Happy Chusok

I'm not too excited to be back at work, but its always hard to get back to the grind after a 4day holiday weekend. The holiday of Chusok is celebrated all throughout South Korea as a harvest festival, it is similar to our Thanksgiving. For the weekened we needed some time to catch up on some sleep and meet up with some friends. My friend Dana, who I met during orientation in Seoul, invited our little group of friends to stay at her apartment in Geojin which is near Sokcho. We stayed there Saturday and Sunday night. There were about 10 of there at once and we went around the little town and hung out at the beach in the evening. The cool thing about Korea is that you can drink opening on the beach, but the not-so-cool thing about Korea is that there is barbed wire all along the beaches which is kind of scary. I think the government is trying to get them all taken down because they were used as a way to keep North Korea out.

While we were there we went up to the DMZ, the Korean Demilitarized Zone, where we were able to see the mountains and ocean of North Korea. On the way up to the site, we passed many army men and also North Korea's immigration, note: we did not go through immigration we just passed by the immigration office. It was quite beautiful. We also went to a small memorial museum that showed a video of the war.

In the evening we went out to eat. The dish we ordered was a huge spicey soup with veggies and pork spine. It is all placed in a pot in front of you and it is simmered at your table. This is my favorite dish I have had so far, too bad I dont know how to say it in Korean. The meat was so tender it was falling off of the bone and the soup was so wonderfully spicey. When you finish and you think you cannot eat any more, they remove the pot left with broth and and mix in some rice and make a very stinky rice dish that tastes divine!

When we came home on Monday we had a 2 days to relax, do some shopping and finally cook in our own home. We also had our first Korean language class on Tuesday, which didn't give much help but I think I'm going to have to crack out the language cd mom and dad gave me. We didn't start work until Wednesday so it was a nice long weekend with a short week to follow. TGIF