The Year of the Pig

According to Chinese astrology, we are now in the year of the pig. Korea celebrates Chinese (Lunar) New Year more so than the calendar new year and enjoys a three day public holiday. Unfortunately this year two of those days fell on the weekend, so we only received one extra day off work. However, not being ones to complain about any bonus days off, we took the chance to embrace some traditional Korean culture.

We started our New Year's weekend by checking into a traditional Korean house (hanok) in the middle of the older area of the city.

The winding lanes leading up to our hanok accommodation set the mood for an escape from the modern megacity that is Seoul

Trent in the inner courtyard of our hanok house

And me in our ondol (heated floor) room with thin mattresses and colourful quilts, wooden finishings and rice paper screen windows

We spent the day in the Insadong area, where free Makgeolli (Korean traditional rice wine) was being handed out in celebration of the New Year.

Free Makgeolli!

We finished the day with a yummy Korean meal in the inner courtyard of one of Insadong's restaurants.

Some spicy Korean food washed down with Baekseju, another traditional rice wine with added herbs and ginseng, which apparently help you live to be 100 years old - bottoms up!

The next day we headed to a hanok village at the base of Namsan. Here there were a range of traditional Korean games being played, wishes for the New Year being made and plenty of eating and running around by hanbok-clad kids.

A nice view of the hanok village

A girl doing laps of the hanok houses in her traditional Korean costume (hanbok)

The steady hand of an experienced calligrapher

A not so experienced archer gets ready for this shot

New Year's wishes

And some wishes down the well

One more cute outfit

And it wouldn't be a Korean holiday without our Principal giving the teachers a present. This time we ended up with a huge box of soaps, toothpaste, shampoo etc, which will help us keep clean and smelling fresh until we leave... and then there was the other box- more olive oil and... SPAM!!

I suppose it does say "quality pork", so maybe I should give it the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it is actually unrelated to the jelly-covered pink blob I remember from childhood