day 1 of Seoul Vacation- Namsangol Hanuk Village

The first day of my vacation I took the train into Seoul and managed (successfully) to get a Metro Card and find my way to the hostel I was staying at. After dropping my stuff at the hostel and taking most stuff out of my bag I went on to the Namsangol Hanuk Village. I spent the day there wondering around the traditional houses and through the park beside it. There was supposed to be more going on in the village (straw sandal making, traditional village stuff) but they weren’t going on this Saturday. I’m not sure if it was because of the weather or if they only have it certain Saturdays, either way there wasn’t much to do in the village until the evening. In the village they had some traditional Korean games.

One thing I found out was that children feeding birds was a universal liking. I was sitting on some steps eating a snack and a family near by was finishing their lunch (some sort of rice thing). Birds were flying all around and soon the boys started feeding the birds leftovers.

One was played like a hackysack game where you bounce the sack on your feet and the other was a throwing game to try and get them into a standing pot with 3 compartments. With the hackysack game I could only bounce it once or twice before missing and with the other game I got maybe 1 stick in 5 throws into the pot.

In the evening they had more events going on. One house had traditional Korean clothes to dress up in and get your picture taken and another house had some Korean crafts for the kids.

The part I liked best in the evening was the musical performances. There was a group of Korean percussionists who played on various instruments and on the later part of the show they combined ribbon dancing with percussion. After the percussion ensemble they had a group of 5 people playing traditional Korean instruments (to nontraditional songs). They played non Korean classic songs and a few traditional Korean folk songs. After the Korean folk songs I talked with a few Americans I had met. The son was a teacher in Korea and his parents had come to visit him.

So that ended my first day. Overall it was kind of a boring day because the village didn’t have as much going on (and it was raining). For a large part of the day I sat under a pavilion and read while waiting for the rain to stop (or at least slacken).

To look at all my photos from today follow this link

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037436&l=c4222&id=55500987

or this one

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037437&l=aac13&id=55500987