Hahoe Folk Village

This past weekend, we had a rather unique opportunity; not only did we get to take a trip to a 600 year-old Korean folk village, but we also got to do it with our church family.

It was a wonderful and unique experience right from the get-go, because we arrived at the church with Chelsea (who came along for the ride), and were floored by the sight of people loading onto a huge tour bus with the church name printed on it! I must say, coming from a small-town background, something like that just tickled me, because I was expecting to see a small fleet of vans and cars (you know, like we do back home).

So, suffice it to say that the journey was a lot more comfortable than I was expecting, which was wonderful, because the drive was about three hours. We arrived about 11:00 (which, for those of you keeping track, means we had to get out of bed at 5:30 to make the commute to the church before the departure time), and almost immediately jumped into a walking tour of the town.

As we walked, we were absolutely amazed by the beauty of the town, and marvelled at the way that the locals had married their traditional homes with a (semi-)modern life. There were cars parked in the driveways and electricity running to most of the houses, but these were mere curiosities in the midst of a little village outside of time.

I also learned on this trip about the reverence that Koreans hold for the forest. There are very (and I mean very) few old trees in the whole country. Apparently, not much of the landscape survived the Korean war, which led to a massive reforestation effort by the US and Korean governments. The result is the beautiful countryside that exists now, and any old trees that remain are preserved with great reverence by the people. The tree at the center of this village is roped off with row after row of wishes that visitors have written on slips of paper.

After that, we made our way to lunch, where we had a delectable chicken dish (I forgot to ask what it was called), before we went to check out the Hahoe Mask Dance. This was certainly one of the most unique experiences of our trip, but was fascinating to witness, as this dance has been a part of the culture for centuries and is even considered to be a national treasure. I won't go into all of the details here, but you can learn all about the dance at http://www.hahoemask.co.kr/.

That pretty much concluded our day. Afterward, we found our way back to Daejeon to sort through the hundreds of pictures that I took over the course of the day. It was a wonderful day, and we were really happy to have been able to share in it with our church family.