Chuseok, Hanbok, Songpyeon, and Tuho

Chuseok is the Korean Harvest Festival, also referred to as Korean Thanksgiving.  It is celebrated in Korea by returning to the hometown of your ancestors and honoring the family members who have passed on.  It also includes a large feast (hence the Thanksgiving reference).  Many Koreans will visit cemeteries where their loved ones are buried to pay their respects during this time.  Since there is so much involved with this holiday, most work places shut down for 3 days.  Those 3 days, plus the weekend, make for a nice long break.  It allows time to travel to wherever your ancestors lived and time to cook all the amazing foods they eat at the feast.  The school was closed for a whole week. 

As expats in Korea, we did not share in the traditional feast or honoring of the dead.  But, the school had a Chuseok celebration on the Friday before the break started, which allowed the kids to experience some traditional Korean culture. 

Hanbok is the traditional Korean semi-formal to formal clothing worn during festivals and celebrations.  It is quite beautiful and has a variety of designs although the basic form is generally the same.  Willow and I got the opportunity to try some on at an International Festival, and then during the Chuseok celebration, all 3 kids wore hanbok at school. 

Maya's class all had wet hair since they had just come out of the pool.

In each of their classrooms, they ate traditional Korean desserts as part of their celebration. 
Songpyeon is a steamed rice cake filled with honey.  They are in the shape of a half-moon and come in different colors using natural ingredients to dye the rice flour.  Blueberries are used to make the purple ones, mugwort powder is used to make the green ones, raspberries are used for the pink ones. 

Yugwa is a deep-fried rice cake that tastes like puffed rice.  It is very airy. and practically dissolves in your mouth.  They are also dyed using natural ingredients, like pumpkin or mugwort.

In addition to the snacks, they drank Sikhye, a sweet rice drink with actual grains of rice floating in it. 

After enjoying the Korean desserts, they played traditional Korean games.

Tuho is a game played by throwing darts into a narrow barrel.  It is very difficult to get the dart to hit its mark. 

Gonggi is kind of like jacks.  You throw one up, and, while its in the air, you pick up another one off the table and then with the same hand catch the one you threw.  Charlie loved this game so much we went out and bought a set of 10 for him to play with at home.

Yutnori is a board game that uses 4 carved sticks instead of rolling dice to see how many spaces to move your piece.  The position of the sticks as they land after tossing them indicates a value.

Ddakji is a game involving folded paper squares.  Each player has a square and they throw it down on a folded square on the ground, trying to flip it over.  

Willow's class made spinning tops and decorated masks.  I supervised the Tuho game in her class.

Maya's class did not have any organized games, but the Korean girls taught the international girls a song called Ganggangsullae which is a song and dance traditionally only sung only by women to bring about a bountiful harvest.  They held hands and jumped around in a circle chanting Ganggangsullae and then each person took a turn jumping in the middle and saying their Chuseok wish.  They dragged their teachers, both men, into the ring to join them.