A Handful of Korean Cultural experiences.

 안녕하세요 Good morning (or when ever you read this) everyone, it's time for another update. This update will focus on three main things, all of which have some significance to Korean Culture.

First of, I'd like to talk about my activities on Wednesday. As some of you may know, my rotary youth exchange coordinator put together a schedule filled with activities ranging in size from visiting the National Museum of Korea, to a three day trip to the DMZ, to a longer 4-5 day trip to Japan. This past Wednesday was one such trip, it lasted the whole day and was a total blast. It began in Gonjiam, city not far from Yeoju where I live (It's on the same line), once I arrived there along with Manny and Eve (American exchange students) we were picked up and taken to the location where all of us would be meeting.

The point of this trip was to learn how to make kimchi, a staple in Korean food and it's known world wide. It's made by combining a number of vegetables and spice together, such as cabbage, radish, carrot, salt (even though the cabbage is brined I believe), garlic, Gochugaru (A Korean spice made from sun-dried peppers) or so I assumed, sesame seeds, and more.

After making Kimchi, we were given the task of creating another Cultural item, although this time it wasn't food. This task required artistic skills because we were making traditional Korean lanterns. We assembled them ourselves out of wooden cutouts and painted them with colours of our choice. I decided to go with light green (Sage green) and light yellow combo for a sort of gentle pastel look. I was impatient so it was a little messy and it turned out looking a sort of weather, i was happy with the end result so...lit.

That was Thursday, now lets fast forward to Saturday, yesterday. 

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I've been taking drumming lessons for over month at this point, it's a Janggu class, however recently we switched to playing the Buk for reasons I didn't know until last Tuesday when they told me I'd be performing during Samulnori (A Korean festival). I was horrified, and rightfully so considering I'd really only copied their movements in class since I've yet to learn the language enough to understand 선상님 (Teacher's) instructions.

Despite my obvious cowardice, I really did enjoy the performance, it truly was a refreshing/fulfilling cultural experience.

Following my performance on Saturday, I was able to walk around the festival grounds, see what the vendors were selling, enjoy a nice meal, and check out the nearby Buddhist temple (Alone 😭😄). Buddhism has existed in Korea since (372 CE) long before Christianity arrived anywhere near there and still thrives to this day, in fact it's the most followed religion in Korea of the nearly 50% of Koreans who identify as religious.

As for today, I had language school at 1:00 p.m. and after that I headed to a nearby park that contains some historical structures. I was able to relax and enjoy the view of the Han river that flows through Yeoju and on the way home I was able to stop at my favorite café Rose' Coffee Haus.

안녕히계세요, thank you for reading, I worked really hard on this post. Anyways, have a good day or goodnight.

Peace