설날 - Lunar New Year

That's right folks, in Korea it's called either "Lunar New Year" or "Asian New Year." Don't call it "Chinese New Year." People will get mad. It's not just theirs ;)

This was my first time as part of an Asian family during Lunar New Year. That made it slightly more enjoyable and A LOT more stressful. I spent all afternoon Saturday with Trash at Lotte Department Store. We had several important family engagements this weekend so my Mother-in-Law decided I needed to look my best. Since "looking my best" usually means an old sweater, jeans without holes and my windproof fleece, Trash's mom decided to buy me a suit and nice coat. This was a painful process. I don't wear clothes like this. Trash was getting pretty annoyed, but eventually we found a suit and coat that I liked.

I found the suit by accident. I needed to wear a suit jacket to fit on an ugly coat (that I didn't buy) so the salesman gave me a random jacket. I hated the coat, but liked that jacket so we bought it with the matching pants and a fitted shirt. Then we went downstairs, and I finally found a nice coat I liked. I saw it from across the store and loved it right away. Remember those black winter coats the SS wore during WWII? It looked like that but without the cool silver letters and eagle. We bought it.

We got home and were able to rest for a little bit but then had to get ready to go out. Pastor Robert's American Visa was finally approved, and he and Jenny only had 4 days left in Korea. To celebrate his time here, the entire church met at a nice restaurant. I wore half of my new suit, the top half...with ripped jeans and old sneakers on the bottom half. What can I say? Old habits die hard. We spent several hours having dinner followed by coffee. It was a nice way to say goodbye.

Sunday, I had to wear the whole suit. I met Trash and her mom at their church to be introduced to the pastor who is going to officiate our wedding. He was surprisingly nice and accommodating. I've had a hard time with Korean pastors. I don't usually find them to be very humble, but that's a whole nother story. Anyway, we were worried about what the pastor would say about our wedding. Koreans are very traditional, and we want to pick our favorite Korean traditions and American traditions and just throw them all together for our wedding. The pastor said that it was fine and to just do it however we want. Very nice and very surprising.

After we met him, we walked around outside the church. Trash's mom had her arm hooked on mine, was smiling and proudly introducing me to everyone saying, "우리 사위! (This is my son-in-law!)" Afterwards, she told me to stop calling her 장모님 (Mother-in-Law) and call her 엄마 (Mom). This isn't as common in Korea as you may think and really showed that she's completely accepted me into their family.

Monday was the big day. I had to cancel my snowboarding trip to spend the day, the actual New Year's Day, with Trash, her immediate family and some of her extended family. Part of the suit got its final ride for the weekend. Just the jacket though. Jeans, a Johnny Cash t-shirt, zipup hoodie and my new, expensive black suit jacket. I looked like me again! The worst part of meeting the family happened right away. Trash and her mom introduced me, and then, Trash and I had to bow to the older members of the family. I mean, the deep bow. The one where we hold our hands/arms in front of our faces parallel to the ground and bow until we're pretty much flat on the floor (Here's a side note for my Christian readers. No, this isn't any kind of Eastern Religion thing. Their whole family is Christian. It's just a sign of respect. Think of it as Asia's version of a really firm hand shake, calling someone "Sir" and paying for dinner all rolled into one.). So we bowed, ate lunch, which was FANTASTIC, and then just hung out for a few hours. It was pretty painless, and her family really liked me.

My favorite part of Monday came after we left the family. I told Trash that since she made me skip snowboarding, she finally had to keep an old promise and watch an episode of Lost with me. We watched the first episode and immediately watched two more. As of today, she's seen the first 8 episodes. She's hooked. That may not seem like a big deal, but it makes me happy :)

Tuesday was a simple day. I woke up at 4:30am and went snowboarding at High1, the best resort in Korea, with my buddy Joe. It was a pretty good day, and I'm definitely getting better at snowboarding.

So yeah, that was the 4 day weekend. It was a bit more hectic than I anticipated, but rather enjoyable. Chinese New Year is fun....uh, I mean Asian New Year. Yeah, Asian New Year. That's what it's called ;-)