Namsangol Hanok Village at the base of Namsan in Seoul offers many cultural events and usually has fun events on Korean holidays. This Seollal, (Lunar New Year) was no different, and they held events every day during the four day holiday weekend. I went over to check out the festivities on Tuesday, the last day of the Seollal holiday.
There were plenty of hands on activities for kids and grown-ups alike. First thing I tried was telling my fortune for the new year with the sticks used to play Yut-Nori.
Unfortunately, my fortune for the new year is not looking so good. It told me that I would not be able to accomplish my goals this year because I am lacking the tools to complete my goal. Not too good, though I don't know how much I should trust these giant plastic sticks.
Another activity was making a new year's wish by writing a message on a piece of colored paper and tying to to the strings. Perhaps I should have wished for a better new year's fortune....
Namsangol Hanok Village always has fun, traditional games to play. Here you can see people trying their luck spinning the traditional Korean top called 팽이치기 (Paengi Chigi). This top is spun by hitting it with a whip to keep it spinning as long as possible. It's harder than it looks!
And, of course, it wouldn't be Seollal without a good game of 윳노리 (Yut-Nori). This game is quite simple to play once you learn the rules. Sticks are thrown instead of dice and whether the sticks fall flat side up or round side up decides how many places you can move. The first team to get all four playing pieces back to start is the winner!
But, the most interesting part of the day for me was the performances of traditional Korean dances and instrumental performances.
Even a little less traditional group made it in the mix, these Korean B-Boys had their own take on traditional dancing by using fans and dancing to a modern song that used some traditional Korean instruments as well.
Below is a video of some of the performances, including the B-boys. Enjoy!
To see past events from Namsangol Hanok Village, see my previous posts:
Korean Traditional Food Festival
Daeboreum
Traditional Korean Wedding
I've been wondering how your no shampoo went and are you still doing it? Can you do a post updating?
ReplyDeleteahh, the hair experiment. I've switched over to an organic shampoo from Lush because the baking powder thing was just not working at all for my hair, I just always had limp, dead, oily looking hair. The organic shampoo was perfect for travel because it's in a bar, not a bottle, so it was easy to pack. The particular one I used was good for cutting the grease which was good, since I usually went 3 days between showers in Georgia. I'm a bit backlogged with posts right now, but I will try to write one about this organic shampoo because I swear by it now!
ReplyDelete