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 ;-)

American Thanksgiving

I know this is almost a month late, but I thought I'd would put up a blog about Thanksgiving. Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) is in September, but I just can't ignore American Thanksgiving. Last year, we had a potluck dinner at Brad and Steph's apartment with the whole EG crew the Saturday after. This year, I decided to do Thanksgiving on the proper day at my apartment. I invited Trash and her whole family over along with Pastor Robert and Jenny. I made the whole spread just like Mom would at home. Mashed potatoes, bread filling, candied sweet potatoes, corn and bread. I also made some gravy. I had to have my mom send gravy mix from home. This was actually the first time Trash and her family had ever heard of, seen or tasted gravy. It just doesn't exist in Korea....They all loved it. The main difference from home, there was no turkey. Just like last year, we bought some rotisserie chickens from a street vendor. It was delicious. We also appeased the Koreans with rice and kimchi ;)

We had a great night. There was good conversation, and Trash's family and my parents met for the first time....via Skype. I thoroughly enjoyed this holiday away from home :)

Preparing the Feast

The Table is Set

Enjoying the Meal

(Trash, her mom, brother, sister, Jenny and Pastor Robert)

Mr. Stuart's Request

Well, John Stuart asked for some info about how this whole international, cross-cultural marriage things works so I thought I'd say a few words....

Overall, things between Trash and I are good and not nearly as difficult as you may assume. Of course, she is not your average Korean. She was born for Western Culture. For the most part, growing up Korean has just made her more polite than most Westerners. When it comes down to it, we both grew up attending church, hanging out with friends, listening to punk rock and playing in bands. It's not that different. Sometimes there are some conflicts that arise. Trash is just Korean enough that many times she will agree with me when she doesn't want to and keeps her feelings bottled up inside. Korean men generally don't want to know what their respective others are thinking, and the women have learned to deal with that. However, Trash is also Westernized enough that over a period of time, holding everything in will cause her to flip out a little whereas most Korean woman have accepted it as part of life. We're working on that though. I think it's just hard for her to get used to the idea that my mom taught me to care about the feelings and thoughts of the woman I'm with.

The issues with her family are a little bigger. They are also a pretty progressive family. Trash had never seen her mom shakes somebody's hand before we started dating (that's right, they still bow in Korea), but her mom understood that my culture is different, and the first time we met she shook my hand. Me being a foreigner was never an issue either, which is VERY different from most Korean households. Unfortunately, her mom hardly speaks any English at all, and my Korean is very poor. Some may see that as part of the American Dream. I have a mother-in-law who can't talk to me! Haha. In some cases, that would be preferable, but my mother-in-law is pretty cool, and I really wish I could have a normal conversation with her. All of our talking goes through our interpreter, Trash. Her brother and sister speak more English than her mom, but they are still pretty self-conscious about speaking in English to a native speaker so while conversation with them is better, it's still slightly belabored.

The biggest hassle has been with the Government. Trash and I have finally finished filing all of our paperwork, and I am officially a resident of Korea. I have a new Visa (I changed from an E2 working visa to an F2 spousal visa), and with it, comes more freedom and rights. I am no longer an indentured servant to my school and can take/quit any job that I want without notifying anyone. It's great to finally be at that point.

I'm sure we will find more differences in our cultural upbringings in the coming year, but thus far, we have overcome all the differences we have found. I don't see that changing.

Updates

It's been a while since I wrote anything so I thought I'd make a quick post. Things are going well, overall, in Korea. I've been spending a lot of time with Trash and her family which has been nice. I even spent a Friday night at their house making kimchi. Wedding plans are coming together, and February 28th is quickly approaching. I'm very happy that Ric will officially be traveling to Korea to be my best man. Also, we have officially set the date for our reception in Pennsylvania. It will be at my parents church, Morning Star Fellowship, on March 15th. We'll be arriving in PA the day before the wedding and staying for 2 weeks after. I'm really looking forward to that. We've set up a webpage for people to check out and get all the info they need concerning our wedding. That's about it for now.

Jeff and Trash's Wedding Page

Wedding Website

Trash and I officially have a website for our wedding and receptions. Check it out and sign up for the mailing list. That way it will be easy to keep everyone up to date.

www.ewedding.com/sites/mosesyang

The Date is Set

It's official. Trash and I will be getting married February 28, 2009.

She's a Rocker! She's a Roller Too Baby!

Trash's band, BBLT, hasn't played in about 3 months because their drummer had back surgery. They've been big in Seoul for about 8 years so, being that she's the hot chick from one of the longer-lasting local punk bands and super cool, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, knows Trash. We can't go anywhere without people saying hi. Recently, two other bands, Sweet Guerillaz, and Vicious Glare, each asked her to do guest vocals on a track on their new album (the studio track with Sweet Guerillaz can be heard on their myspace page linked above). After the albums were released, the bands toured around Korea together. Last weekend was the last show of the tour, and they asked Trash to sing the stuff she recorded with them so of course I videoed it. So here they are, videos of my fiancee doing guest vocals with a punk rock band and a hardcore band. Yup, she's a bad ass.

Trash with Sweet Guerillaz:


Trash with Vicious Glare: