Maewha Festival Market

Maewha Festival Market
Originally uploaded by TJF.

The sunlight was so bright today many of these photos look pretty washed out, but I like this picture because it shows something I see everyday in Korea--the old women sitting on the ground selling foodstuffs of all kinds.

More about today: This morning, after my host mother finished her classes at school, she picked me up outside the apartment at 10:25. We met up with the other two women and drove to the Maewha Village in Gwangyang, maybe an hour or two from Suncheon.

This festival started last weekend, but typically, there were crowds of people and as we neared the site traffic got worse. Luckily this year they'd decided to cut down on traffic by running a shuttle bus from a parking area to the actual maesil orchard. Though I had to stand on the bus the ride wasn't long.

At the festival site there were traditional performances and of course numerous stalls selling all kinds of foods, clothes and household items. A wide path led up into the hills, which were covered in maesil trees. Maesil is a type of plum, maewha refers to the blossom of this tree.

Though the festival felt a little premature (a lot of the trees hadn't even opened their buds yet) there were a number of beautiful flowering trees and I enjoyed being out in the sunlight, and the sort of festival atmosphere. I could tell that Mrs. Lee and the others were enjoying themselves, too. After watching the drummers we walked up the hill to the famous maesil orchard--apparently the origin of maesil trees in Korea. The female owner is very famous. Up at the orchard we ate "flower chun"--a sort of eggy pancake. I was actually half-expecting it to have blossoms in it, but it was actually just your standard "chun" or "bindaettuk" with spinach and little bits of octopus in it.

As we were waiting for the chun, my host mother asked me if I'd ever tried makkalli, a sort of opaque rice wine that has a pretty pungent, sort of freshly-fermented sort of taste. I told her I'd tried it, then I paused, gauged her expectant expression, and asked her if she liked it. She giggled and scampered off to buy a bottle--just one small one, for the four of us to share. While we were eating the three women started talking in Korean about how they felt happy to be here instead of at home doing housework. They thanked me, in English, for my hand in this. After a little more converation my host mother told the other two women that she drinks more alcohol because of me (I really don't drink very much, especially not with my host mother--I would say I'm more of a catalyst for her to drink if we're out to eat with other adults and I'm offered alcohol). Saegyung's mother laughed, gestured to me and said, again, "Thank you!" It's nice to be appreciated.

In the orchard's sort of gift shop, my host mother bought me a pendant--a maewha blossom preserved in a circle of glass and metal. It was a really sweet gift. Then we wandered down the hill through an area rich with blossoms. The picture of the four of us in front of the tree was taken there.

We left the Maewha village around 2 pm, and stopped for a late lunch of special Gwangyang charcoal-broiled bulgogi (beef). It was good, though I wasn't as hungry as you might expect someone eating lunch at 3 pm to be. At the festival we'd eaten duk (the kind I had a chance to hammer), roasted chestnuts, the chun and these little shellfish I had never tried before. The shells are very small and narrow, like the kind you might see at the bottom of an aquarium. They're boiled, and the pointy tip of the shell is cut off. There's a special way to eat them. First you suck on the tapered end (sometimes you get a little meat this way, but sometimes just salty juice) then you suck on the open end of the shell, and the little shellfish pops into your mouth. I liked them a lot more than I was expecting. I get offered a lot of shellfish living in Suncheon, and though my tastes are growing, there are only certain ones I like and usually not the whorled-shelled kind.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Gurye (I actually went there over the Solar New Year, with the families of everyone that accompanied me to the Maewhat Festival). There's a flowering dogwood festival there, so maybe I'll have more pictures to post tomorrow.