Table of Contents
- 1: 주무시고 가실래요? Host Diary
- 2: 주무시고 가실래요? Have you eaten already?
- 3: 주무시고 가실래요 Come and stay over
- 4: 주무시고 가실래요Silverlinings
- 5: 주무시고 가실래요Favorite meal of the day
- 6: 주무시고 가실래요 Overbooking
- 7: 주무시고 가실래요 Columbia annual gathering
- 8: 가실래요 How I met your father
- 9: 주무시고 가실래요 Oxford dinner club
- 10: 주무시고 가실래요 Youngjoo
- 11: 주무시고 가실래요 Stick to your guns!
- 12: 주무시고 가실래요 Cultivating a Friendship is Like Gardening
- 13: 주무시고 가실래요 Paying it forward
- 14: 주무시고 가실래요 Hope Brooklyn
- 15: 주무시고 가실래요 Potters
- 16: 주무시고 가실래요? Who Will Pay for Dinner?
- 17: 주무시고 가실래요 Banyan tree
- 18. 주무시고 가실래요 My old house in JEGI-DONG
- 19: The invincible six sisters, the Little Women of Jegi-dong
- 20: My family’s special tradition: Our Fairytale Christmas
- 21: 주무시고 가실래요 Who is the best chef?
- 22: 주무시고 가실래요 Song Sister Uniform
- 23: 주무시고 가실래요 Family Reunion
- 1: 주무시고 가실래요? Host DiaryToday wasn’t much different from any other day. We invited everyone and anyone, offering them a place to stay and serving home-cooked meals without much thought. Sometimes, people needed a place to stay. Living in NYC, we often had friends or friends of friends visiting the city. Other times, we simply invited people out of… Read more: 1: 주무시고 가실래요? Host Diary
- 2: 주무시고 가실래요? Have you eaten already?My husband and I have lived in New York for nearly 40 years and raised 4 children. My journey from Korea to France and to New York wasn’t always easy but filled with joy and laughter thanks to dear friends and family who shared our lives over good meals. Whenever I run into someone I… Read more: 2: 주무시고 가실래요? Have you eaten already?
- 3: 주무시고 가실래요 Come and stay overI did it again: 16 grown ups and 3 children. It wasn’t my intention to have such a large gathering… Originally, I had planned for my children, who are scattered across different states, to come for a family weekend at our house in Hampton for a week. However, ever since two of our children got… Read more: 3: 주무시고 가실래요 Come and stay over
- 4: 주무시고 가실래요SilverliningsDuring the pandemic, many people rediscovered the joy of home cooking. There were days when supermarkets ran out of flour because everyone started baking bread at home. I learned bread making from my daughter, who worked in a bakery during her college days. Trapped in our Hamptons house for 18 months, I baked not only… Read more: 4: 주무시고 가실래요Silverlinings
- 5: 주무시고 가실래요Favorite meal of the dayOur favorite meal of the day is definitely breakfast. Ever since we started intermittent fasting, breakfast became more important–literally the meal that’s breaking my fast. When we have overnight guests who stay for more than a night, we rotate following menu: @ fresh baked sourdough, chakshuka, strawberry scones, berries, coffee or tea @avocado toast, peach… Read more: 5: 주무시고 가실래요Favorite meal of the day
- 6: 주무시고 가실래요 Overbooking“That’s not a nice neighborhood! Just have them stay with us!” My husband must be taking in new guests. Again? He convinced his friend to cancel the Airbnb booking for their children visiting NY and brought them to our house. This time, it’s his elementary school buddy’s son. He is in law school in Atlanta… Read more: 6: 주무시고 가실래요 Overbooking
- 7: 주무시고 가실래요 Columbia annual gatheringI married my husband, who was a graduate student at Columbia, in the spring of 1983. Most of our friends were still students and singles at the time. Our wedding gifts mostly consisted of items affordable to college students, such as a $20 electric skillet or a set of forks. We initially moved into my… Read more: 7: 주무시고 가실래요 Columbia annual gathering
- 8: 가실래요 How I met your fatherI met my husband, Jae, in March of 1982 in New York. I had been studying in Paris since 1980 as an art student. My sister Aera met someone in New York in 1982, and I flew over to attend her engagement. My other sister, Soonjin, who was living in NY with Dangsun at the… Read more: 8: 가실래요 How I met your father
- 9: 주무시고 가실래요 Oxford dinner clubEver since we moved to Brooklyn from our Montclair house, we began inviting our nieces, nephews, and our friends’ children—who affectionately call us uncle and aunt—for dinner, alongside our grown children. We secretly hoped to provide our children with a sense of growing up in an extended family, reminiscent of the olden days when all… Read more: 9: 주무시고 가실래요 Oxford dinner club
- 10: 주무시고 가실래요 YoungjooI had lunch with Youngjoo. She is a friend of my younger sister and now teaches piano in college. She was delighted when I invited her to Hampton house on July 4th weekend one summer. She stayed overnight, and we watched the fireworks on the beach. We finally went out for lunch when the pandemic… Read more: 10: 주무시고 가실래요 Youngjoo
- 11: 주무시고 가실래요 Stick to your guns!It was still early in the morning when Jae called, asking me to receive a guest who was already on their way from JFK airport. This sudden guest was one of his upper classmates. I had only met him a couple of times before he moved back to LA, where he’d grown up. I opened… Read more: 11: 주무시고 가실래요 Stick to your guns!
