FRIDAY'S POST
Holiday!

Tomorrow is lunar new year (Chinese new year) so no school and no work for the Helen today. Instead, at Maiko's suggestion, we went with my dad to a Korean folk village in Suwon, which is about an hour south of Seoul. We saw a beautiful, robust farmers' dance that involved drumming, hats with long ribbons, and a bit of acrobatics. There was a performance of women acrobats on a not-quite-traditional Korean see-saw (the traditional one is a long wooden board that women used to jump to incredible heights; these performers used a more flexible man-made material). A comedian in the guise of a tightrope walker bounded across a rope up about 12 feet in the air while sitting crossed-legged, using one leg, etc.

The village features a mish-mash of 19th century Korean houses from various regions of the country, plus artisans whom you can actually watch creating masks or pipes or hanji (mulberry paper) or whatnot. It's owned by Samsung, which must make a mint not only from the tourists, but from the rental rates to the Korean dramas set in olden times. A few times I've caught myself watching one of these shows, which is surprisingly absorbing, and what do you know -- that exact drama was shooting while we were there!

I got the feeling that they shoot there quite often, for they were very lax about tourists coming near the scenes. The actors and extras and support crew were all sort of loitering in the courtyard of one of the big houses, so after we watched the farmers' dance, we went and loitered with them. My dad took a few pictures of me and Maiko standing around trying to look nonchalant while the stars of the show discussed something right behind us. One of the principal actors is also rather pretty, and I was gratified to see that he looks just as nice in person (i.e., hee hee! cute boy!). At my dad's behest, we also took a proper photo with another one of the stars, who very courteously put out the cigarette he had just lit up in order to take a picture with us (perhaps Dad's loud, "And this is a very famous actor right here!" jollified him up).

We also had some tasty denjang jjigae (bean paste stew), curried an ass (as in, brushed a donkey), watched a wandering rooster strut around, discovered that rabbit urine is beneficial to chickens (don't ask), declined to try picking up a yoke with two buckets used to carry feces, and fed some ducks (that was my dad, who cannot resist feeding animals, both domesticated and wild).

It was quite a nice day.

My dad recently bought a digital camera, and I have pictures of many of these things that I'd like to upload, but I'm not sure if this free form of blogger.com supports images. I'm working on it, but am not very computer-savvy; if anyone has any suggestions or knowhow that they'd like to send my way, please do, and I'll buy you a big bowl of bean paste stew (redeemable in Korea).

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I saw a commercial tonight that featured a cell phone that you can use like a credit card; point it at the register, press a few buttons, and zap your way through the sale. As cell phones here can already take pictures, connect to the internet, send text messages, play music, and oh, yes, make calls, I think we're closer than ever to eliminating the need for anything except a teeny little PDA. Could be nice.