Archive for the Korea Category
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Posted in Korea, Olive, family, fun, milestones on 27 January 2009 by saintlouisfricksStarting Early
Posted in Korea, Olive, family, food, life, milestones on 24 January 2009 by saintlouisfricksTomorrow is Lunar New Year’s Eve… if there is such a thing. We’ll be having a big New Year’s meal, probably at In Soo here in St. Louis. It’s a Chinese and Korean place that we’ve heard great things about.
Monday is New Year’s Day. Traditionally, everyone bathes early in the morning and puts on solbim, new clothes. Olive will be donning her hanbok again. But we have a new one for this occasion. (Stay tuned for pictures! )
Adam and I will be drinking traditional liquor (if we can find it!), gui balki sool. It is believed to clarify the hearing. We also plan to make sure and tell Olive the story of her birth parents (what we know of them), how we came to find her, and how much she means to us. We have just a few pictures to share with her (4,000+ at this point) of our lives together.
We will honor her ancestors and our own, and plan to have lots of fun together as a family. There’s usually kite-flying and game-playing, so we’ll see what we can actually accomplish of those with a 15-month-old! And one of these days, we hope to master Yut, a traditional Korean game.
So how did we start early? Well, we kinda tore into the traditional new year’s sweets. We bought a handful of things at Jay’s, most of them Vietnamese. Mung Bean cookies, coconut milk cookies, and sesame umbrella cookies. So Adam and I are sitting around after lunch, munching on our sweets and sipping coffee, watching old episodes of The Office on Netflix instant-view (which is totally awesome, btw). I put away several cookies before deciding to check the nutrition facts. Well, it appears that nine of the quarter-sized sesame umbrella cookies amount to 580 calories. WHA??? I’m freaking out, realizing how many I socked away in about 7 minutes. But then we checked the coconut milk cookies. Hm, well… 9 of those cookies equals 16 calories. So, we’re not putting a lot of faith in the nutritional facts of our treats. I dodged a bullet there!!!
For those who are interested, here’s more info on LNY from familyculture.com:
The Koreans focus on the family as they celebrate the beginning of the New Year. Children put on new traditional clothes called hanbok. They kneel and bow to their ancestors and elders. Family members wish each other prosperity and good fortune. Then they exchange gifts. Children receive lucky money, candy and fruit from the elders. The family spends time together and have rice-cake soup for breakfast. Children often take this day to play special New Year games. In parts of Korea, people usher in the New Year with a ritual called Jishin Balpgi. Loud drums and gongs are played to scare off evil spirits of the old year. At the end of the day, friends and relatives join together for dinner to renew their friendship. Sol is a celebration of family and good friends. And for the Koreans, the New Year is about family and community.
