Conor Meagher Fan Club

This weekend was a three day holiday for celebrating the Lunar New Year (Seol-nal). It’s typical for Korean families to spend time together at home and visit relatives tombs to pay their respects. This usually means that Seoul is dead and traveling outside of the city is wall to wall traffic. I had a 3 day weekend planned with lots of sport watching, beer drinking, and male bonding since Jeong-in was busy with her family. Well, that would all change when Jeong-in called me on Saturday and asked me if I wanted to meet her whole family for dinner. Apparently, they were asking about why I didn’t come with her and her Grandmother was hoping to meet me. This was all very flattering, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do something like that. Fortunately, I had other plans for that night and decided that lunch the next day was a better idea. When the time arrived, I was a little nervous because all of her family who could come, did, which was around 12 people in a cozy apartment. Everything started with greetings and a hug for Grandma because Jeong-in said she liked to give hugs, but I think when she saw me in person she was a little shy since I was 2 feet taller than her. After that, we sat down for lunch and her parents made me feel extra special since they had already had Christmas dinner with me before. The food was great, even though we were eating while sitting on the floor, a typical Korean style of eating. Also, I partook in drinking with the men. It was a little bit early to take 5 shots of Korean rice wine (So-ju) at 2pm, but it made things a lot more interesting. One thing I really need to work on are my Korean manners. There’s so many rules on how to be respectful to someone older than you. Especially, your girlfriend’s parents. Just pouring Soju has strick rules. Never, let someone pour their own drink. Pour with your right arm and support it with your left, so you don’t shake. I shook. If your sitting on the floor, always pour while sitting on your knees, never while sitting on your bottom. That’s always a fun one when your 6′4″. But with only a couple shakes, I did a pretty good job and had some good laughs. After lunch, I tried my best to learn a popular game Go-Stop with Jeong-in’s Grandma and cousins. Go-Stop is played with small thick cards with flower designs. There’s a bunch of rules about matching cards, even though all the cards look different to me. I tried, but I would of lost all my money if I played with the men. After I lost a couple games, all the cousins and I went to another room and played a traditional Korean board game called Yutnoli. I’ve seen it played before at my old school, but never got to play it. First, we played a couple of games for fun. Then we started to wager some money until the last pot was 20,000W (~$21). I didn’t want to take her cousins’ money, but that’s nothing new to gamble a little. So after an hour or two of playing it was time to go, but one tradition on New Year’s is to bow to the elders. So all the nieces and nephews, including me, lined up and bowed to Halmeoni (Grandmother) and the 3 uncles. In return, the elders give some kind of gift, usually money. They were so nice to treat me like family and gave me the same gifts. Each uncle gave a 10,000W bill and Jeong-in’s Dad also gave a Lotto ticket. Her cute Grandma gave everybody socks. That was the best gift of all. So after saying goodbye to everybody, Jeong-in and I left along with some cousins. It was a day to remember no matter what happens in the future.