YEY! It's finally summer vacation! In two weeks I'm going to Norway for a short time to spend some time with my family and friends. But right now I'm at my boyfriends parents house in Suncheon. I personally like Suncheon better than Seoul. Suncheon is smaller, more quiet and people more friendly. For those coming to Korea to study or just travel you should try to go outside Seoul and explore other cities also, see Korean culture more up close.
I've been here for some few days. Me and my boyfriend have spent most day just relaxing. I'm currently sitting in a coffee shop and drinkin iced americano, so humid outside today!
Our first day in Suncheon, and the reason why we came is that we went to my boyfriends cousins wedding.
Wedding is Korea is......Interesting. Its so far from a Norwegian wedding as possible. When you arrive to a wedding hall you must find out what floor you are going to. Every floor has a wedding room, so you must find out where the wedding you are going to are being held. When you get to that floor you will see a table where you must go to give money for the couple getting married. Weddings in Korea is super crazy expensive, and couples family must spend alot of money paying for their wedding, so every guest must pay money to attend, which will go to the parents for paying back. Therefor the more people who come, the better. When the wedding starts you can go inside the room and sit down to watch. The fun part here is that the rooms are small, so not everyone can go inside and watch if you have invited all people you know. And the most annoying part and surprising for me is how non romantic it is. Most people are talking during the ceremony, even on their celephones, not paying attention at all. The ceremony itself takes like a half hour at the most. The wedding ceremony itself is some weird also. Firstly, the person who marry the couple aka the priest can be whoever, it can be someone in the family, a friend, old professor, whoever can do it. Second, in the middle of the ceremony it's normal that a friend of the couple sing for the couple. And my favorite part that makes me giggle everytime = at the end of the ceremony when they are married and they walk down the aisle, two females stand on each side of the aisle with trumpets shooting out sparkeling stuff at the wife and husband. I wonder who came up with this tradition.
After the ceremony is finished its buffet time! This is probably the last time we see the couple at the wedding except if you are close family. Parents of the couple go into another room alone having traditional tea ceremony where the bride and groom change into wedding hanboks and do traditional ritual with theit parents, this last also for about a half hour. After that the couple leaves the wedding and most likely go strait to their honeymoon. Rest of the guest, and main reason why people attend weddings here is to eat buffet. Here you can eat like crazy, eat dessert and drink alcohol. This buffet is shared with all the guests of all the weddings taking places in the buildnings at once. After the bufett the whole wedding is finished and time to go home. There is no after party, no cutting of cake, no dance, nothing. Just a short ceremony and some food. My boyfriends parents of course wants us to have this kind of wedding also in two years time. I don't really want, because for the price of this wedding I can have 10 westerns weddings, a romantic wedding in my homecountry. But here in Korea the wedding is more for the parents than the couple. It's to show off the families status, show off their son/daugther, show they have money etc.. So its not only for family, but coworkers of the parents. Its more business than it is to celebrate a couples love.
After the wedding and buffeet we drove to my boyfriends uncles restaurant nearby. Here we ate fruits and traditional cakes made by the bride. The bride is suppose to make beautiful food and snacks for her new family in law. I will fail at this big time in the future.
It's now four days since the wedding took place, and we are just relaxing at my bf parents place. It's better to stay here than in Seoul. The weather is not hot as in Seoul, and his parents apartment got aircondition which we don't have in ours. We have spend the days doing almost nothing, just spend time with each other. I think its good for our relationship to get out of our hobbit size apartment and just relax and enjoy each others company. Its easy to get tierd of each other when living in such a small apartment back in Seoul. We have mostly been in coffeeshops, out eating, watching word cup at bar, walking the the park and so on. Vacations are for relaxing right??.
Oh, but there was one day, the day after the wedding, when we had to attend another of my bf's uncle ceremony for becoming CEO of an organization. We drove an hour to a country side place, like taken out from a money, only traditional houses and rice fields everywhere. My boyfriend spent the time sleeping laying on my lap in the car, but I was too busy watching outside the car window. It was so pretty, interesting and different from what I've seen in Korea so far. I didn't really know where we were going or what we were going to do there. When we arrived there was a big hall, I think it's the sports hall to a school or something. Inside people were dressed in suits, hanbok's and pretty dresses. Thank god I wore a pretty dress and heels that day. People of course looked at me like I was an alien, or first foreigner they have even seen. Well, it could be that I was the first foreigner they have seen when I think about it...... The place has round tables everywhere, and a hugh buffet and stage with flowers and instruments. I was suprised how formal this banquet was. We sat down and after a while the entertainment started and also some people holding a speech. And now the part that was very embarresing. Our table was the table of honor, the table of the family of the new CEO, we were only 5 people of his family attending. They started to introduce important people. And guess what.... We had to stand up infront of everyone, and bow twice infront of the whole audience, like 100-200 people. And I had no clue what was going on before my boyfriend told me to stand up, so I did. Then he asked me to bow infront of all..Confusing foreigner moment. I felt like hiding under the table when I finished... But I survived and I could enjoy the buffet later and also getting many people coming over talking to my boyfriends parents because they were curious who this blonde foreigner was. But everyone was really kind, told me how pretty I am and also I got flowers from one of the men there saying welcome to their town.
I had some really nice days so far, and I still got a week left. Today I've only been sitting here in this coffeeshop, and I did some quick shopping, bought two tshirts. This city shopping is alot cheaper than back in Seoul! 4000 won for a tshirt.
And now for this weeks video=
Enjoy.
And lastly
A old photo of my boyfriends family ^-^
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