Holiday Woes

Seollal (the Lunar New Year) is one of the two biggest holidays in Korea. If you are in the states and think you know what bad traffic is, you haven't sat in traffic on Seollal in Korea. You just have no idea.

I've been excited for Seollal this year because it will be our son's first. He's too little for a hanbok (Korean traditional wear), so I bought some little hanbok accessories to pin on him to add to the festive mood. As such, we've been asking for months what the plans are for the holiday since my husband and his brother are in Seoul, but their mother is in Busan. Train tickets sell out way in advance of the holiday, and I don't know a single person who is willing to sit in 8 hours of traffic that hardly even creeps along at times with a 3-month-old baby.

Well, until yesterday, it seemed like everyone was working hard to get my mother-in-law up here for the holiday. It only makes sense: holidays are spent with the husband's family, and considering both of her sons live up here, it's far easier to transport one person than it is to move six people (which includes a baby) along. Complicating matters, though, is my brother-in-law's wife, who wants to visit her family (in Busan) and now my niece from Busan, who is staying with my brother-in-law's family for two weeks as she starts job training here in Seoul. She, of course, would make seven people.

As I am sure you've deduced by now, my brother-in-law will be driving down to Busan with his wife, son and our niece. When we talked to him, it sounded like we weren't expected to make the trip down since we have a baby.

Hee Suk's mother called last night, though, and she is none too happy. As expected, she pulled out, "But you went all the way to America with him!" Airplanes have bathrooms with changing tables, and we can get up and walk around any time. Airplanes don't sit in traffic (well, unless the runways are busy, but still). And I don't know about you, but I actually kind of like airplane food. Oh, yeah, and my parents provided a car seat for us. Despite having a large family, we never tried to cram seven people (remember, we are adding in our niece now) into one car with the baby. The longest car trip we took with Nehemiah was, what, 30 minutes?

I'm really disappointed, too. As I said, I was really looking forward to his first Seollal, but no matter how upset she gets, I am NOT taking our son in a crammed car for a minimum of 6.5 hours in traffic, which will later mean that we'll be looking for some sort of a motel/hotel for our stay in Busan that doesn't include an Austin Powers-style love bed in it. I can't even handle it.

I guess we'll just pretend like it's not his first Seollal and just focus on Valentine's Day (same day this year), setting up hearts all over the place and taking ridiculously adorable pictures of him.