새해 복 많이 받으세요!

or HAPPY NEW YEAR! Today is 설날 (Seollal) or Lunar New Year. This, along with Chuseok, is the biggest Korean holiday and is a time all Koreans spend with their extended families. I was lucky enough to be invited to spend the holiday with the Korean family I am living with. The four of us traveled to Seoul to spend the day at my host father's sisters house with all of his brothers and sister and their families. Relatives were also going to be hosting me overnight so my KyuYeon, my host brother, and I decided to make a dessert to bring to the gathering. My host family does not have an oven, like most Korean families, so I had to be creative in my search for a good recipe. Finally my host brother and I decided on walnut and craisin bark. Unfortunately, the recipe was not in metric units so I had to guess the amounts of the different ingredients. Chocolate is also hard to come by in Korea since there's very little baking so I had to just buy unlabeled chocolate chips and hope they were bittersweet like the recipe called for. Luckily, the bark came out perfectly and my brother and I had lots of fun making it.

On Friday, the day we arrived in Seoul, I spent a lot of time getting to know the extended family. They were unbelievably kind and even took me out to get coffee at a really fancy restaurant floating on the Han River. We also played the traditional Korean New Years game called Yunnori. The game is a kind of board game but instead of rolling dice you throw sticks to decide how many spaces to move. The next day I was able to observe and take part in some of the more formal traditions. We woke up at 6AM to start preparing the house for the bowing ritual. The family first prepared a table with lots of food to offer to their dead ancestors. The quantity of each type of food must be an odd number, although I never figured out why. The family then performs sebae, which is the most formal bow, to pay respect to their ancestors and to bring them luck in the coming year. The family then opens the door to the home so that the spirits of their ancestors can come in and eat with them. After the family bows to the ancestors they bow to each other. First everyone bows to the oldest member of the family, who was the grandfather. He then gives sebaedon, or some pocket money, to thank them for their blessing and to bring them good luck. This is then repeated with all of the younger members of the family bowing to those older than them. Since I participated in sebae I don't have any pictures of the bowing ritual.

After the rituals we then ate breakfast, which was the food we placed on the table as an offering. We then all piled into cars and drove to Chuncheon, where the family's grandmother and uncle are buried. When we first arrived in Chuncheon we paid a quick visit to other relatives and performed sebae. We then all drove to the graves and performed sebae in front of the graves. It was really special to partake in the ceremony. I was also taken by how beautiful the grave sites were. The graves were buried in a mountainside and it kind of seemed like you could just bury people anywhere you wanted near there. There were other graves but it was by no means a cemetery. Everything was very open and scenic. It actually reminded me of my time in Copenhagen, when I learned that Danish cemeteries are often designed to double as a public park. After we visited the graves we ate lunch and then said our goodbyes. Most of the family returned to Seoul but my family stayed in Chuncheon because tomorrow we will spend time with the mother's side of the family for her father's birthday.

The mountainside graves

The family performing sebae