재사 [jae sa]

So this weekend I went home to my grandparents' place for jae sa. Jae sa is basically a ceremony to honor a deceased elder. It's held on the day they passed away, and this one was for my great grandparents. I hadn't participated in this in a while since I'm only in Korea during the summers so I had forgotten what it was all about. Recently I learned in one of my classes that traditional korean culture reinforces the belief of spiritual existence after death, and this was very apparent in this ceremony.

I wish I had brought my camera home this weekend, but my grandmother and aunts spent the last couple days preparing aka cooking a LOT of food. For the ceremony, a large table is set up with the pictures of my great grandparents and all the food that was prepared. Every jae sa needs to have certain food (such as fish, rice cakes, fruit, meet, stew, rice etc) and there's a specific arrangement in which all the dishes must be placed relative to where the ancestors would sit. Before the ceremony the front door is open so the spirits could enter, the lights in the house are turned off, and candles are lit. We welcome the ancestors by doing the traditional korean bow twice. Incense are lit and a small glass of alcohol is poured then is rotated around the incense three times counter clockwise. I don't really know why they do this, but I got to do it because I was the oldest in my generation to be there. There was lots more bowing and bowing and at the end, we each did individual prayers where we asked the ancestors for good health and luck. It was fun participating in the ceremony.

Then we got to eat all the food and i am stufffed. and I brought a lot of the food back with me to the dorms so i have plenty of food to snack on while i write an essay for tomorroww woooooo