As you know, this past week was New Years. We celebrated fairly simply by having some friends over for dinner. The family is a couple similar to myself and my wife; that is an American husband and a Korean wife. They have one son, six years old.

The wife is from 대구 (경상도). Until recently her parents lived with them but they have returned to Korea to live now. When the son speaks Korean, he usually speaks in 경상도 사투리. He learned most of his Korean from his grandparents so his 말투 is very hard to understand. His mom’s 사투리 is also difficult to understand even for my wife. Like our children, he seems much more comfortable speaking English.

We had 떡국, 불고기, 김치, 빈대떡, 쌈장, 쌈 and rice (of course). The cooking was different from what my wife prepares. I think the difference is due to the way 전라도 and 경상도 use spices. Our friend said that anyone from 전라도 is a good cook. (While I will get in trouble for saying this… my wife had a hard time cooking rice properly when we first got married… maybe it was just that American rice…) I have heard that the further away from서울 one gets, the better the food gets. I don’t think that is true so much today due to the metropolitan nature of 서울.

We had some good food and enjoyed some time with friends, speaking Korean.

Happy New Year everyone!