Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok)

So, this past weekend was Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving/Harvest Festival. Like the American Thanksgiving Koreans go eat lots of food with their familes for this holiday. Not having family here I went to the beach with 13 of my new friends.

But before I get into that. This is where I work every Monday, Tuesday and Saturday. I teach Taekwondo and English. My school is on the second floor of this building. And here is the inside. Much smaller than the one at home but I think it's more efficient this way and homier. It reminds me of the old school.
So, anyway, I and many friends took the subway west for about an hour to the port city of Incheon. (This is also where the international airport is.) Then we took a ferry over to one of the islands off the coast. This is a view from the ferry where, of course, the seagulls were much more daring than you really wanted them to be.
We had planned to go Busan, another port is the south, but due to the holiday we couldn't get bus tickets so we decided to got to Incheon Friday evening and left Saturday morning. This meant we showed up with no place to stay. Luckily, we found a room/house two minutes from the beach. But it had no western beds, just Korean styles beds (two inch thick pad on the floor) so 13 of us slept in one room on the floor. But it was cheap.
The beaches were nice. The water was much like the Mediterranean (calm, salty water with no waves) but was a much darker color. When the tide went out it went out about half a mile and left behind mudflats where people fished for worms, muscles and crabs.
Fresh seafood was the main food here. And I mean fresh. Outside of the restaurants that lines the beach were tanks of crab, shrimp, muscles, fish and octopus. When you ordered seafood the waitress walked outside shoveled some into a pot and put it on the burner in the middle of you table. In Korea you usually cook your own food but this was a little extreme. The shrimp for instance was still alive when they put it in the pot (heads on and moving around) and you got to watch them die and turn pink in front of you. Some of us ordered sashimi (raw fish on rice/ a kind of sushi) and with that we got many side dishes (also another thing with Korean meals, everymeal comes with at least 3 or 4 side dishes, usually kimchi, some kind of salad, radish and pickled garlic) At this restaurant we recieved all sorts of clams and muscles but the scariest was octopus tentacles that squirmed throughout the 40 minutes meal and though who tried to eat them choked on them because the suckers when attach to your throat. I didn't eat this but I did have something else that was red and kind of sinewy that I realized later was also moving. Ugh.
Later in the night, we walked along the beach to a rock outcropping. Here is a look back at the beach. There were many restaurants and small hotels about 100 yards back from the sand but the town itself was rather small. More of a day trip kind of place. And the international airport was behind the mountains, so you can see a plane landing but not hear it.
This is Mackenzie. A Canadian French vegan who I get along well with. Most of this trip I spent talking and with her or playing sports with the boys. I get along well with the girls too, but I can't spend hours laying in the sun doing nothing.
Here are a couple of boys I see on a regular basis. Tom (Australian on the left) and Niko (French on the right) I beat them both in poker.
And probably the highlight of the trip was the beach volleyball game. The boys, Mackenzie and I bought a ball and played volleyball and soccer most of the time. At our last game a middle aged man, who had been drinking, came and started playing with us. He eventually called his friends over and we started a game. Foreign college students vs. 40 year old men in dress pants. They even bet money on the game. It was a close game (oddly so considering the teams) but we won. The money from the bets was given to us to buy food and drink and we all went to their blanket for some traditional Chuseok food. (Beef, ricecake, Korean cookies, chesnuts and some other things that I just can't name) I love Korean people. They're so generous and nice.
I'm trying to make plans for next weekend still. I'll let you guys know how it turns out. As a side note, my classes are all going well. I have a lot of reading to do but it's not hard. And I have a two Yonsei students whom I meet with every week now to practice Korean and "share culture" with.