Though my school made us work on Wednesday from 10 to 1pm, they gave us Saturday off, which I thought was better anyway. Wednesday afternoon SY and I went to her parents' house and ate dinner with the whole family -- nieces, nephews, brothers, and sisters-in-law.
Thursday was similar -- we went to the parents' house for breakfast, hung out for lunch, and then went home. There was a ceremony in the early morning, but that was before we'd gotten there.
For Seollal, the younger generations bow (jeol 절 style, with face and hands to the floor, in a ceremony called "새배") to the older generations. In return they get money (usually about 5 or 10 dollars). Kids like this deal; socially it's kind of like Christmas, but they get money instead of presents. I did my bow to her parents, and then my 2 nieces and 4 nephews bowed to me (all at the same time).
Those dinners are usually a bit stressful for me, since I don't know what's going on and no one really talks to me. Mostly I just sit there and keep from getting too bored. We eat traditional Korean holiday food (like ddeokguk, 떡국) and then SY and I go home.
One of the things I was surprised by this year were the little fiddler crabs SY's mother served. They were only about an inch and a half across:
From what I saw, the way to eat them is to put the whole body in your mouth, crunch it up, suck out what meat you can, then spit out the shells. Eat the big claw separately.
Friday and Saturday I caught up on rest. Later, we went out and saw the movie Happily Never After. All in all, a nice weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment