Keeping Up With Tradition
October 2020 pumpkins in South Korea!
Wow. What a crazy few months we are about to experience here! The last week or two has been full of my Google Photos saying, "Look what you did on this day 1 year ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago!" October is full of all the fun fall activities and Google is making sure that I not only remember what we've done in the past but feel also feel a bit homesick at the same time while I think about the festivities we are missing out on. For the last several years my family has attended The Bhurd Family Pumpkin Patch event and many members of our family bring their kids to pick out pumpkins, eat Dunford donuts, and hot chocolate or cider. My phone is full of these picture memories which is shortly followed by Brandon and I's first time carving pumpkins together in Cedar City at the Inn and our last couple of years of painted pumpkin attempts.
I am hoping that in one, three, or five years from now my Google Photos will continue to share these precious memories along with the excitement of getting a new Kitty and other adventures for the time we lived in South Korea. We are building new and different memories but that doesn't change the slight bit of sadness I am experiencing knowing that Pumpkins and Halloween is happening now but in one month we will be missing our family's Thanksgiving and in two months, Christmas. I haven't thought about it too much yet but there are tears streaming down my face as I consider the inevitable time we will be missing with our families.
With that being said, I knew that we couldn't let this year go by without pumpkins. Nobody in Korea really celebrates Halloween so the pumpkins aren't as easily available. Last weekend, the market day in town happened to land on a Sunday so David and Hyelan invited us to go walk around and help us find/barter a good deal on some fresh produce or anything we might need. The fresh fruits and vegetables in our local grocery mart are insanely overpriced and it makes eating fresh quite challenging. Anywho, it was a great experience to walk around with them and see what the market looked like as we'd never been brave enough to go by ourselves. We found some nice looking pumpkins and snagged them for 3,000 won each (about $2.70). We had also talked about making caramel apples so we found a bag of those for about 5,000 won or $4.50).
Excited that we found what we needed to continue our tradition, we were just about ready to leave when I spotted somebody selling bed quilts. Not a quilt topper, but the mattress topper quilt that people here use instead of a fitted sheet. The teachers before us left two blankets and I did bring a top-sheet from home so for all this time we've just used one blanket as our bottom sheet. It's worked fine until now but it is really just too big for our tiny washer so I have to shove it in and worry about breaking the machine every time it needs to be washed. It also takes at least 24-36 hours to hang dry so it's really just inconvenient. I picked a pattern I liked and we took the new topper home with us as well. I will say it also seems a bit too big for our small washer, but less so than the original two blankets so I will take what I can get.
I didn't want to spend a fortune on supplies because we will likely only use them a few times before we leave so we each had a single paintbrush to work with and real acrylic paints that needed to be watered down to use which was honestly a hassle. I definitely missed the convenience of my giant shoe-box full of every pre-mixed paint, 50 paintbrush styles to choose from, and an array of other supplies/glitter! But we eventually figured it out and also watched Ghostbusters together while we did it. The kitty, of course, wanted to eat the paint off of our plate and thought I was playing with him whenever I moved my paintbrush. A different kind of experience but I am glad we did it together. Everybody needs to paint or carve a pumpkin, yearly. It just needs to happen to feed your soul.
   |
| Fun fact: I usually despise pictures of couples kissing because it is yucky but I was so happy with how this turned out for some reason. All we really have is each other and it just works. Smushy, smushy, smushy. |
Making caramel apples was not quite as successful. Somebody had the brilliant idea to cut apples and do slices so they would be more delicious and easy to eat. I'm sure anybody who's ever made caramel apples before can guess that was a total fail because apples are too wet and the caramel all just slid to the bottom. A frustrating lesson learned, but we still got a lot of full apples made and they have been a fun treat to have. Brandon and I made caramel apples one time before when I was still living with my parents and the experience may have been slightly better because we didn't do slices... but I've definitely learned that if you want yummy caramel apples in fall either 1, go to Gardner Village and buy a fancy one no matter how expensive it is or 2, just buy the soft caramel dips from smiths so you can dip and enjoy those apple slices!
  |
| Those apple slices though...! |
Another thought, completely out of left-field, just entered my mind. I will be missing Ruth Kuhlman's heavenly pumpkin bars this year and I am honestly furious. Today I will just be happy that we got to continue our pumpkin tradition and try not to worry about the other upcoming holidays. One good thing about the holidays is that we get to teach 'free lessons' about the holiday which usually means less prep work as all the grades get the same two classes for the week and they are usually more exciting than our typical textbook topics. This is a positive thing to look forward and hopefully, we will find a good way to celebrate on our own at home.
Nacho trying to get in on the action with Ghostbusters in the background
Comments
Post a Comment