Chuseok: The Only Long Weekend Between May and February

Early on we knew that this year's Chuseok was going to be very nice - because it was being given as a five-day weekend! This is almost unheardof in Korea, as labourers often complain that this situation is "too much time off"! How did it happen? Well,  the Chuseok holiday fell on Saturday, September 29th through to Monday, October 1st. Tuesday was a normal work day and then Wednesday, October 3rd was another holiday, National Foundation Day. In a surprise move, most schools, including Joe's and mine, allowed the Tuesday between to be a bridge day, giving us five consecutive days off!

Here's a quick blurb about the two holidays:

Chuseok is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea Celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. Chusok, also known as the Korean Thanksgiving day. The celebration starts on the night before Chusok and ends on the day after the holiday. Thus, many Korean families take three days off from work to get together with family and friends.

A ceremonial table with fall harvest foods.

A family dressed in traditional clothes, enjoying Songpyeon (a kind of rice cake) together.

National Foundation Day is a public holiday in South Korea on October 3. Also known by the name Gaecheonjeol Day. This holiday celebrates the creation of the state of ancient Korea (Gojoseon) founded by Dangun Wanggeom in the year 2333 BCE. "Gaecheonjeol" means "Heaven-opened Day".

Dangun and ancient Korea.

This link shows the year's calendar of holidays in Korea, with links to information about each one: http://portalseven.com/calendar/Holidays_South_Korea.jsp?year=2012

Originally we planned to take a few family days at home in Mokpo together, and also to go to Seoul for a couple days, to visit the Canadian Embassy for some paperwork. However, the Thursday before the holiday, our wonderful babysitter suddenly had to quit due to her mother's serious illness. I spent all my free time at work on Friday calling around to daycares all over the city, trying to find an urgently needed placement for Ellora, for the next week. I was not successful, so we had to cancel our trip to Seoul in order to stay back and continue searching for a daycare. More on this later, in a separate post.

The other thing we had planned for the long weekend was Ellora's next set of photos for the year-long package we purchased. In the package was included several shoots at various stages in her first year: 30 days (I wish we had gotten in there earlier, like around 2 weeks!), 100 days, 250 days, and one year. This time round was 250 days, and we were allowed to choose two "concepts". After browsing their samples we choose a princess scene and a cute angel scene. Actually I had to convince them to let me do the angel scene, because it wasn't one of their normal outfits, just a few things I put together out of their stock of props, but it turned out really well.

Our photo studio, Lime Orange.

A big advertisement for the studio...

...and our baby girl featuring the knit animal capes we let the studio borrow for awhile, in return for some free framed photos later. She's famous!

We did encounter one problem though, and that was that Ellora was just not impressed with any amount of laughing, funny tricks or noises, or bubble blowing the photographer and assistant threw at her! That kid would not crack a smile for anything! It made the photo shoot rather difficult in terms of getting a good range of expressions. In the end, we just had to choose from what we had but I really wish she would learn to be more open and relaxed around Koreans and adults in general. Lighten up, little serious face! Here are a few choice examples of her "I'm not having it" attitude:

I'm not going to fall for that!

Do you think you are being funny right now?

Whatever, I'm just going to stand here and stare you down.

Whatever it is you are doing right now, it's not working.

Of course, as soon as we got her home she was happily playing and laughing with her toys, giving us lots of silly fang-tooth smiles. That's just the kind of girls she is, and she's not afraid to show it.