Chapter 6: 추석 + 자연 (Chuseok + Nature)

Alright, prepare yourselves for a longer update.

That’s right. I actually did stuff these past few weeks, so I have more than a couple things to say.

As a general update about school and stuff like that, classes are going well! Lots of assignments, lots of presentations, lots of tests, but at least I feel like I’m making some progress with my language skills. It’s slow progress, but at least it’s something.

I would also just like to give a shout-out to my amazing KFOP teachers. They are so supportive and understanding of their students and are always willing to just sit down and talk for an hour or two about almost anything, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that. But sometimes things just get a little overwhelming, so I’m really happy to know that I have such a supportive network of people behind me.

Ok, onto the fun stuff!

As you could see in the title, this past week was Chuseok, so we had a 5 day weekend!

What’s Chuseok?

It’s basically the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving and is just really a holiday for families to get together and see each other. Of course, COVID made that a bit more difficult, but I think people were able to travel more freely compared to last year. All I know is that the trains were sold out to the various cities, but I’m pretty sure that’s quite common when everyone is trying to go home on literally the same day.

Anyways, since I don’t really know how to celebrate Chuseok, I kind of just took this time to relax and go do some things that I had been wanting to for a while.

Chuseok Cooking Class

Our KFOP program arranged for us to go and take a cooking class where we could make some traditional Korean dishes that people might eat on Chuseok! As predicted, because of COVID things operated a bit differently than they normally would, but it was still super fun!

Since there are nine students in total and only up to 6 people could meet at a time, they split us into three teams of three students and one chaperone, and we took a taxi to Dongdaemun where we were to meet our cooking instructor. We were taking a class through OME Cooking Lab, and usually participants would go to one of the traditional markets around the area and buy ingredients and then make them into a meal. However, because of COVID, we simply went to the kitchen where all of the ingredients were already prepared and got right into it.

The cooking class was held in an an office hotel in a room on the 17th floor. The view was honestly breathtaking, and I think we spent a good few minutes just looking around at the pretty decorations and the view. they also had really cute pink aprons that they gave everyone to wear. Unfortunately, I did not get to take that home.

Our menu for that day was:

Seafood pancake (해물전, haemul jeon): This is basically what it sounds like. The main ingredients are green onion, white onions, peppers and seafood of your choice (we used squid and shrimp), which are then mixed into a batter made of flour, potato starch and water, and then fried. It’s a very savory dish, which is just to my liking. There are different types of jeon (pancake), like kimchi-jeon (김치전) and green onion-jeon (파전, pajeon). I will definitely be making this when I get back to the states if anyone is interested in trying it!

Japchae (잡체): This is a dish consisting of glass noodles, vegetables and meat (usually beef) and is kind of just like a stir-fry. It’s a rather simple dish to make, there’s just a lot of chopping to do!

A little bit of cultural background, the most important thing about the vegetables used in japchae is their colors! There is a philosophy called obangsaek (오방색), which literally translates to “five orientation colors.” These are the five traditional colors of Korea, with each one representing a direction.

Green/Blue = east
White = west
Red = south
Black = north
Yellow = center

So in our japchae, we had green onions, white onions and mushrooms, red peppers, black mushrooms, and yellow peppers! Our teacher said that if you don’t have the exact ingredients it’s okay so long as you have the five colors represented in some way.

Songpyeon (송편): These are rice cakes filled with something sweet, like sweetened crushed sesame seeds. They formed to look like half-moons and are traditionally steamed on a bed of pine needles, as the song (송) in songpyeon means “pine tree.” We didn’t actually make these, but got them as a gift!

There was a lot going on on this table haha. But these were all of our ingredients

Here we are making the seafood pancake! My goal in life is to be able to just flip it in the pan, but for safety purposes, we were all given spatulas this time around

Here is everything completed! The japchae is on the white plates and the seafood pancake is on the wicker basket-looking plate! The songpyeon (rice cakes) were given to us already packed, but we got to decorate them with some pretty wrapping and a little charm. And of course we got to take all of this home and eat it!

And here we all are! (Yeah, I’m short. What am I gonna do about that?)

The cooking was a great experience, and it also made me realize how much I kind of miss cooking for myself. I got a lot of practice in during my time living in an apartment at UW, so it’s a bit sad that I don’t have a kitchen now. But nevertheless, this was so much fun and great way to start off our break!

They also gave us a little cookbook that includes the recipes we made that day, so you bet I’ll be whipping this out when I return and making you all some good food!

