Korean Folk Village

Welcome to our day adventure to the Korean Folk Village! We went with a group of the teachers on a Sunday because we had a few days off the next week because of the Lunar New Year.





These are a few of the crazy people who went. Wilma, Cleo, and I are in the back and that's Leah in the front =) Leah used to teach at Incheon so she came with us for fun.






This is us trying to comfort Cleo int the cold. It was actually really pretty to be there when the snow was falling.





However, as pretty as the snow was we were cold and getting hungry so we went inside a Korea restaurant.




Wilma, Kelly and I on the left, Cleo, Leah, Debbie and Ruth on the right. We were served nice hot soup and felt so good against our cold hands as we held the bowls.

Most of us ordered bibimbab and this was were we learned about Dol-sot bibimbab. This is where the bibimbab comes in a very, very hot stone bowl. It makes the whole meal delicious!





Bibimbab is a rice based food (bab=rice in Korean) and has an assortment of veggies with an egg (that gets fried on the hot stone bowl) and a spicy sauce. It can come with beef but we don't get it like that. This was the best bibimbab we'd had.


After lunch we went out and some Korean children called us over to this rock covered with rope and tiny papers. They told us that we were to write our wishes for the new year on the paper and tie it to the rope.




Here goes nothing!

Then we began to walk around and see the different traditional building and look at the stores they had around the folk village.


Then we saw cows!




This is Kelly Ann (first name is Kelly, middle name Ann but we already have a Kelly teacher so we call her Kelly Ann. The junior students get a kick out of it). The cows look cute but unhappy, however it is the year of the ox so we thought it was appropriate to have them. =)


Then we went to see the performances. The first one was the guys... We've seen stuff like this a couple times but it was still pretty interesting to watch. Especially when the started to jump.



(Isn't Matthew a great photographer?)



I picked the video with my favorite part. The jumping spinning part is near the end.

After the guys we were fooling around on these seesaw looking things.



As you can see, we did not know what we were doing. =P

But then we saw the act.



These girls would fly into the air, do trick and come back down, alternating the weight and balance for the jumps using the seesaw. It was really cool to watch.



Here they are just warming up and then at the end of the video you can see how the performance would go. Each time they would do something more elaborate.

Then just as we were getting ready to head on we saw this older guy walk onto a rope. So of course we had to stop.

This man had some incredible balance going on. Especially since it was cold it was harder to keep jumping and sitting and doing all the things he was doing on the rope. In the picture above you can see him getting ready to do a trick.

And here he is "sitting" on the rope. It was very interesting. It was really fun for me to see because in our junior textbooks they talk about the Korean Folk Village and the different things there and I was able to see them! I was very excited to tell my class the following school days.

But finally we were getting cold and so we had to cross the rock stream to get to the other side

The water was partially frozen so you had to be careful as we went across. Debbie actually slipped and got one foot wet. Not fun.

(Later on we saw a normal bridge...but what is life if you don't have a little adventure?)

Beautiful with the snow, isn't it?

We were all feeling pretty frozen but then we saw all these people "sledding". And decided to go down to the frozen lake and investigate!

Here is a sled.

As you can see it is a small wooden thing and in Matthew's hands are to very dangerous wooden poles with sharp, sharp points on them. You can either scoot yourself around with those, or have someone pull you.

This is Matthew being pulled by Kelly Ann. She's in the bright pink jacket. She had a brother who is the same age as Matthew and just got married this summer, and she says they act just a like. She showed us a picture, and they even look similar!

We pulled each other around and finally I got brave enough to let Matthew pull me.

This is on our way back from around the lake.

It was really fun, but kind of scary. The coolest part for me was being able to do all this on a real frozen lake. I've never been able to be on a frozen lake before and to walk around and "sled" around was so much fun.

But...we were still cold and had to leave.

As you can see, Matthew was NOT happy about this.

The last thing exciting to tell about the day is the court candy. Some of you have tried this candy that we send home with Mama and we wanted to show you how it is made.

The first video is how they make the outside. The second one is how they put it all together. I hope you enjoy watching =)

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