Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Chuseok

So Chuseok 추석 Holiday was this past weekend which is why I had enough time to take a little vacation!!! Anyway, this blog post is only to show off the rockin' presents that I got!!! (and tell you a little about the holiday)
Chuseok is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. Like many other harvest festivals, it is held around the Autumn Equinox. As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and share a feast of Korean traditional food.
In modern South Korea, on Chuseok there is a mass exodus of Koreans returning to their hometowns to pay respects to the spirits of one's ancestors. People perform ancestral worship rituals early in the morning. They often visit the tombs of their immediate ancestors to trim plants and clean the area around the tomb, and offer food, drink, and crops to their ancestors. Harvest crops are attributed to the blessing of ancestors.
One of the major foods prepared and eaten during the Chuseok holiday is songpyeon (송편), a crescent-shaped rice cake which is steamed upon pine needles. We made songpyeon together at school and then we went outside to play. Pictures below:

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