Chestnuts growing in an open field ...

Harvesting chestnuts is a four-appendaged sport. Or so I learned during this weekend's cultural outing - a day of activities at a "folk village" north of Daegu (kind of like Iowa's Amana Colonies but much simpler and smaller).

For anyone who didn't know (like me, before today), chestnuts grow inside fist-sized masses of thorns, which turn brown and thunk to the ground when ripe. Getting these well-armed bundles to give up their hearts is a prickly task. You'll need one hand to hold a sack, two well-soled feet to stop the thing into submission and then nimbly pry it open, and a surgeon's hand to go in after the innards. This of course while dodging the tree's attempts to pelt down more thorny fruit at the intruder.

I probably could have seen the process even in Colorado, but it's so much cooler to do my stomping-prying-extraction dance on a rainy gravel lane half a world away, listening to bleating goats and amusing a wizened Korean farmer leaning on a rake. Maybe that's why people travel ... not necessarily to make more memories but simply to tie them to more exotic incidentals. Plus, odds are that I wouldn't have hit any chestnut groves in the foreseeable future in Colorado.

And it's pretty neat to have a better understanding of the process behind what ends up on your plate - or palate. As far as I was concerned, the woody, autumnal treat simply materialized on city streets half-roasted. (By the way, that's not my picture - it's copied from an educational website with a clause allowing such use.)

Despite an unyielding downpour, we also:

• picked apples,
• dyed handkerchiefs with onion, ash-tree and soil dyes,
• ate a farm-fresh meal,
• made Korean rice dumplings,
• saw a traditional wedding ceremony (a couple from Iowa got mock re-hitched), and
• stomp-danced with the old women to a medley of traditional rhythm instruments.

All in all, an awesome day sponsored entirely by Daegu city tourism.

It's amazing the amount of money Korea is pouring into reaching out to the world, especially to Westerners. That event, which has been at least an annual occurrence for some years now, included buses, food and materials for about 120 people - not to mention labor costs. There were all sorts of nationalities there, including the first Spanish speakers I've chanced upon in Asia - a Mexican couple in government work. (My Spanish has obviously rotted away, by the way - eeks.)

And Friday, we went to a cultural expo back at Gyeong-ju, the historic city with the tombs east of here (see this post for ramblings from my earlier visit to other parts of the town). The government also keeps systematically pouring money into that expo center, constructing modern architecture, sponsoring cutting-edge exhibits that blend millenniums of culture with futuristic animation, and drawing performers from the world over.

And let's not forget that my existence here is largely on the government's tab, too. As I understand it, the Village we were hired to run is essentially city-funded to educate a broad swath of the city's kids - plus eventually serve as part of a large-scale attraction area north of the city with resorts, an amusement park and who knows what else. Organizers hope to break even through weekend events and special sessions, but the main portion of the state-of-the-art venture is dedicated to public education.

But it's not only the government pouring money into global ties - it's a whole culture. There are legions of expats here teaching English at all manor of institutions, most of them private firms funded by Korean parents hoping for global opportunities for their children. English competence is seen as a source of power, though Korean children are also fully expected to value their cultural heritage. There's much still that I don't understand about that balance, but it works largely in my favor.