As I mentioned a few days ago, I spent my Lunar New Year (Sol Nal) in Pohang at my mother-in-law’s house.As this was my first sol-nal to spend with Koreans, I was anxious to see how they celebrate the new year.

Just like most holidays, it’s centered around family. MyeongHee’s neice and nephew came to our house on Friday evening and we spent Saturday and part of Sunday playing Wii games. We had recently bought Wii Fit so we had a number of active games to keep them occupied. Like most kids, watching TV, playing computer games and video games occupies the majority of their time. Her neice, MinGyeong, is in her first year of high-school, just like DongHyun. They get along well together. MH’s nephew, ChangHyun, is about 5 years younger and is still in elementary school. He’s a playful little guy who excelled at the sports games on the Wii.

On Sunday afternoon, we packed up all the kids and drove up the coast to Pohang where MyeongHee’s brothers and wives had already arrived. Sunday evening we spent watching TV and playing Wii games which we had brought along with us.  Around 10pm, one of the brother’s friends brought over a large box of steamed crabs. Yum! I love crab and it’s just about as expensive here as in the States, so I don’t get it very often. It was interesting to watch how Koreans eat them – no shell crackers and clarified butter – they use kitchen scissors to neatly cut things apart. Eating crab legs was never easier with the legs simply sheared off – just suck the meat out of the tube like a straw. MinGyeong and I feasted on the legs while the rest of the family ate legs and guts mixed with rice. I’m not a big fan off guts so I simply watched them eat their yellow, gray and pink rice mixture while hiding my revulsion as best I could.

Early in the morning, we held another ancestor worship ceremony for MyeongHee’s father. That’s the same ritual they do during Thanksgiving (Chuseok) and I’ve learned that they do it at all big holidays. They’ll do it again one the anniversary of his death. Ancestor worship is a huge part of Asian, not just Korean, culture and it figures heavily into their traditions.  At the crack of dawn, we got up, dressed in our finest and bowed in front of the table filled with traditional foods. Then we went to my mother-in-law’s younger sister’s house just down the beach for the same thing (her husband had also passed away) and ate breakfast there. Then we packed up and headed to the military memorial to do another ceremony for MH’s father at graveside. I took this opportunity of bright sunshine, for by then it was 11am, to take some family photos.

This is the whole clan at the graveside of MyeongHee’s father, Kim CheonDo. In the background are a couple of other families doing the same thing – bowing and eating lunch by the graves of their fathers, brothers and uncles.

After we arrived back home and had another lunch (Koreans and food just go together) it was time for a nap while the kids played with the Wii. Dinner time was the traditional New Years dish of ddeok Guk, a soup made of doughy rice. While I was in Texas in 2005, 2006, I made manDu Guk, a similar dish, but with meat and veggie filled dumplings. Most people loved my mandu guk and would probably love ddeok Guk as well.

Last fall, I went to a festival and watched them make ddeok,

the rice dough, which is made my pounding rice and water into a sticky paste.

During the holiday, the kids are supposed to do their “sehbeh,” or bow, to their elders. This is not just a simple bow, but a knees-and-nose-on the-floor bow expressing their respect. Afterwards, parents, uncles, and grandmother is expected to give them money. I gave them each 30,000won (about $35) but I declined the bow. Being a westerner, I’m a little uncomfortable with being bowed to.

Otherwise, it was a pretty typical family holiday. With only a small 4-room house for the 10 of us, it was hard to find any real privacy. The girls, therefore, put on their makeup and curled their hair in the main room while the men shaved along side them. While the bathroom has all the western plumbing, it was added on after the main house and doesn’t have heating. Its too cold to spend too much time in there, especially if you have to put on a cold mask as MinGyeong does.

Again, it was another few days of agonizing on the floor without any furniture other than a small cushion to sit on. My legs ached for a decent chair. Were only there for 48 hours, but I was more than ready to sink into a chair just to get my weight off my legs. SaTang was ready to come home, too. With so many people in so small an area, she had more than enough people willing to throw her a ball or give her a snack. She didn’t sleep much and has been in her bed almost continuously since we came home 18 hours ago.

Lunar New Year, that is. In many parts of the western world, it’s known as “Chinese New Year” but that doesn’t sit well with all the other Asia culture who also celebrate the event. The official new year day is next Tuesday, January 27th. But since it’s normally a 3-day holiday we’ll start on Monday and have through Wednesday. So, I now have a 5-day weekend. This is a much bigger holiday in Asia than January 1st (or December 31st) and is a time of family gatherings.

