::A Geek in Korea::

This weekend is when extended Koreans families typically get together for Lunar New Year, one of the two biggest Korean holidays. My wife’s family has a series of complicated rules about who would actually want to get together in an extended group. Some permutations of the family gathering simply do not work as a cohesive whole, and it takes a major event to bring about such a reunion. Instead, we get together in groups to approximate a gathering in one way or another. I’ve been to two so far this year.

For example, I got invited to visit my mother-in-law’s house with my wife right after work. My aunt’s family had come to visit, and we get along with all of them. My brother-in-law and father-in-law weren’t present, which means the younger cousins had the run of the television and were the focus of the scrutiny. When I said something, instead of my wife harassing me to speak Korean, the middle school students got harassed for not translating what I said for their parents. Someone is going to be bothered, but it might as well not be me.

They commented that I had lost weight and looked good despite working a long schedule. I greatly appreciate this sort of lie. They watched boring Korean television shows while I was watching my PMP. Nothing hostile was said except to the children for not studying their English harder and trying to talk to me. Both my mother-in-law and her sister are amazing cooks, so we were spoiled with five star quality foods. We had smoked duck, fermented bean curd stew, and cheopchae noodles.

Then, on Sunday, my wife said that we had been invited back to my mother-in-law’s house to eat another meal with her father and brother. Ironically, I’m the only one in the family that actually enjoys the traditional Korean meal of rice dumpling soup. You are supposed to eat rice dumpling soup on the holiday to celebrate growing one year older. My mother-in-law had decided to make it specifically for me, so we were going to have to go despite the snow and cold weather. Oh no, more delicious Korean food? How I suffer.

When we arrived, I was parked in front of the television with my father-in-law once again. He commented that I looked fat and was in poor health, despite having rested for the past two days and feeling much better than the last time I had seen him. He said I need to take better care of my health. I just smiled politely. He went back to criticizing his wife shortly enough, and telling my brother-in-law to clean the table. My brother-in-law peeked out of his room long enough to change the channel on the television a few times before he disappeared in his room till dinner was ready.

We had another amazing meal that was totally worth all the awkwardness. They forced me to eat seconds, but it wasn’t a difficult thing since my mother-in-law cooks the best rice dumpling soup I’ve ever had. During the meal, my brother-in-law was getting bothered for not wanting to go to the countryside and visit his grandmother. She’s lonely during the holidays out in the country, but no one wants to visit for extended periods of time officially. They might stop in to check in on her, but they don’t want to make it a reason for an official reunion because getting together with the family means the women all must work hard to keep all the men fed. Korean dishes, other than kimchi, are usually prepared right before eating, so Korean women work extremely hard whenever the relatives get together. 99% of the time the men do no work, so there had better be a good reason to get everyone together, otherwise the women work too hard to justify it.

My mother-in-law is being the responsible one and making sure that she visits her mother, and she wanted my brother-in-law to come too so that they could honor her father’s filial piety service. My father-in-law agreed that my brother-in-law should also pay respects and go, even if he wanted to spend his holiday relaxing. Since my wife isn’t “part” of the family any more by marrying me, she got to sit through the meal free from the guilt her parents were dropping on her brother. He finished his soup and left the table in a hurry. Poor guy. I had to chuckle. At least I wasn’t the focus of the evening.

I went to check on what my brother-in-law was up to in his room and he explained the new MMORPG he was playing. He was a merchant tailor that tried selling items made out of chicken feathers. Riveting. It was still better than whatever was on Korean television, so once that conversation ran its course, I eventually just watched some television on my PMP and kept myself out of the conversations that were going around the room. My wife helped do dishes, then we left, family duties completed. My brother-in-law drove home, which was nice of him.

This is all very different from my American relative’s gatherings. The women work too hard there too, but generally I think the family goes out of it’s way to meet each other, instead of trying to find new reasons to avoid each other. I got to see all the relatives I wanted to see this holiday, which was good. I’m still not always comfortable with the way the family operates around each other, but I greatly prefer a small setting with people I’m familiar with than a larger group of relatives that I don’t see as often.