New Year's Day is every man's birthday. ~Charles Lamb
I can hardly believe it’s 2012 – I keep wondering where 2011 went. Time is weird that way, at moments it feels like it lasts forever, and other times it flies by.
New Year's Eve came and went with little fanfare here on the island. I was blessed to spend the evening with good friends who live here, my sweet friend Debbie who was visiting from Yemen and some Korean American friends who were visiting for the holidays.
We made peanut brittle, ate junk food and laughed. We laughed a lot. A few minutes before 12:00 we gathered in the living room to have a New Years toast (sparkling cider) and watch the ball drop from 2010 on YouTube. We sat around talking about our plans , hopes and dreams for the New Year. And that is when I learned that I am glad that I'm not a Korean.
My Friend Mary told us that in Korea they practice East Asian age reckoning. This is a traditional way of counting a person's age. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a Lunar New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age. In other words, the first year of life is counted as one instead of zero, so that a person is two years old in their second year, three years old in their third, and so on. Since age is incremented on the new year rather than on a birthday, people may be 1 or 2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western system.
If I was Korean I would be 41 years old...I said it...41!!! Just another reason I'm glad I'm from Florida.
I can hardly believe it’s 2012 – I keep wondering where 2011 went. Time is weird that way, at moments it feels like it lasts forever, and other times it flies by.
New Year's Eve came and went with little fanfare here on the island. I was blessed to spend the evening with good friends who live here, my sweet friend Debbie who was visiting from Yemen and some Korean American friends who were visiting for the holidays.
We made peanut brittle, ate junk food and laughed. We laughed a lot. A few minutes before 12:00 we gathered in the living room to have a New Years toast (sparkling cider) and watch the ball drop from 2010 on YouTube. We sat around talking about our plans , hopes and dreams for the New Year. And that is when I learned that I am glad that I'm not a Korean.
My Friend Mary told us that in Korea they practice East Asian age reckoning. This is a traditional way of counting a person's age. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a Lunar New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age. In other words, the first year of life is counted as one instead of zero, so that a person is two years old in their second year, three years old in their third, and so on. Since age is incremented on the new year rather than on a birthday, people may be 1 or 2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western system.
If I was Korean I would be 41 years old...I said it...41!!! Just another reason I'm glad I'm from Florida.
1 comment:
Also if you were Korean you could eat spicy food! We had a good time, I'm so glad you guys came over!
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