Road Trippin' to Andong

I was able to get out of Daegu again this last weekend (that sounds terrible, like I just count the days until I can leave Daegu – but really I just get very excited for the weekends and the chance to do something a little different). A lady from my school got married Sunday in the city of Andong, and the principal decided to turn it into a cultural experience for me! She’s very thoughtful that way (she’s the same lady who let me tag along to see Jekyll and Hyde at the school’s expense). Sunday morning Bosun, the principal, one of the gym teachers, another lady who works at the school, and I met at Jeil Middle School and drove to Andong in the gym teacher’s car.

My experience of the wedding was very funny to me, and fit right in with Korea’s typical quick-and-dirty methods of making things happen (Korea is dynamic, remember?). Koreans usually get married in a “wedding hall” rather than a church, and they also like to get married on special days that they consider lucky. So yesterday being a lucky day, there were at least two weddings happening every hour in the wedding hall of Andong. The ceremony itself only lasts about 20 minutes – not that I would know, because my group waited for a while in a little lobby of the hall, made quick eye contact with the bride as she was being photographed, and then trooped down to the hall’s cafeteria with our meal tickets to eat at the huge buffet line, along with the friends and family of every other couple who was being married in that time slot! Bosun informed me that this is common if you don’t know the couple that well – just make an appearance and skip the ceremony to make sure you get a seat and some food while it’s still warm!

The others returned to Daegu after our meal, but they dropped Bosun and I off at Andong’s bus terminal on their way out. As I said, the principal was kind enough to turn the wedding trip into an opportunity for me to see more of Andong, at the school’s expense. The city is famous for maintaining a lot of Korea’s culture and traditions, most notably in the form of ancient buildings and folk customs like the mask dances (it’s also famous for its own type of soju and steamed chicken!). Bosun and I took a forty minute bus ride from Andong to Hahoe Village. It’s a traditional village that was built in the 16th and 17th century, and a lot of the original buildings are still standing and people continue to live in them! The village was beautiful – a river wraps around it almost entirely, there’s a large cliff called Buyungdae overlooking the whole thing, and we also had great weather and a beautiful sunset to enjoy it in.

But my favorite part of the day was watching a performance of the Hahoe Mask Dance Drama. I read about mask dances before I even left the States, and was disappointed that I missed the annual Mask Dance Festival at the end of September (cancelled because of stupid swine flu!). So I was really excited to hear that I would be able to see this performance. According to the booklet I bought there, “Hahoe Pyolshin-gut T’ al-Nori is one of Korea’s most traditional folk plays [and] has been performed for centuries as a village ritual…The drama combines shaman rituals and popular entertainment. The village ritual was intended to please the local goddess and exorcise evil spirits…The whole village took part in the event and enjoyed the satirical story revealed in the drama…Each of these characters represents a social class. Conflicts among different classes and individuals were satirized to relieve social tensions among the families in the village.” Pardon my terrible quotation job, but they summarize it better than I can! The show was in a circular outdoor theater and was so cool – I didn’t understand much because it was in Korean and I didn’t buy the booklet until after the show, but it was funny and the actors interacted with the crowd. Not to mention I was watching something that has been maintained and handed down for centuries, not only the stories but the masks and costumes as well. I also loved the live music that accompanied the show – there were drums and some sort of horn that emphasized certain dialogs or the end or beginning of a scene. Not to mention the free concessions – men and women walked along the bottom of the stands passing along warm rice cakes to the crowd, or hurling them at anyone who had their hand out but was sitting too high up to reach (I brushed rice cake crumbs out of my hair that night and shook them out of my purse).

So anyway, Andong was great! I know that reading this without visual aids just isn’t the same, but I killed my camera battery taking too many pictures. I WILL put up pictures of Busan and Andong soon! Thanks for reading these ridiculously long posts and keep in touch! I miss you all!