Another 추석 dinner

Today I ran up a small mountain and had a wonderful 추석 dinner, from which I am still extremely full.

One of my co-workers from 동상 초급학교 (Dong Sang Cho-geup Hakkyo, or Dong Sang Elementary School) picked me up from 동상초급학교 at 5:30pm today with her husband and her daughter and took me to their house for dinner. Out of all the Koreans I have met here, her daughter is the best speaker so far. I was so surprised when I got into the car to hear what seemed like a native English speaker! She told me that she spent two years in Canada for middle/high school - but for only two years in an English speaking country - wow, it was amazing.

So I ended up talking mostly English most of the night. I actually felt quite bad because although her mother (my co-worker) speaks better English than many of the Koreans I know here, she still didn't understand everything that her daughter and I were talking about, and I don't think her husband understood much either. I felt a little uncomfortable speaking so much English - but they were so nice and seemed like they were encouraging me to speak English and to be comfortable.

The food was absolutely amazing. We started eating about 4.5 hours ago and I am still full! Oh man. Soooo good. I LOVE 송뷴 (Song Pyun - is that spelled right?). 송뷴 are special rice cakes that in the past had only been made on 추석, but now I think they are more popular. Oh man. They are just rice cakes with sesames and beans inside - so imagine rice kneeded into a stricky rice dough and balled around sesame and beans...it is AMAZING. It is so good that I am going to try and make some of my own next weekend...

The rest of the meal was amazing too. Noodles, fried shrimp (the fried is kind of getting to me but it's ok, it's 추석) and an amazing sauce with chunks of carrots, cucumbers and onions, amazing soup, pumpkin porridge-type of thing, kimchi of course...and lightly fried pumpkin cakes...wow. Wow. I am so lucky!

We talked about a lot of things at dinner, but one thing that struck me as very interesting was our conversation about Lunar and Solar New Years. I had started this conversation with 수청 a few days ago, so I knew of the existance of the Lunar Calendar, but we talked about it in more detail tonight. It is so interesting! Just think - we measure our days by the rise of the sun without a second thought - but some people measure time by something completely different! Can you imagine? I think that is so cool...

Well I'm off to bed - I am going to research more about the Lunar Calendar and write more about that next time. :)