New Beginnings

This past week, we said goodbye to the year of the metal tiger and hello to the year of the metal rabbit. I confess, I have no idea what the elements mean, but this year we are supposed to relax and focus on family. Last year, I was disappointed that there was no Chinese New Year like fanfare, but this year I noticed that if you pay attention, you can still pick up on the holiday atmosphere. Everything was closed, for starters. The streets were lined with cars, with people walking around in formal or traditional dress every day. Bobby happened upon a huge family gathering at a burial mound and quickly retreated, dog in tow. Maya and I walked through some kind of ceremony the next day (it was at the stream and I didn't notice until Maya was sniffing some ritual object—eek!) We probably would have really seen a festival atmosphere had we ventured to the Home Plus, but we decided to skip out on that.

Americans had Friday off (USFK=lots of holidays). I was supposed to brief my staff on the dangers of driving drunk and heavy lunar new year traffic. I heard a couple of American patrons advising Mr. Pan to stay off the road, apparently oblivious to the fact that he has, in fact, dealt with Lunar New Year every year of his life. Anyways, I don't dream of driving too far on those days, but the traffic isn't really as bad as everyone says it is.

I read that Daegu National Museum had a Lunar New Year demonstration, so we decided to visit on Saturday. We didn't see any rituals, but there were a bunch of traditional Korean games on the grounds with kids playing them. The museum was pretty neat. It was free, for starters, and there was an exhibit with photographs of Seoul during the Japanese invasion. It looks almost agrarian; there were trees and grass! We learned that the stone pagodas we see in temples are supposed to resemble houses, and that Korean women (presumably yangban, or upper class) had “five friends,” which were their embroidery implements. This led Bobby to ask me where my five friends were at regular intervals throughout the weekend.

Tomorrow, I go back to work, but Bobby, whose office is entirely active duty personnel, is off because it's a “training holiday,” which means the soldiers are off. This particular training holiday is for the Superbowl, which airs at 6am here, at which point the on base clubs will be packed to bursting with people drinking beer and eating breakfast.

Daegu National Museum

I think this is a kiln