Hanbok shopping

This afternoon 정숙, her mother and myself went shopping for traditional Korean clothing (한복/hanbok) for 정숙 and me. Tense negotiations, delicate colour and style choices concluded, we proceeded to the tailor's room to be measured. The hanbok will be ready in about 3 weeks so watch this space for photos...

I took this photo in the mirror in the tailor's room. Some woman's hanbok hangs on the wall.

A piano recital

Korean kids study too hard. These kids are first-graders and yet, after school every day they go to a piano academy. Today, a Saturday, when they should have been running around enjoying themselves, they were at the academy for 8 hours waiting for their 5 minutes of fame as they played before the assembled throng of parents. I was one of the few non-parents, and the only non-Korean there.
The boys all wore suits with tails and glittering cravats, the girls were in stunning evening gowns. They played very well indeed...

한과 (Han-gwa)

One of my students, Mrs Lee, quite an elderly woman, gave me this today. They are traditional Korean sweets - han-gwa. Some of them taste good. The pink ones are best avoided. Taste like chalk and sugar...

Chuseok

Woke Sunday morning to deathly quiet - a rare event in Korea. Walking to the station my local market appeared completely deserted. Normally it is jammed with people.








Another thing was different - many people were wearing hanbok, traditional Korean clothes - like this little girl playing in a carpark. It was Chuseok... my fourth Chuseok in Korea.







Chuseok is one of the busiest days in the Korean year. It is a harvest thanksgiving day, when Korean people thank their ancestors for, well, everything. I headed bush with one of my students, Arthur, a Russian teenager studying in Korea. We walked along the main ridge of Mt Geumjeong, which runs down the middle of Busan. It was a great day as there were very few people on the mountain. It was SO GOOD to get out of the city and smell the air among the trees...



We met a pair of Korean men who shared their picnic lunch with us. They generously gave us fruit, cakes, eggs and makkoli (korean liquor) and we ate our fill.






Our walk ended here at Beomeosa - one of the oldest temples in Busan. We took a bus from here back to "civilisation".






After the walk, we saw a crowd of people walking up a road. The road was lined with people selling flowers. From a distance the flowers looked beautiful so we went to look more closely. Unfortunately they were artificial flowers. Hmmmm.... so many things here are like that.. It seemed there was some sort of festival going on so we followed the crowd. I was a bit perplexed to see people selling sickles and other cutting implements... were people going to some sort of battle?






When we got there we saw the reason. The road led to a public cemetery, where people were tending the graves of their ancestors. The sickles are for cutting the grass. Some graves are well-kempt, the grass cut short. Others, whose descendents are no doubt poverty stricken and hungry now, have long grass growing on them. After cleaning the graves, people perform a ceremony and bow to them.


I think we can be forgiven for thinking it was a festival as there were people selling balloons and snacks. I bought two Sponge-Bob balloons and called Jung-sook, asking her to bring her two nieces to the MacDonalds nearby. There we ate chips, soft-serves and admired Spongebob's squarepantsy glory. ^___^

T-Shirt design

I want a t-shirt like this (it's my own design btw ^^). It means "What are you looking at?"

I am so tired of being stared at all the time. It seems to be the Korean national pastime.

Bum-A Clutch

Holiday for me today. I went to E-Mart ostensibly for shopping but really to meet 정숙 for lunch. It is 추석 time - the Korean harvest festival, so the shops were very crowded and the sales assistants were all dressed in traditional clothing. I snapped this detail of a motorbike while I was waiting to meet 정숙. English transliterations of Korean words are sometimes funny. Never did do any shopping though. The crowds were too bad.

A stroll along the Hot Spring Stream

온천천 walk, originally uploaded by hojucandy.

Tonight 정숙 and I went for a walk along the 온천천 (On-cheon Cheon), or Hot Spa Stream. The local Gu office have done a lot to develop the area as a place where people can walk and take excercise.

Sunday is Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, so the moon is nearly full. Seen through the light cloud cover the moon looked eerie...

Roller-blade lessons, originally uploaded by hojucandy.

Free roller-blading lessons are available along the walk. It looks very funny seeing people practise their blading moves with no blades on. High heels are ubiquitous here - even when excercising it seems...

온천천 walk, originally uploaded by hojucandy.

At some points the walk goes under a road or the railway line. In places it has a strange catacombs look to it... in other places it smells BAD!!!

Busan train - 똥래, originally uploaded by hojucandy.

The train home...

Haeundae with Bill

Haeundae - Zed, Bill, Greg, originally uploaded by hojucandy.

Sunday we went to the beach. Bill was down from Cheonan with his friend 유경. Zed also came along... and 정숙 of course, camera shy as usual....

Numerous idiots on jetskis were showing off way too close to shore where children were swimming. A disaster waiting to happen. Safety standards in Korea are very poor.

Noraebang - Greg, Bill, originally uploaded by hojucandy.

The old Ansan Noraebang team of Bill and myself together again at last for a rendition of "Ziggy Stardust". Performance was somewhat marred by my sore throat....