Cat Garden

For the start of the weekend, I literally spent all of Saturday just doing homework (a collective 10ish hours of sadness) and then just went to a cafe on Sunday to relax.

But Monday…

One of my friends on the program had mentioned a cat cafe that she really wanted to go to, and how was I not supposed to also jump at that opportunity? If you didn’t know, my cats are like my children, and I miss them dearly. Every time I video call my family, the cats are required to make an appearance.

For example:

And this was just one video call haha

Anyways.

So my friend found a place called Cat Garden (고양이 정원), which was honestly more of a cat sanctuary rather than a cat cafe. Korea has a surprising amount of stray cats, so it’s nice that there’s a place like this where a lot of them are looked after. Honestly, there must have been around fifty cats there.

It was amazing.

The establishment also labeled themselves as the first outdoor cat cafe, and they had a relatively large piece of property where the cats could roam around freely.

Okay, enough talking. I show you cats now.

There was a two hour time limit for how long you could stay, and I can say that we used those two hours to their fullest.

Nature and Hiking

This was my absolute favorite part of this entire break, and I think I’ve found myself a new hobby.

If you didn’t know, South Korea is a very mountainous country, and I learned the other day that 70% of the terrain is actually mountains! So hiking and mountain climbing is a really popular activity (though usually more so among the older generation. Hm, what does this say about me…?)

So on Tuesday, myself and two other students from our program decided to pay a visit to Cheonggye-san (청계산), which is one of more recommended mountains for hiking. Honestly, this might not have been the best one to pick as a complete novice, since the peak was at a whopping 620 meters! (around 2034 feet if that means anything to you).

And it wasn’t just a nice steady incline. No. This was 620 meters of pure stairs, with the occasional rock climbing because why not? I definitely got in all of my cardio workout for the next month.

But the view was definitely worth it, and the next pictures will tell you exactly why.

Okay, yeah they all kind of look the same, but ugh this view was just incredible, so you’re getting multiple pictures so that you too can appreciate this beauty. Since Cheonggye-san was a little bit further out from the city, you could see almost all of Seoul as well as a lot of lower mountains that surround it. Stunning.

Here are a couple other sights we saw on the way up (and down. Ugh, the stairs down were honestly a bit more painful)

Here we are at the very peak!

There were also…cats(?) at the very top and at some of the rest stops. Pretty sure they were just looking for food, but I can’t help but wonder how they managed to make it all the way up there??

We also met a nice man on the way up who was very happy to let us know all about the mountain’s geography and was very encouraging as we all basically lost a lung on the journey up

This is water from the mountain that is completely pure and safe to drink! It’s meant to give you energy and considering I made it to the top, I guess it kind of worked?

Our after-hike meal! Much deserved

But my adventures didn’t end there!

Despite my legs literally being on fire the next day, I decided to go to another mountain that I had been wanting to visit. This time I went alone, so it was just me and nature (and like 200 hundred other people who had the same idea haha).

The two mountains I went to were Acha-san (아차산) and Yongma-san (용마산), and they are actually connected, so you can hike both in one day. They were both only around 280 meters tall (918 feet), so were a lot easier to climb than Cheonggye-san. Although I was still walking for about 5 hours that day, but that was mostly because I don’t know how to read signs and got kind of lost haaaa.

Anyways, here are the photos!

I would also like to say that I have no idea if I actually made it to Yongma-san. I started off for sure at Acha-san, but the signs and trails got too complicated for me to follow, so I literally just kept walking straight for 4 hours until I decided I had had enough and wanted to go home. All I know is that I got in about 18,000 steps that day and I literally could not walk that entire night.

But being surrounded by all of that nature was honestly so incredibly refreshing and freeing. Seoul and the city life are great in their own way, but sometimes you just need an escape. And hiking is just the escape I needed.

I’m hoping that I can make this a weekly or bi-weekly thing. There are definitely plenty more mountains to go explore, and you definitely can’t really experience something like this in the Midwest, so I’m going to take advantage while I can.

I think that’ll be it for this update! To finish it off, here is a picture of what I’m eating and drinking as I sit and write this post

A chocolate egg-waffle and milk tea!

Now that Chuseok is over, the semester is definitely going to be kicking into full gear, so I have a feeling I’ll be getting pretty busy. But when I have time, I’ll do my best to get out and do some fun things! Thanks for waiting so patiently for this update!

Have a great rest of your day/night/week/weekend and I’ll be back (hopefully) soon with another post!

💜