Multicultural Family Life In Korea (한국의 다문화 가정생활_
A Korean husband, an American wife, and their daughter. This is all about being a multicultural family, raising a bilingual child, and life together. (한국인 남편, 미국인 아내, 그리고 그들의 딸. 이것은 다문화 가정, 2개 국어를 할 수 있는 아이를 키우는 것, 그리고 함께 사는 것에 대한 모든 것이다.)
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The Thunderous Hello: An English/Korean Children’s Story
After so much great feedback and interest in my bilingual bedtime story The Sun & The Moon Story, I jumped right back in to write another and worked with Raquel Cruz to illustrate a second book in the series titled The Thunderous Hello. I am so excited to introduce this bilingual Korean and English story. I love that my daughter is bilingual and I want to continue to foster that by giving her every opportunity to use both English and Korean with me and her daddy. What started as a one off experience to write a story for my daughter has turned into something very meaningful and I’m so thrilled…
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Where To Buy A Baby Hanbok Online: Joteta
The first time most families look into buying a Hanbok is when their child is turning 100 days old or celebrating their first birthday. To celebrate the occasion and to hold a Dol Ceremony, the first purchase is a baby Hanbok. If you’re abroad, that can be a bit tricky as there are far less retailers than you can find if you’re in Korea. That said, online shopping is become the standard and it’s getting easier and easier whether you’re in Korea or abroad to get everything you need with just a click of a button. I’ve been asked again and again from readers abroad where to buy a baby…
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Things To Do With Kids To Celebrate Chuseok: Arts, Crafts, & Cooking!
Chuseok, or the Korean Thanksgiving, is a national holiday that is celebrated in Korea. Families everywhere migrate across the country to head to their parents’ or grandparents’ home to partake in a feast to thank ancestors and remember those that came before. It’s a special time and for traditional families like mine, we hold Jesa, an ancestral rite, eat, and then play traditional games together. Some years we just stay in Seoul though too and there’s a lot to do for Chuseok even when we stay in Seoul. Wherever you’re celebrating, here are some things you can do with kids for Chuseok. If you’re staying home for Chuseok, or abroad…
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The Sun & The Moon Story: An English/Korean Children’s Bed Time Story
Like most families, we’ve slowly started a bedtime routine to get our daughter to sleep at an appropriate time. That routine includes brushing teeth, changing into pjs, reading books, and then listening to a bedtime song as she drifts off to sleep… most nights. In our house, my Korean husband speaks only Korean with our daughter and I speak only English with her so when we’re having a family discussion, there are always two languages utilized. This is great most of the time but I quickly realized that when it came time for bed it was super difficult to find bedtime stories for kids that were bilingual. Our daughter would…
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Stay At Home Activities For Kids
As a creative person myself, I have loved instilling the love of creation in my daughter. We have spent hours together cooking, dancing, crafting, and learning of course. It’s amazing how much can be learned in more fun and inspiring ways. Whether you’re homeschooling or just have the kids home for the summer, these are great stay at home activities for kids. Great things to do with kids on rainy days and great things just to do together. Here are some of the programs we LOVE and some other ideas too! (This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a certain percentage of a sale if you purchase after…
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Compromise, Acceptance & Happiness In A Multicultural Marriage
Five years! We are celebrating our five year anniversary this year.. well actually at the beginning of next year. Okay, that’s confusing. Five years ago in October of 2011, we wed in traditional Korean fashion down in Busan, Korea. While the ceremony was colorful, interesting and fun, we also wed stateside in Ohio in January of 2012. We actually celebrate our wedding anniversary in January using our American ceremony date, BUT that doesn’t stop me from reminiscing over our Korean ceremony each year come the autumn foliage and cool breezes in October. Just look at us all done up in those gorgeous Korean traditional duds! Getting into them required a…
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Painting With Babies: Art Exploration
At this point with the little one we’ve realized that almost anything will undoubtedly now be a messy endeavor which has caused me to step out of a very clean box I put myself in awhile back. It can be anything really; eating, sitting, sleeping, reading. It doesn’t matter. There’s pee, drool, poo, crumbs, food from breakfast, lunch or/and dinner inevitably stashed away in some fold, crease or in the hair… it never ends. Because everything is already messy, when faced with the prospect of doing an art project I was both excited and daunted. Luckily, a friend who teaches art to little ones made her way over and really…
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A One Year Old & Lessons of Raising a Multicultural Child in Korea
While I would probably raise my child very similarly to my sister if I were married to a fellow westerner, I'm married to a Korean man and so blending our cultures to make us both comfortable is a huge priority around here.
