Chuseok

Last weekend was a long and beautiful four days thanks to the Chuseok holiday. Chuseok is held on the 15^th day of the 8^th month of the lunar calendar and is regularly compared to Thanksgiving in the United States. Colleagues told me that people usually visit their home town and eat a lot of food. I read that Chuseok is a time to visit ancestors’ graves and play traditional games in honor of the harvest, but nobody specifically talked about anything other than eating a lot of food.

On the first day of Chuseok we were invited to a local orphanage to play games, eat, and celebrate with kids whose parents, family, or friends could not come pick them up. The orphanage typically has 64 kids but all except 15 were picked up by someone to celebrate Chuseok. I don’t know much about the orphanage system in Korea, but it was very different from any image I previously had of an orphanage.

I felt very privileged to spend time with these kids. They seemed very well taken care of and they were really happy to see the 8 of us. Some of the older kids shyly spoke a few words of English, but mostly we found other ways of having fun. We played handclap games, thumb wars, drew pictures, helped with the cooking, listened to the kids play piano, chased each other, played soccer, played basketball, monkeyed around on the playground, and ate together. Several of the people who went to the orphanage are planning to regularly volunteer.

I’m not sure yet what if any relationship I’ll continue to have with the orphanage. I’m taking it very slow on the extra curricular activities because I have a recurring tendency to over schedule myself. An important goal that I had before flying to Korea was regular reflection time. I want to make sure that this stays a priority.

Sunday we had a day of errands and relaxation, but Monday we hiked to the summit of Mount Hallasan. Mt. Hallasan is the tallest mountain in South Korea. It is only 6,398 feet but the hike was an exhausting 18km roundtrip. I had to force myself up the last 2km, and the hike down was painful. This is the first hike where I truly met and exceeded my limits. I’m determined to get into shape and try the hike again on a clear day. Needless to say we recovered from the hike on Tuesday, but I was still sore when school started on Wednesday.

The left photo is of Hallasan from our guest bedroom on a clear day. The photo on the right is a little pond at the summit that we were lucky to see when the fog broke.