- 12: 주무시고 가실래요 Cultivating a Friendship is Like GardeningMy daughter Anne once asked me, “When are you truly happy?” Happiness is difficult to define, but time certainly flies when you do what you truly love. In that regard, I am happiest when gardening or painting. Preparing to host is similar—time goes by faster because my heart is in it. My husband had no… Read more: 12: 주무시고 가실래요 Cultivating a Friendship is Like Gardening
- 13: 주무시고 가실래요 Paying it forwardWhen we moved to Montclair in 1991, we started attending a church called KUPC. My husband wasn’t a Christian at the time, but a customer of his fish market let him know the church had a Korean school. He thought teaching the kids Korean was important, so that’s how our family’s journey into Christian fellowship… Read more: 13: 주무시고 가실래요 Paying it forward
- 14: 주무시고 가실래요 Hope BrooklynOur involvement with Hope Brooklyn occurred, like most events in our life, by what some may call coincidence and what we prefer to name as God’s hand. It started when Drew Hyun, who officiated our son Kevin’s wedding, suddenly called us one day and asked if he could drop by for a cup of tea.… Read more: 14: 주무시고 가실래요 Hope Brooklyn
- 15: 주무시고 가실래요 PottersPart of why hosting means so much to me is it’s one way I am able to give and receive spiritually. One good example of this is with the Potters. The Potters are a volunteer gospel praise group from Korea who tour and sing for different churches. We first met them when they visited our… Read more: 15: 주무시고 가실래요 Potters
- 16: 주무시고 가실래요? Who Will Pay for Dinner?My husband and I sometimes wonder what would happen if my cousin, Suk Hyang unni, and my husband’s cousin, Hyo-soon unni, had dinner together at a restaurant. It would be a tough (and entertaining) match because they are both headstrong and always fight to pick up the tab. My husband only has one brother; but… Read more: 16: 주무시고 가실래요? Who Will Pay for Dinner?
- 17: 주무시고 가실래요 Banyan treeWhen the travel ban from the pandemic finally got lifted, the first place my husband and I headed for was Maui. There were tough regulations for us visitors to follow, but it was well worth it. The weather was beautiful, and it felt less crowded than it would have been under normal circumstances. One of… Read more: 17: 주무시고 가실래요 Banyan tree
- 18. 주무시고 가실래요 My old house in JEGI-DONGI can still hear my mother calling me in that little alley of Jegi-dong. When I reflect on why I enjoy hosting people as much as I do, I realize this trait traces back to my maternal grandmother. Ironically, I wasn’t fond of her when I was young. It makes me sad to look back… Read more: 18. 주무시고 가실래요 My old house in JEGI-DONG
- 19: The invincible six sisters, the Little Women of Jegi-dong“I’m the fourth of six sisters.” People are always surprised when I tell them this. These days, having a household full of girls sounds fun and even enviable; but in my mother’s generation, having all daughters and no sons was almost a sin. My mother later learned the chance of giving birth to six daughters… Read more: 19: The invincible six sisters, the Little Women of Jegi-dong
- 20: My family’s special tradition: Our Fairytale ChristmasMy family has a special tradition. To us, Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year. This tradition isn’t particularly special in the eyes of the Western world, but celebrating Christmas was pretty rare in Korea when I was a child. We grew up loving Christmas because of my father, who was baptized as an… Read more: 20: My family’s special tradition: Our Fairytale Christmas
- 21: 주무시고 가실래요 Who is the best chef?One thing all my sisters have in common, despite the wide age difference, is they’re good cooks. Even though we’re scattered across the US and Korea, we still share new recipes we try in our Kakao “sister chat.” Food and cooking is one of the many ways we bond, though we all have our own… Read more: 21: 주무시고 가실래요 Who is the best chef?
- 22: 주무시고 가실래요 Song Sister UniformAll my sisters and I are on the taller side, thanks to my father. He was 5 ’10,” which was considered to be fairly tall in those days, especially for Korea. My mom used to say it was always easy to spot him among a crowd. I was about the second tallest in my class… Read more: 22: 주무시고 가실래요 Song Sister Uniform
- 23: 주무시고 가실래요 Family ReunionI still remember my mom’s nagging– “No more congregating and go to your rooms! It’s way past your bedtime!” We were always busy chatting and didn’t want to go to sleep yet. Such antics are inevitable when you have six girls in the house. As we grew older, though, it became rarer for all six… Read more: 23: 주무시고 가실래요 Family Reunion