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Yes, I Have a Mixed Baby. Thank You For Noticing.
I wasn't one of those women that had a love-at-first-sight moment with my infant when she was born. Afterward, I wondered if that was one of those things that women that have babies tell women that don't have babies in order to make them get excited or look forward to what will inevitably be the most painful moment in their lives.
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Mothers Are The Ultimate Multitaskers
This made me wonder what this woman thought of her own mother. I grew up in a single-parent household, though I wouldn't say that only a single-parent raised me. My mother's side of the family is a close-knit 70 or so people and that's who raised me. My mother was raising three girls while working full time.
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My Korean Husband Attended Our Baby Shower
Baby celebrations in Korea are a bit different from in the United States where I’m from. Koreans don’t usually have baby showers so I thought it was important to invite my Korean husband to my baby shower and let him enjoy this cultural celebration. It was a great way for him to see how we celebrate the impending birth in the States with silly baby games, gifts to help us prepare and friends that love us. Of course, we would do other celebrations the way Koreans do later, but this was an introduction for him on how we prepare for a baby in the US. (This post contains affiliate links,…
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Saving Money the Multicultural Family Style in Korea
Banks are a fickle sort, aren’t they? After finishing up a two year savings CD in Korea, we were looking into another one and I heard through the multicultural family grapevine, over which much information is passed, that there were CDs especially available for us with higher interest rates. What? Did multicultural savings accounts in Korea exist two years ago too? They indeed had. Why hadn’t the bank teller mentioned this when it was clear that a multicultural family was sitting in front of her? Questions such as this and many more were answered on a recent trip to a branch of Kookmin Bank. Yes, this type of savings account…
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How We Revealed The Gender Of Our Baby
Living abroad when you’re going through big life changes that you’d like to share with your family can be rough. Luckily, planes, trains and automobiles exist. Though we can’t celebrate every part of our first pregnancy with my family in person, there are things we’ve been able to share through video calls and online and last week week we were able to fly to the States for three weeks to see them in person too. While we were home, we decided to make the reveal of our baby’s gender a bit of a spectacle in order to celebrate at least one aspect of this child within with everyone. (This post…
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30 Things I Did Before I Turned 30
It’s my birthday today! I saw a post with this same title awhile back and at first I thought, why would someone write a post like this? I’ve done a lot in 30 years and writing just 30 of those things down doesn’t seem fair to everything else I can’t write down or can’t remember, taking my first step was a big accomplishment I’m sure, but I can’t for the life of me remember it. A few weeks back though, I was sitting with a student, who is just a year younger than myself, and we were talking about accomplishments. I thought it was an easy enough question. Tell me…
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Bruise Cure = Egg?
“Put an egg on your bruise. You know an egg can suck out the bruise.” I eyed him skeptically and then cracked up. (How fitting is that idiom right now?) Do eggs cure bruises? I had never heard of this bruise remedy before and didn’t know if it was a my husband thing, a Korean thing, a his mother thing, or just a thing I’d never heard before. He wondered why I was laughing so much and I said I’d only ever heard of putting raw meat on bruises to cure them… though I’ve also never tried that “cure”. I’ve learned a lot about holistic medicine while living in Korea,…
