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!

The weather at my house has been very cold (by California standards) this past week. We have had snow several times, although it did not stick. Yes, that is my favorite kind of snow, the stuff that says hello and then leaves. The snow in my wife’s hometown (여수시) is similar; it typically does not stick for too long. One thing that winter and snow do bring with them is skiing.

I never learned to ski growing up as it wasn’t very accessible, it was expensive, and my parents aren’t skiers. We now live fairly close to a small ski resort and the local schools offer skiing every Friday during the ski season, so my children have all learned how to ski. The Korean children that we have had in our house have also been skiers, including the boy living with us now. He says that he learned to ski when he was 10 or 11 (음력으로). He is also from 여수 and had to travel about four hours to 무주 in order to ski.

For the most part I believe that skiing is a sport/recreation reserved for those people with more disposable income than the average person. This is probably more true in Korea than here in the United States. The same could be said for golf. Interestingly, I have heard of Koreans taking golf trips to China because it is cheaper there, trip included. I wonder if skiing is the same? I know skiers here that travel to different resorts, Park City, Lake Tahoe, etc. for the experience. How far would you travel to ski? The boy with us now, he has travelled half way around the world and is enjoying California skiing.

The local Korean grocery store can be a cultural connection that, for many, goes largely untapped. The most obvious link to Korea through the local grocery store is the food. The store can be a source for many spices and foods not found in a regular chain grocery store. These include the mundane like curry powder, red pepper powder, soy sauce, fish sauce (젓갈) as well as the more hard to find like 고추장, 된장, 쌈장, 미역, and Korean soda pop and 요구르트 (my children love that stuff).

The best food stuffs to get in the grocery store are the prepared foods. Sure, you can get “Wong’s Kimchi” as your local Raleys or Vons but it is horrible, pasteurized, and not much more than pepper and cabbage. Each Korean market will have different tasting 김치 because the owners typically prepare it right thereaccording to their own unique recipe. Just like 김치 from different provinces in Korea will taste different, it will be different in each store. (My wife says that 전라도 김치 is 최고!) You can get a variety of prepared foods besides 김치, too. Usually you can find many different 반찬, of varying degrees of goodness.

Besides food, the Korean grocery store can be a great source of many things non-food like cosmetics, music CDs, kitchen supplies (like chopsticks, rice bowls, rice cookers, and huge buckets that you won’t find anywhere else), bath supplies (like 때타올, soaps, 등등) as well as the ever-popular Korean dramas. The stores usually record the dramas direct from television and then rent the DVDs or tapes. Mostly, these don’t have English subtitles, so you should ask first if that is important to you.

The most overlooked resource that the Korean market has to offer is free, that is the language connection. Most Korean markets I have been in offer free newspapers, phone directories and this time of year, calendars. But they also offer someone to talk to in Korean! The store owners know varying degrees of English and are all too happy to help you speak a bit of Korean, especially if you are a regular customer. If you haven’t discovered your local Korean grocery store, check your yellow pages and give them a visit. Let me know how it goes.