Pumpkin Carving In Korea

Of all the holidays, Halloween is my favorite. It holds an even more special place in my heart because I arrived here just a couple months before it in 2008, and even make a trip into Hongdae in Seoul to celebrate.

So this will be my third year of heading into Hongdae to have Halloween fun. I'm not a huge fan of going to Seoul ... at all. But to celebrate Halloween the right way, you have to be where the westerners are. That's just science.

So to prepare for my third Halloween in Korea -- and Jeong Mi's first official Halloween -- she and I carved pumpkins last weekend.

It was a lot of fun. She had never carved pumpkins before, and I haven't done it in two years, so it was awesome.

We found a big orange one and a small green one at Lotte Mart. The big one was about 12,000 won ($10.62 right now). That's not a bad price. The little one was only about 4,000 won, so that's a good deal.

The pumpkins here are a bit different than what we carved at home. I'd just refer to these as big gourds, really. But a pumpkin is a gourd, and there did the trick.

We spent about an hour doing the whole thing. We checked out some pics of other cool jack-o-lanterns, then got to work on ours. Afterwards, I cleaned off the seeds and baked them for a nice little treat.

Jeong Mi definitely has a good time with the pumpkins. Of course, I did too. The only problem is we have no porch to set them on or window where we can point them out towards the world. And with Halloween this weekend, my apartment is starting to get that unmistakable squishy pumpkin smell. Haha.

But we took a ton of pics, and we made some nice memories for sure. As long as I'm in Korea, I'm sure this will become a tradition for us.

Check out all the pics here!!!