Saturday night I wrote an exquisite blog entry, full of imagery and turns of phrase that at least equaled those of the great writers in history.

And then blogger lost it for me.

I know you all weep for grief.

Well, here's the skinny of what I wrote: Saturday was Dae Boreum, the first full moon of the lunar year, and I went as a guest of the Foundation to a traditional Korean arts performance at the National Center for Traditional Korean Performing Arts.

If anyone makes it out to Seoul, while I'm here or not, you should check out getting tickets for the Saturday performances, which are offered at quite a low price (about $5 USD). The show I saw included several parts. One particularly neat one was a dance enacting a fabled story of a queen escaping from enemies by crossing a river on the backs of village women, who volunteered through their loyalty to the court. The woman dancing the part of the queen, dressed in scarlet robes, actually did walk on the other dancers' backs!

Another cool part was the four women, accompanied by the full set of court instruments, singing "Bright Moonlight," which exhorts the listeners to go the mountain and greet the moon.

Traditionally, you see, Korean villagers would climb the mountain nearest their village on Dae Boreum, and greet the moon with their wishes for the year.

Because it was a cloudy night, there was no moon to be seen on Saturday night. But the NCTKPA set the lobby of the performance hall up with memo pads and pencils, so that audience members could write down their wishes for the year, and pin them up on posts in the lobby.

After the show, the audience members practically ran out, blocking the egress of some of the performers, who were exiting out the audience doors. "How rude," I thought, but then I understood when I got outside; the NCTKPA had set up all those jotted wishes for the year in a large pyre in the middle of the plaza outside the building. Some audience members were plucked out and given large torches, and set the highly flammable straw ablaze.

The fire, which roared almost immediately into life, lit the plaza and toasted our faces -- so much so that we all backed away from it. Dancers and drummers began to circle the inflagration, and soon nearly all the audience was walking around their wishes, as those scribbled notes turned into flames, and into glowing embers afloat on the heat stream, and finally into ash melting into the moonless sky.
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Another tradition of the first full moon? Eat nuts. I've heard two differing reasons for this. One is to protect your skin from diseases in the coming year. The other is that if you crack the nuts with your teeth and then toss the shells away, you're dispelling evil spirits for the year.
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I saw my listening/reading and speaking tests today (just the rights and wrongs, not a final score), and I did fine. I'm not sure about the writing test I took this moroning, though (heh - a very apt slip, considering how I felt when I took it). But done is done.

Next part of the midterm process: speaking interviews on Thursday. My partner is a lovely 42-year-old Japanese nun who charmingly admitted today that her favorite place in Seoul is Lotte World, an amusement park.
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On top of all this testing nonsense, I am tasked with revising the school's advertisement to be placed in the Korea Herald, an English-language paper here. Just when I am feeling very, very unmotivated and would like to spend a day in bed. Yarlgh.