Korean New Years Tradition

On New Years Day, there are many traditional activities that occur within the Lee household.

For lunch, the ladies of our family cook a rice cake soup called 'Dduk Guk'.  The broth is made by boiling a type of beef (I forget what it's called) for several of hours.  Once the broth is good to go, you add the rice cake slices in it until it's soft enough to eat.  While that is cooking, the beef is getting sliced to put back in the soup.  Eggs are added along with chopped green onions.  When the soup is poured into the bowl, you top it with toasted seaweed lavers.

Before or after you eat, our family does a bow to our grandparents and parents which is called 'Saebae'.  This means that the elderly of our family sits on the floor and waits for our bow.  We usually bow to our grandparents and parents along with our cousins, aunts and uncles.  Guys and girls have a different style of bow and we do this twice in a row.  Once we bow, we sit and wish our grandparents great health for the new year and they tell us to do good in school and always love one another because we are family.  While we bow, there is a saying in Korean that states: Happy New Years. "Sae hae bokk man-ee bod uh sae yo".  Saebae is a sign of respect for our elderly that has been a tradition for a while.  We usually get quite a bit of cash in an envelope after we pay our respects!

After all of these festivities we then play a game called 'Yoot Nori'.  It's a game that has a board with 4 different teams.  You have to throw these four wooden sticks in the air and the way it lands on the floor is how many spots you can move.  We usually split up the teams by families and take turns playing. I don't understand the full instructions but I just throw the sticks and hope to get higher points. This is just a glimpse of some Korean Traditional festivities that happen in our family!

Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture

Before this presentation from Dr. Karowe, I had no knowledge of Global Warming.  I still lack knowledge of this topic and would like to know more about it.  I am summarizing his presentation as how I interpreted it and what I took away from the information.  So as we know, about 450 million of the world's poorest people depend on agriculture.  There are about 1.02 billion hungry people worldwide...that is a lot of hungry people.  It's sad to know that these hungry people depend on agriculture when sometimes these crops are ruined from the climate change.  Most of the crops vary from wheat, rice and corn which often has decreased yields due to many factors.
- Increased temperatures
- Increased droughts
- Increased flooding
- Decreased nutrition
- Decreased water for irrigation
- Increased pests.
These are all factors that decreases the amount of crops that are grown each year.  This effects farmers who can't grow their crops and will eventually lose money because they can't sell enough.

I feel like this is a huge cycle that comes full circle.  Each action affects the next action which can be good or bad.  There is so much we can do as students in our generation but I don't know where to start.  I wish I knew more about climate change and global warming.

Burger Shot & Cluckin' Bell Commercial

Burger Shot

The 6 pound heart stopper burger they sell at Burger Shot seems to be giving people heart problems.  Although this commercial is making fun of America and how much American's eat, this could be a warning commercial.  Because that man called 911 from eating too much, I think it shows that American's are eating too much fast food.  If people see this commercial, they can learn that fast food isn't the healthiest and too much can be very harmful to your body.  Also, this commercial is sending us a message that as long as you die happy, die from eating the most unhealthy food there is.

Cluckin' Bell

I found this commercial to be very stereotypical and racist against African American's.  A 90 piece bucket of deep fried chicken obviously makes a huge difference in your weight.  I just thought it was stereotypical because this commercial showed only the african american eating the chicken and gaining weight.  On top of that, there were three Caucasians pointing their fingers at him. I also feel like they don't care about animal cruelty because they were saying how small chicken brain's were and they wouldn't feel the pain at all. I think this topic relates to many food industries out there that uses animals but treats them so cruel before they are sold in the stores.