Chuseok for Young Gun's Family

   My family is not traditional whatsoever. I'm guessing it's because of a lot of our family members practice Christianity. I was told that the older generation of Christianity believed anything that is not Christian, such as the traditional ways of Korea or Buddhism, are demonic activities. And Korean traditions said the same about Christianity.    I got a few priests in my distant family. But my immediate family never really cared what other religious or traditional fanatics said. We just went groovy with everything however it suited us best.    So that's a bit of a history lesson about my family.    With that said, this Chuseok was intensely groovy. And I said 'intensely' because I lost my voice from laughing half a day.    We didn't even bother with anything for most of this long weekend. Chuseok was on Monday and we only prepared a couple of things for the Sunday. We decided to get together on Monday evening because my dad doesn't usually get the holiday break and we wanted all the family members at our barbecue party.    Yes. Outdoor barbecue in Korea with the whole family. Jelly? You should be! Because it was awesome!    Except, of course, I was told that in Western cultures that kind of cookout is quite common. So I guess we're just like, "Screw tradition. We're cooking red meat! What's the neighbor got? Rice cake sitting on the clustered floor table? Ha!"    Well, actually rice cake isn't too bad. Except it's a bit harder to prepare a bunch for the family and it's mostly the women in the family making those. We didn't appreciate that very much.

Outdoor barbecue with my family, mostly praying before eating. And there's me who's getting caught on flaming oil while cooking. The usual. Image Source : One of my uncle's videos

   They say a house that isn't on fire is a good house. And I set fire on the barbecue pen and didn't set my house on fire for once, so it was a good house.    After that, the adults watched a couple of movies. And the young ones came to my room to play Halo Reach or their own mobile games, or torture my dogs.    I never played Headhunter or Invasion until today. Don't know why. Because it was hilarious. Never thought I'd laugh so hard losing a game because a checkpoint disappeared in front of me and I started vomiting a firework of burning skulls and everyone wanted a piece of my corpse.    Then we got bored. So we played Mortal Kombat. If you know the game, you know its graphics. And the irony of all of us being so good at not hitting each other with button mashing was the part that I lost my voice.    Two of four old Xbox 360 controllers broke along with a couple of fortunately-not-very-significant technologies in my room. As a semi-experienced house party host, that just means it was a good party. But I tell you, kids are violent.

Kids and uncles visiting grandparents. Image Source : One of my uncle's videos

   One of the families crashed at our place for the night, and woke up early the next morning. We went to my grandparent's graveyard. I still don't know why it's only the men who go there. The ladies say they just don't want to hike. So I said, 'meh'.    Came back, played baseball, football (what Americans call soccer), had lunch, spent some time in traffic and went to Eunpa Lake Park. We scattered after a good couple of family days.    I tell you, funerals may be the events that get the family together much better than any family holidays. But none of those are anywhere near as fun as this!
 

Young-Gun Park

Young-Gun Park has been studying various forms of visual arts for more than a decade and has been involved in various community arts projects. He has been a writer and photographer for GPTWT for more than a year. His future portfolio projects include work in cinematography and graphic novels. Read more.