생일 written by 미국아내
My birthday is December 22nd, just three days before Christmas, arguably the biggest holiday in the Western world, and just over a week before New Year’s. Growing up, I resented having my special day overshadowed and receiving the dreaded birthday/Christmas gift combo.
As I have gotten older, I’ve come to terms with all of this, learning to take advantage of Christmastime sales and promotions to double-treat myself. However, moving to Korea, there’s been an added disadvantage to having a December birthday.
As some of you may know, they use a different system for calculating age in Korea, where you are 1 when you are born and turn another year older each January 1st. For those of us with birthdays late in the year, this means we spend most of the year telling everyone we are actually 2 years older than our so-called “Western age”.
Yesterday I turned 27 “Western age”. I recently visited the White House in Washington, DC with my husband, so I thought for my birthday it might be fun to visit the Blue House in Seoul.
I was one of the few non-Koreans there; most of the visitors were Korean parents with young children. In typical Korean fashion, the main purpose of the tour seemed to be taking photos in the designated “photo zones” and talking over the tour guide while she explained about each location.
After the tour, we headed to Kyobo bookstore near Gwanghwamun. This is one of the biggest bookstores in Korea, and in my experience, is always packed. Surprisingly, many bookstores in Korea actually have areas where you can read the books in the store.
This is particularly frowned upon in the US as far as I know. You can obviously flip through the book and see if you are interested in buying it, but you aren’t really supposed to sit down with your coffee or tea and read the whole thing in the store (that’s what libraries are for).
The reason I wanted to go here was to get a new Korean vocabulary book, as I am preparing to take the TOPIK again in the next few months. I was able to find many books for beginning and intermediate Korean study, but I was disappointed to find very few options for advanced Korean vocabulary. Eventually, I came across a book that seemed like what I was looking for, called TOPIK Vocabulary 2300. While this also only covers up through an intermediate level, it seems quite comprehensive and should help me to fill in any gaps in my vocabulary.
By this time, it was nearly 2pm, so we quickly made our way back to the subway and headed towards Hongdae for lunch. My sister-in-law had sent me a voucher for a sushi restaurant in Hongdae. We ordered the “signature line”, which included 16 or so pieces of nigiri sushi and four types of sashimi. It was delicious, although I think with how hungry were were anything would have tasted amazing.
On the way home, we stopped by a stationary store to pick up the rest of my birthday presents - a new study notebook and pens. Korea has the best stationary stores - there are so many cute designs and types of notebooks - I could browse for hours, but for my husband’s sake, I tried to choose quickly.
My mom often says she thinks 27 is the best age, because you are old enough to know who are you and what you want, but you don’t yet have all of the responsibilities that come later, like children and owning a home. I have a lot of big potentially life-changing plans for this year. Perhaps I will share some in another post. For the meantime, here’s to my 27/28.
