May 25, 2009

A Wedding!

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Sniffle. My little sister is getting married! This summer. If there are any crafty folk out there with Korean themed ideas, we'd love to hear 'em. She's chosen Korean ducks as a motif since her wedding will be lakeside. Nice, right? Clever bride.

February 21, 2009

Hi from Costa Rica...

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November 29, 2008

Turkey and Kimchee

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Nothing like turkey and all the fixings plus banchan! I so strongly associate eating turkey with kimchee and rice that even if we have Thanksgiving elsewhere I have to save some turkey to eat with kimchee at home. It doesn't feel complete somehow.

Incidentally, my sister who spent the holiday at her just-about-fiance's in Maryland informed me that most of her 'Korean' Korean friends didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving. And if they did they didn't do turkey. Which made me curious as to what was on your table growing up? Did you do turkey or Thanksgiving at all?

Looking back I realized that the only reason we celebrated it was because of us kids and we had enough cousin power to insist on having turkey which we probably were roasting ourselves at eleven years old or something. Even now we tend to make all the American dishes while mom slaves over the Korean dishes which always took longer. The interesting thing is that now Thanksgiving has come to mean a doubly huge feast.

Mom was on a roll cooking wise and spent the next day making vats of kimchee. This is my younger son Gabriel watching and what you can't see is he's holding a banchan plate with his third helping of betchoo (cabbage) that's been prepped and just before being mixed with Mom's homemade chili paste.


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Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

October 4, 2008

Koreans for Obama?

Mom was watching the television screen from about six inches way during the televised invasion of Iraq. A staunch Bush supporter, motivated to vote for the first time ever when he ran, she felt as though God personally answered her prayer when Bush was put into office.

She was watching with my brother who was freshly graduated from a very liberal college (where he had most memorably declared there to be no biological difference between females and males), and had moved home to consider his next move.

Mom, when the first tanks rolled in, threw her hands in the air and screamed. In victory. She jumped to her feet and marched around the room chanting,”GO BUSH-Y! GO BUSH-Y! JOO-YOOOOH!" And in the next moment, "NORTH KOREA NEXT! NORTH KOREA NEXT! KIM JONG-IL IS NEXT!”

My brother told us this story immediately after, my sister and I as horrified as amused. These are the moments when we feel as though we can see the great divide between mom-world and ours, and really there was no way to bridge it except to simply experience it.

These days with the current election Mom has opted out of politics again. She would never vote for Obama, a black man, and she feels personally betrayed by Bush who was obviously responsible for the current economic crisis. Ever the practical Korean, her pocketbook is where her culture meets her faith – she believes in a God who rewards materially those who obey, which is also not so incidentally the creed of her immigrant generation. I broached this topic just once, making some slight comment about her having believed in Bush and the primal, deep earth Buffy the Vampire slayer growl she uttered in response shut me up immediately – it was a warning that this wound ran way too deep, way too fresh and there was no Confucian way she was going to discuss it ever not to mention with her uppity, democrat daughter. (Something my husband still has a hard time grasping, the perfect ordered-ness of Korean society where everybody is ranked and this dictates how you related – he still tries to sit with the adults at our family get togethers, plopping down next to my sixty year old aunt and asking her these direct, American questions. In English. :)

My uncle understands the current election as generational. For Koreans it is answer enough to say that young people like Obama and older people like McCain. That the divide can be marked like this is highly satisfying for them, and tend to be the first and last thing said in any political discussion about the election.

Which makes me wonder now, Are there any Korean parents out there who do support Obama? Anybody?

June 17, 2008

Dear Daughter...

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March 20, 2008

He chose the Book.

Gabriel, Dol, March 1st, 2008

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