's called Pizza School and they make a very fine medium sized pizza in traditional (ours) and not so traditional (Korean?) flavours for 4 to 6 bucks each. Much better than our previous experience with the over-priced Dominos in Gangnam. So it looks like our Friday night pizza tradition can continue here.


Deb and I registered for Korean language classes at a language institute downtown (short subway ride away). Our "survival Korean" session begins on May 1. And Deb took a cooking class on Friday. She learned how to make bibimbap. A rice dish with a veriety of vegetables, some meat and an egg. We like the dolsot bibbimbap where the dish is served up sizzling in a hot stone bowl. So we bought a couple stone bowls at the Lotte Mart and Deb made a sumptuos meal. Here are shots of the bowls, containing the precooked (except for the egg) ingredients being heated on the stove and one of the finished product. You mix up the egg and sizzling rice with all the other ingredients, add some hot sauce (goochoojang) to taste and dig in. (We took portions out for the girls before adding the hot sauce.) It was great!


We found a bicycle rental shop at the Hangang Park entrance one subway stop away from ours. When I enquired about the cost I was informed rentals were free. Can you believe it?! So we took the girls down on Saturday morning for a bike ride.


And, even better, we found a playground down there too. Had a fun spin!


Our big adventure this weekend was a day trip on Sunday to the Korean Folk Village (www.koreanfolk.co.kr/folk/english/index.htm). It is located near Suwon, a city about 1 hour subway ride from Seoul. That's right a subway ride (actually above ground, so technically a train I guess) to the next city (and it's not the end of the line!) and it only cost about $1.50! The kids brought some colouring to keep themselves occupied along the way. Once in Suwon we bought tickets for the folk village ($20 for all of us) at the tourist information office (located right next to the subway stop) and then took the free shuttle bus to the village.


The folk village is sort of like Upper Canada Village, with people dressed in traditional clothes, demonstrating long-lost arts and crafts in a setting of historical buildings representative of different times and regions in the country. They also put on various performances including a traditional wedding ceremony, an equestrian demonstration, acrobatics and my favourite, the farmer dances or pungmul (or nongak). It was amazing to hear the rhythmic drumming and watch the dancers spinning themselves and the long ribbons on their hats around the performance area. I really need to figure out how to add video to this!


Here is shot of my apprentice filmaker capturing the action for a forthcoming production. The seesaw acrobats were amazing! And the tightrope walker did a lot more than walk on the rope!

All this acrobatic stuff got us hungry. Whew, what a work out! So we went down to the food market area, where various types of food were being prepared at small kitchens set up around a large open-air eating area. Here are a couple of the "pancake" cooking stations. Deb stuck with the safe potato pancake or gamja jeon while I tried (and liked!) the seafood and green onion pancakes or hae-mul pajeon (being prepared in the second photo). The girls had their regular favourite gimbap. This time though it was simply rice wrapped in dried seaweed.

There was western and Korean style seating available in the eating area. We opted for the Korean style of course. More relaxing. And you got to take your shoes off. Later in the day we stopped at this BBQ stand for a snack of meat (pork I think) and onion on a stick (a Korean shishkabob). Mmmmmmm good.

After lunch we wandered around the village, checking out the various styles of traditional houses representing different classes of society and different parts of the country (and likely different time periods), watched artisans make crafts and even got our hands dirty pitching in on some chores. The prettiest buildings on the site were probably those in the Buddhist temple complex, located up a small secluded valley above the main village. Here is a shot of the main building and a pavilion with drums hanging from the ceiling (the fish is actually a special wooden drum).


A creek flows through the grounds, crossed by bridges of various styles (and levels of safety). Here are the girls checking out a very basic "single lane" bridge and a more substantial stone bridge.

On our last trip to Korea (2 years ago) we visited Jeju Island, located off the southern coast. Here in the folk village are examples of a Jeju house (made with lava rock) and a "Jeju-man" statue (with 2 little posers).

It wasn't all just walking around looking at old houses. There were pony rides too! (they were pricey and short, but a highlight for the girls - they even galloped!)

Here are examples of a typical southern (I think) house and a small mountain farmers house.

And here is a "small mountain farmer" with his backpack and trusty co-workers. And there is the mountain farmer's wife examining the fence. "Hmmm, we could do this at home. "

Here is another farm house (not sure where from) with grain waiting to be thrashed in the front yard. There were demonstration fields of rice (photo shows a flooded just planted field with netting to protect the crop from birds), herb garden for traditional medicines, ginseng and many others.

Almost all the houses had inside and outside kitchens. In the one below we see the outside kitchen where the stove is also used as the furnace for the traditional under-floor heating heating system called ondol (note the "traditional" fire extinguisher). And here is a schematic showing how a typical ondol system was built.

At most of the farm houses there was produce of various kinds hung up for drying. Notice the corn, which I was a little surprised to see, thinking of it as a North American crop. And of course a wood pile stocked up for the cold winter ahead (just like home).

There was a reproduction of a local Governor's office. This was also the place where punishment was doled out. The man in the photo below is just getting a "spanking". Kids, that's the way things were done in the good ole days. We're nicer now.

Here are a couple guys doing "hard labour" making brassware the old fashioned way. You could (and we did) buy samples their wares. Actually there are lot of crafts and some foods made in the the village for sale. Here Lili is sporting a new Korean knotted necklace that Mommy bought her in the craft store.

Perhaps the coolest craft we saw there was silk spinning. One women (just out of the photo on the left) watches the silkworm cocoons being heated in a pot and uses chopsticks to make sure threads are continuously fed up to the spinner. There are maybe 10 threads (from 10 cocoons)being spun together into a single thread. At the edge of the pot they've laid out a few of the silkworm larvae that would have been from inside the cocoons. These little critters, as we've noted in a previous post, are a bit of a fast food delicacy here. We'll try them out....some day.

Here Lili and Jin help with the spinning. In the next farmhouse we found a women spinning wool (I think).

Then we put the girls to work, pounding grain and grinding soyabeans to make tofu. Mmmm! Little do they know what they were making...

As we left the village we wrote down our wishes and attached them to strings on a large stone pile, an ancient sacred symbol in Korea. One wish we didn't need to write down was to return the Korean Folk Village sometime soon.

What a great day out! Will try to get the kids to post about their school and Deb and I will write up a post on food and shopping.

Thanks for reading and for all the nice comments too!

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili