Happy Lunar New Year

Last week was another holiday in Korea, a rather important one: the lunar New Year or Seolnal in Korean :) I'd say this is one of the most important Korean holidays together with Chuseok - the Korean thanksgiving that I'd already written about.

Seolnal is a family holiday, a time to spend at home with your family. That's why most Koreans travel home to their parents' or grandparents' house to celebrate. And for the same reason, Seolnal can be really uninteresting or lonely holiday for foreigners here. In the past years I spent seolnal alone in my dormitory room... but this year, I got to experience it the way Koreans do, with my boyfriend's family. ^^

Even though New Year's - the 1st day of the new year is just one day, most Koreans get three whole days off, at least all schools are closed for three days. And luckily this year, it was Wednesday, Thursday and Friday so my boyfriend didn't have to work for 5 days straight. ^^ 

On Wednesday we went to my boyfriend's parents' house for lunch. His sister was there too and it was nice to see her again. His mom prepared LOTS of food and it was all delicious, especially tteokguk. Tteokguk is a rice cake soup and it is always eaten on New Year's day, because it is believed that it brings you good luck in the new year if you eat it on Seolnal. Rice cakes are usually white, but they can be different colors too and in the tteokguk that my boyfriend's mom made, they were yellow, purple, red, green etc. so it looked really nice and colorful :) It looked so yummy that I didn't remember to take a photo of it before I was half way done already.

Another thing associated with tteokguk is getting older :) I don't remember if I'd mentioned this before or not, but Koreans count age a bit differently. Here, when you're born, you're already a year old, so in Korea, you're always a year older than you are in in the West. Another thing is, you don't age on your birthday, but everyone gets a year older on Korean New Year's - Seolnal. In fact, it's said that you gain a year after finishing your tteokguk. :) In Korean language growing a year older is even expressed as 'eating another year' - 'hansal ul meokda'. Someone even sent me this cute picture while wishing me a happy new year's. What's written on the spoon is 'hansal' meaning 'one year' or 'another year', showing that even if we don't want to, we all get a year older again :)

So until my birthday in July, I am again two years older in Korea than I am in my country... Korean age counting system sucks :P

On Seolnal children usually put on Korean traditional clothing - hanbok and then wish their parents and grandparents a happy new year while performing a traditional bow for them. Parents and grandparents then reward this gesture by giving them a special new year's pocket money called 'sebet-don'. I didn't wear a hanbok since I don't own one anyway ;) But I did get a chance to try on several different kinds of them in the past.

I didn't perform a traditional bow either, but I did buy some cake for my boyfriend's parents as I didn't want to visit their house empty handed. Unfortunately, I didn't know my boyfriend's sister would be there too, so I didn't have anything for her but some Slovenian candy. :( But anyway, this year I received sebet-don too. ^^ I received cash from my boyfriend's mom and two movie tickets from my boyfriend's sister. ^^ It was great that I got to experience Seolnal the Korean way, with tteokguk and sebet-don and everything. The best part was, I didn't feel like a foreigner, but like a part of a Korean family. It was amazing. ^^

After the delicious lunch, my boyfriend and I went for a short walk because we were so full. Then his mom played saxophone for us. ^^ And later we went to see the new family firm that is being built nearby and should be done by this summer. It looks really nice.

In the next days we went to use those movie tickets, we relaxed at home, went to a birthday party of my boyfriend's friend from the band, ate lots of yummy food, did some shopping and even went on a one day trip to Gwangju. But I will write about the trip in my next post.

Even if you don't celebrate Korean New Year's I still wish you lots of luck in the new year, as Koreans say: SaeHae Bok Manhi Badeuseyo.