This past week has been a busy one on more than a few levels. Last sunday was Easter and we spent the day at my brother’s house. He lives in the central valley of California on farm land. We got home late and the blog didn’t happen. It is happening right now, however.

Easter (부활절) is not really celebrated in Korea. Unless things have changed dramatically since I lived in Korea, Easter is only celebrated by a special Sunday service in christian denominations. There is no Easter bunny or egg hunt or any of the other commercial entrapments that exist here in America.

When we get together as a family for Easter we usually have an Easter egg hunt. My brother’s house is ideally suited for an egg hunt because he has a large, grassy yard around his house. We bring about a dozen eggs per child but this year we had quite a few more than that. We usually don’t do any egg dying but stick to plastic eggs and candy instead. (Hard boiled eggs get old fast… the eating and the sitting in the sun…) This year we decided to dye some eggs.

We decided to not do the grocery store dying kits that are so popular. We did some natural dyes using berries and onion skins. Everyone had a great time wrapping the eggs with various flowers and onion skins to make some cool patterns.

Here is an onion skin dyed egg waiting to be found:

We did a pot-luck style dinner in that each individual family brought a side dish and my brother provided the main dish. The concept of a “pot-luck” isn’t really practiced in Korea either as far a s I know, maybe only in a church setting. Our house guest was introduced to a few uniquely American traditions as well as some that may only be unique to my family. For example, we like to make homemade ice cream. My brother does a great job on that. He is also into photography but in an antiquated way. Instead of embracing the wonders of the digital revolution in photography, my brother has gone retro; his latest thing is large format. Yes, everyone and their brother (not mine) is a budding digital photojournalist. Here is my brother, all covered up:

I think Easter was an interesting cultural experience for our guest. He had a great time hunting eggs with all the other children. But that may be just because he loves American candy…