Seolnal

In Korea, Seolnal is the celebration of the lunar new year. More commonly known as the Chinese New Year to many in the West, this celebration contains considerably less fireworks and dragon-dancing. Instead, people visit their families (usually the oldest son in the family plays host), play games and make manduguk (meat dumpling soup). Visiting one's family is no small feat during this time. The traffic is horrible. A two hour trip can take six hours because of traffic congestion. If you ever find yourself in South Korea at this time, count yourself lucky if you have nowhere to go. Sitting in traffic is never fun.

We had a new year's celebration at my school. There was a lot of mandu making. I was told that the shape of the mandu one made was vital to one's future so I tried to make the best shapes possible. We had a couple of students make some really attractive mandu!

We then played games. I was particularly amused by the human yutnari game. Yutnari is a sort of dice game played with four wooden sticks. The sticks have symbols on them. They are rolled and if the sticks are rolled in a certain way then a stone marker is moved along circles on a board. This time around, human "markers" were used. A kind of hackey-sack was also played, along with a game of kong noli, a game of jackstones. I never got the hang of these games so I just stood back and took a few pictures. There were no sebae (special bows given to elders)this time around so subsequently there was no sebaeton (customary money given for satisfactory bows) handed out.

View the pictures here.