Korean Thanksgiving

Korean Thanksgiving or “Chu-Seok” was this past weekend. It’s similar to our Easter in how the date is different each year, but the time off is almost always the same, two days. My first year here we were incredibly lucky, it was called the “golden year” because we had a full week off. I went to Seoul and Busan with friends I just met in orientation. If you want to read about it, it’s here Chuseok Part I, Chuseok Part II. With the whole country off for a week, the economy took a BIG hit so they made sure that would never happen again. Last year, I was able to combine my Chu-Seok days off with another small vacation right after, so I went to Japan.

This year Chu-Seok came incredibly early, like Easter if it came at the end of March. The past two were the end of September/early October, but because this one came less than two weeks from when I had just got back to Korea, I didn’t want to do any traveling. What I did do, was visit my friend in Yeosu, a city about 1 hour 20 minutes away with three other friends on the Friday. We went to the aquarium. One of three in Korea and my first time going to one here. I don’t like going to Zoo’s and I wouldn’t suggest it as an activity to do, but all my friends were up for it and we had nothing else to do. If you want, you can read about my visit to the zoo in Spain here,A Visit to the Zoo . On Chu-seok tourist/cultural places are discounted to encourage families to do things together and the toll roads are free, but the aquarium was the full price of $30. Thirty dollars might not sound bad, but imagine a citys’ aquarium in the US and divide it by 3/4, the quarter left is the size of the one we went to. To be fair, I mentioned there are only three in Korea, one in Seoul, one on the island of Jeju and the one in Yeosu. Other than the aquarium and a cable car ride there aren’t many activities to do in the city and it’s a novelty in Korea, so perhaps the price is justifiable.

The aquarium was small but pleasantly surprising. Seeing all the different kinds of fish was amazing, l thoroughly enjoyed parts of it. I think that for the educational purposes they are necessary and probably inspire children to pursue marine biology or an environmental-related career. However, some of the displays were sad and without much care for the fish inside. One of them had a giant fish in a tank as wide as itself, all it could do was hover, anther had an adult sea turtle in a small cylindrical tank, they had two Beluga whales in a tank that could have been twice the size and too many penguins in an area about half the size of a bus. Personally, I don’t think either should even be kept in captivity. The first animal upon entering the aquarium is another that should definitely not be there, raccoons. Walking in on your right is an exhibit of 9 fat raccoons with lights blaring down at them as they sit on those fake rocks and tree branch stumps. It wouldn’t have been as depressing if it was an actual zoo with rocks trees and foliage with space for them to move around.

Within the aquarium was a trick eye section, paints and areas throughout come “alive” when you point your phone at them. If it wasn’t already included within the ticket, I wouldn’t have ever done it, it looked lame. Also, I didn’t like the idea of having to use your phone to experience it, but once I got into it, it was surprisingly fun. Each room was a different theme, the first one was fantasy, then the sea, jungle, fairytale and some more I can’t remember. If you were by yourself it wouldn’t be fun, you definitely need to go with friends.

After the aquarium, we planned to ride in a cable car for the sunset, but once we climbed 20 stories worth of stairs, we decided not to do it. Instead, we watched it from there, hiked back down and ate dinner at a Pizza place that had “ good” pizza for Korea. I would eat there again. All that concludes my Chu-seok, Saturday and Sunday I literally did nothing. Ran, played PlayStation and watched season 4 of Stranger Things.