Lunar New Year at the In-laws

Traffic wasn't too bad this year for some reason. Perhaps we just missed the heavy times. We headed down to my mother-in-law's house for the holiday on Seolnal morning. Seoul to Pyeongtek an hour of stress-free driving. We got there and had some breakfast, though the rest of the gang had already eaten and the men-folk were at the ancestor's grave doing the ritual. We just ate.

Then I went into the other room and took a nap for a couple of hours. Any foreign husbands can back me up here, it is part of the holiday tradition and is usually encouraged. I took no pictures of the any of the ceremonies or the holiday food layout because frankly it is pretty much the same as it is every year and the family has long since grown sick of my taking pictures of such things. There were so many things I could have taken pictures of this trip, but couldn't be bothered. Because my in-laws live in a small farming village surrounded not just by rice paddies, but by beef,  dairy, and chicken farms (which are fortunately all located just over the hills from the house so there isn't much of a smell), there were plenty of set-ups on the roads that spray disinfectants on the cars to help stem the spread of hoof and mouth disease. (As the son and grandson of Ag folks, I choose to use the proper term. Cows and swine don't have feet. they have hooves; therefore the correct term for the disease is hoof and mouth, not foot and mouth disease). That is another story.

I drove through these:
 
but didn't take any pictures. I stole the pic from that interweb thingie. Click on it to go to the original article.

I did take a few pictures of things that I found interesting. First was my nieces and nephew fascinated with the screen saver on my notebook. I guess they'd never seen 3D pipes before. I thought it was cute because they were all still in their hanboks laying there watching the screen for about 25 minutes before I went back to work (studying... trying to keep my 3-hour per day reading up during vacation).

Take a look at the little cuties:


They boy was old enough not to be as spellbound, but I think had nothing else to do. The little girls were amazed though.

Then in the evening, there was a barbecue. Someone had acquired a whole box of oysters and scallops. They were cooked over the fire while a table was set up in the greenhouse.
It is still winter afterall, and though the temperatures during the day were the first above freezing in a month, it still got quite chilly for a barbecue. We've done it before, but I still get a kick out of it.







Since a proper grill isn't such a great thing to have inside, we used the electric one to re-heat some jeon and cook some bulgogi. (Which I added a nice cup of red wine to when nobody was looking--now they're all hooked!)






My sister-in-law and and I hamming it up a little.


Pouring the soju right in. Who needs little paper cups?



Whoa.


Then there was chapchae added. Honestly, I love the stuff, but not the best thing for a barbecue.
But then

... someone added hot dogs, and that fixed everything.

Wine.
Makkoli.
Soju.

We all slept well that night.