This year, I’ll be going to MyeongHee’s mother’s house on Pohang. Although I’ve been in Korea for 3 years, I’ve missed all the official New Years rituals. In 2005, MH and I weren’t dating long enough for her to take me home to her family. My friend Kim Wheels had come then and we spent the holiday wandering around Seoul trying to find restaurants that were still open. In 2006 I was living back in Texas. In 2007 I had just barely returned to Korea and went skiing with friends. In 2008, I took two weeks vacation during LNY to come back to Texas and see my family and friends. This will be the first LNY, or  “Sol Nal” as they call it, in which I’ll get a chance to see how the Koreans do it.

We’ll leave from Ulsan on Sunday, so when I come back I hope to be able to type a few paragraphs on what LNY means for the Koreans.

I’ll be sitting on my ass on a comfy sofa until we go to Pohang. Once we get there, its three days of sitting and sleeping on hard-ass floors.

Have you been to Ulsan online yet? I’ve been speding lots of time lately on the site writing code, formatting, editing and even writing articles. I hope to write more articles, but lately its been down-and-dirty geek stuff. I’m not complaining, because as a geek, that’s fine for me.

The work I did for the Ulsan Pear and, briefly, for the Korea Sun, were all volunteer. This one has been, too, so far, but that may be about to change. We’ve reached the point where we have enough content to get some of the local businesses to pay for banner ads and other forms of advertising. I might actually make some coin in this venture. Not enough to get rich, but it might be enough to buy me a beer or two.

One perk I get so far is a discount on the bar at Benchwarmers, a local sports bar and one of our partners. I also get to advertise for MyeongHee’s hair shop, listed on the same page.

Check out the site and tell me what you think.  Should any of you actually want to visit me here, it might give you a decent idea of what living here is like. This blog has only my experiences, not the breadth of experiences of dozens of expats like me.

I keep waiting for the Korean Won to come somewhere close back to reality. It’s still hovering around 1350 won to the dollar. It was nearly 1500 late last year and then dropped to the mid 1200s after a cash swap deal with the US. But whatever reality has set in now somehow believes that American dollars are worth more than they were.

Trying to plan for a flight back to America in May of this year is proving to be a daunting task. Should I buy now and try to get a cheap flight? Or should I wait and hope the won increases in value and makes it a better deal for a guy with no dollars but plenty of won?

One would think that will the billions of dollars being printed and distributed by the US Treasury that each would be worth less since there’s no gold backing it up. But somehow, the Korean government thinks just the opposite: more dollars in circulations means they are each worth more. I suppose they’re hoping that enough exports of Hyundai cars and ships, LG and Samsung TVs and memory chips will buoy the local economy with an influx of cash. Maybe they’re trying to make up the shortfall in American purchasing with a higher exchange rate.

Whatever the reason, it’s going to cost me a bundle to come home unless it comes down soon. 🙁

Just a little bit. Upon awakening this morning we were greeted by a heavy flurry of snow. Not near enough to accumulate, but enough to cause a flood of little kids to swarm into the park and await enough to build a snowman. SaTang wasn’t sure what to think of it. She tried to bite a few flakes. Things weren’t cold enough to stick and most of it melted as it hit. I went ahead and rode my bike, thinking it wasn’t going to be a problem but it quickly proved me wrong. It became a real snowstorm. By the time it started to get wet and slushy, I was too far from home to just walk. So I had to carefully navigate my way on the simply wet parts. I only got in 20 minutes of riding before I decided it might cause me to slip and get hurt (I’m a puss – I hate that) and I called it quits. Within 2 minutes of taking off my riding gear and getting ready for a shower, it stopped. Now, the sun is out and things are drying out. So, our one “snowstorm” lasted for about 1 hour and is now nothing but memories and a few pockets of snow still left in the shadows.

The passenger side headlught went out in the car this week. Having only American manufacturers as experience in having to change a light I was mentally prepared to spend $50-75 to change the entire assembly. In the foreign cars I had in America the only light I changed that was more than a mere bulb was in my BMW 740i – that cost me $275 for the taillight assembly. All the other cars with headlights gone bad cost me a decent bit of change to change the whole thing. I just had the headlight changed here for $5. Just a bulb and 2 minutes of labor (no charge). They build things for easy repair and maintenance and I have trouble understanding why anyone would have built them different. If American cars are now built with this mentality, then great. But the last American car I had was a Ford Explorer SUV. Just about everything on it was a bitch-kitty to repair or replace.