Local festival

Netta, Olive and John observing a tea ceremony at our local park during a traditional Korean festival for Chuseok. Chuseok is this week and it is a harvest festival celebrated by returning to your family home, honoring your ancestors and eating food. At least that is what we have gathered about it so far.



This is the place setting for the tea service. Lovely....
These are traditional tea sweets. They are made from bean powders mixed with honey. Olive packed away so many that the ladies were worried she might get a tummy ache. Never happened. The mixture is pressed into a wooden form to make these beautiful designs. We are looking for one so that we can make our own at home but haven't found one yet.

This is lotus flower tea - beautiful and tasty.

Olive looking a little worried about where she might be going. Olive loves to look at this picture recreate the face and laugh.


John and Netta playing a game - trying to toss the arrows into the container. It took some practice but they both got quite good at it. Eye exercises for the day!
OK it only looks like she is tossing this at Olive......
Olive writing Os with her arrow in the sand.
Netta receiving some drum instruction.
Netta and John drumming. They spent a long time creating rhythms, combining them and then performing duets.
Olive looking up at the ducks on a stick. This is a very old craft in Korea. John said that in the folk museum one was featured in a display about the bronze age in Korea. Netta and Olive both received small hand crafted ones as gifts before we left the festival. Netta because the lady who taught her the wedding bowing ceremony was so impressed with Netta and Olive because once Netta had one she just went over and took one off the table. They graciously gave her one of her own.

All in all a lovely Saturday afternoon at our local park learning about traditional Korean culture.

As a side note I am beginning to feel like a member of our neighborhood - as I walked to the park I ran into 2 people I knew. Even in this big city - wow!