Chu(don't)seok

Chuseok (pronounced Choo-suck) is the Korean equivalent to the American Thanksgiving.

For three days, "there is a mass exodus of Koreans as they return to their hometowns to pay respects to the spirits of their ancestors. People perform ancestral worship rituals early in the morning. They often visit the tombs of their immediate ancestors to trim plants and clean the area around the tomb, and offer food, drink, and crops to their ancestors."  (wiki)

But, what Chuseok meant for me was gifts!  And not just little gifts, bulk sized gifts!!

Thursday (9/8) I was given two huge bags of gourmet coffee.  However, I don't drink coffee, so I re-gifted the bags-of-yuck to my co-teachers.  They all were eager to accept a bit more caffeine and very grateful that I was offering my coffee to them.  It would have been wasted on me and passing it off to them really got me two birds with one stone - (1) I didn't have keep it and (2) it made me look good :)

Friday (9/9) during lunch, the Vice Principal mentioned that the Principal had a gift for us.  Nice, more gifts!!  As we were heading out of the teacher's room to receive the gift, one of the office workers handed us a giant box of dried seaweed.  I mean, it was GIANT!!  The box was over a foot long, half a foot wide, and packed full of seaweed!!  Amazing!!!  It's a fantastic snack, it's great with rice, and it's a good side when you have curry.  It's fantastic!  and you just gave me a giant box of it!!! Ahhh I love Chuseok!! 

With that on my arm, we were off to the Principal's office were we were handed a fancy looking, navy bag, told "Happy Chuseok" and sent on our way.  

What's in the bag?!  

I was thinking oils.  During Chuseok, families go through bottles and bottles of oil for cooking.  Being that I don't cook (Korean Test Kitchen has sadly closed) I was a bit nervous as to who I would be able to re-gift this too.  But alas!! It wasn't oil.  It was 8 cans of Spam!  

I will be needing a lot of Spam recipes to help me get through all this "meat".