Thursday, September 23, 2010

Celebrating Chuseok Holiday

Chuseok holiday is a 3-day special event in South Korea. This year, the holiday falls on September 21-23. I'm writing something about this one now because we are enjoying this event by not having work. My part time job is being an English teacher to Koreans online that's why I'm affected by such event. Sad to say that we won't be having a pay for those days because primarily we are following Philippine holidays. I will not elaborate on that issue anymore because it has been fought and a lot of matters has been creating gap among members already just because of that issue.

Anyway, going back to the event. Chuseok is similar to our All Souls/Saints day celebration. During this time, Koreans pay tribute to their dead love ones and families would gather in their hometown for a somewhat reunion.
If you happen to observe the sumptuous food on the left then that would exactly be the food that they are serving during the event. It would be first offered and then prayed and then everyone would enjoy eating it afterwards.
The picture above is the Chuseok Rice Cake. It has been the traditional food that they are serving during the event. It is similar to our very own Puto but I think it is more sticky. According to one my students who happens to have a rice cake business, it comes in different flavors and the most expensive one is the Chestnut Flavor and the cheapest is the Rice Kernel. I'm not sure if he was able to translate the terms correctly though. Anyway, their table won't be complete if this food is not present.

Koreans highly honor this event and even those who are in different countries would really see to it that they can go home during this time. Even my Korean boss went to Korea just to celebrate it with his parents. Kids won't have classes in their schools and academies during this time but sad to say that this year, they attended a 25 minute class with our company because our boss told us to have a class on the 21st.

Last year, me and my friends was able to have a trip to Cebu City because the holiday started Friday until Sunday. However this year, the event fell on Tuesday until Thursday so we need to go back to work Friday which is very annoying.

So much for this pre Chuseok Holiday post because I primarily discussed what is the event all about. On my next post, I would be sharing to you what we did during our 2 days without work, without pay Chuseok Holiday. We gathered somewhere and we ate a very delicious dinner at a friend's place and a real chef cooked our food. More details would be on the next post along with the food's pictures.

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