i'm learning that living abroad has it's extreme ups and downs. especially in the beginning when you don't speak the language, you spend a lot of time in total confusion- and, naturally, this can be tiresome and annoying.
but, today, was really fun.
today was Chusak. korean thanksgiving day- one of the bigger holidays of the year. so, we were invited to one of Luke's co-workers house's for breakfast. this co-worker actually doesn't speak any english, but her son does- so we got invited. to be honest- i was really excited to be invited somewhere for Chusak, but we had already accepted a Chusak invitation for Sunday, when we got invited to Saturday breakfast- so i was dreading it a little. when you spend 8 hours a day during the week confused- why would i willingly want to be confused over the weekend as well?
but, we went and had a great time. her son was really nice and spoke really good english. the dad had practiced and memorized some english phrases and was so cute about saying them. breakfast was amazing. i know, right now you're thinking "hmm, they probably had pancakes, bacon, eggs, maybe some cinnamon rolls..." Ha! no. We had kimchi and rice! What's a korean meal if kimchi and rice are not served? Of course, there was more than that- really good beef, noodles, cooked fish (skin, bones, and eyes all still present) and about a billion other korean side dishes. it's still weird to me to eat dinner foods at 9:30 in the morning, but it was really good. luke and i mostly eat korean cafeteria food- we are just realizing that this might not be greatest demonstration of quality korean food.
anyway, the family was really nice. they were Christians so they do Chusak a little differently. Chusak is a holiday to thank your ancestors. koreans normally make a ton of food and put it before their ancestors and bow to them. but, christians don't bow- instead they thank God for their ancestors. when we left they gave us a really nice plant, tons of fruit (including korean pears, which look absolutely nothing like the pear i grew up on- instead it's shaped like an apple, but the size of a melon...and it's yellow, not green), and told us to come back again. we had a lot of fun and left feeling really welcomed.
when we got home, we decided to try out our new badminton set (koreans adore badminton). the other day we went hiking on a nearby mountain and found badminton courts nestled in the mountain. so we hiked on over thinking how great we were going to be at this new sport. well to my surprise we suck at badminton. we hit the birdie around for awhile/did a lot of walking to fetch the birdie every time we missed it. meanwhile, the court next to us was doing a great of exhibiting how bad we really were. eventually, we sat down- then, one of the guys (there was a group of 4 or 5 older men- maybe in their 50's) came on up to our court and started playing with Luke. the truth is, they saw how pathetic we were and wanted to teach us how to play. pretty soon the other guys were calling me down to their court to teach me too. we spent awhile learning and then we played doubles (luke and i on opposite teams). my team won. ha.
it was seriously SO fun. we got to hang out with some random koreans, and even use some of the language we've been learning. oh, and we are about 10x better than we were when we started.
have we mentioned how nice koreans are? they seriously are the nicest people! all of them!
we did some other stuff today too- but i think the best part was all that. hanging out with koreans and making friends- despite the language barrier. also, it really gives us confidence when we talk to koreans and are actually able to talk (even if it's only a little).
so, when you have a day like this- you gotta revel in it.
p.s. sadly, our camera (that we just bought) was out of battery for this revel day. but, sometime we will try to take picture of the awesome badminton court.
