Andong Maskdance Festival & Hahoe Traditional Korean Village

This past weekend, Mike and I took an overnight bus tour (yes, just like tourists) to the Angond Maskdnace Festival, Ginseng Festival and Hahoe Traditional Korean Village.

Seoul has these awesome Global Village Centers all around the city, that helps foreigners with everything...from free Korean classes, helping pay bills with banks that don't speak english, helping buy movie tickets (not as easy as you think) and anything else you can think of. Best of all...it is all free. Our local village center is in the "french area" of Seoul and was sponsoring this great little overnight bus tour. No one told us that it was all in French! Would have been a great detail to know. Mike and I were the only Americans amongst a bus full of French people dirving around Korea! Needless to say, they figured out we didn't speak the language very quickly and were happy to translate for us when needed.

First stop...bathroom...or is it? Yes, that is a bathroom and completely functional! Talk about blending into the landscape :-) And here is our bathroom montage from the weekend...

We visited a maskdance museum...here are some photos

Boo!



Mike's Hungry Face!



Some Maskdance Festival fireworks in the rain at night, preceeded by some fishcake soup (I don't know the Korean name) and makgeoli (always good!) in traditional Korean style...on the ground.



Motel Thema for our Saturday night stay, complete with wall mural that that glowed when the black light above was turned on! Classy! No Hampton Inns in sight :-( Almost don't see Mike in the picture...he blends into the glowing wall mural!

Maskdance Festival & Performance on Sunday. Got a video for you on this one...have to experience it live. I honestly don't know the meaning, but it is a play and each mask represents a person in a traditional Korean society (scholar, peasant, concubine, etc). Warning for those of you out there checking my awesome blog while you are at work...turn your volume down...it is LOUD!

 

Sunday afternoon concluded with the Ginseng Festival. It was a plethera of activities...I dug up some ginseng from the farm, shopped for some ginseng pills, had some deep-fried ginseng...met some interesting folks...and we even found polish horseshoes to play (me in the last picture) and the Koreans were enthralled with my skilZ!




Mike brought his girlfriend this weekend



Great Korean experience, but exhausting weekend. Maddy welcomed us home about 11PM Sunday night and Mike had a big week ahead of him with some visitors from the US. Really, he is such a great husband!

If anyone knows what to do with raw ginseng, send me some recipes. I have some in my fridge that is going to last about 6 months.