Korean Folk Village

On Sunday, all 400 of us took a field trip to a Korean Folk Village in Seoul. It was actually really fun! Upon arrival we had a tour for about an hour where we saw things like an old Korean jail. Some of these images were a bit disturbing for in the dark the dummies looked somewhat real...so I guess the effect was achieved. Other sites we saw on the tour were traditional houses in old Korean villages and everyday contraptions used to make food.

After the tour, we saw a bunch of performances. My favorite was definitely the Farmer's Dance. There was so much wonderful color, lots of movement, dancing, acrobatics, percussion, and crazy hats with streamers attached to the stick pointing off the end of the hat. The multi-tasking was amazing! Acrobatics and getting the streamers to move like they did were just two things that contributed to this awesome dance. Also, one of Korea's traditional instruments, the janggu, was played in this dance. This instrument looks like an hour-glass drum, and sounds pretty sweet too. This performance was just amazing!

Other performances ranged from traditional wedding services to a man walking/jumping/sitting/etc on a jump rope.
The rope walker was very interesting because he would break his concentration every time he crossed the rope to introduce what would be coming next. I'm convinced he was using tactics from Confucianism to keep his concentration going when he was jumping all over the place.

After the performances, we just walked around for a while and enjoyed the scenery and history. My friend and I even found a place where they were letting people try on traditional Korean clothing, so I put on the servant's clothes and she put on the clothes of someone of higher status. It was really fun!