Personal Narrative

Greetings everyone! Do you all know about Korean culture well? I lived my whole life in Korea, and still made a mistake which made everyone laugh.

There is a type of rice cake called siru. Traditionally, Koreans pass these rice cakes to their new neighbors when they move in. However, I never knew so.

It was a typical Saturday morning. I was alone at my home. I was studying Chinese characters, trying to pass the exam since I had already failed several times previously. While I was depressed about the exam on Sunday, people living on our upstairs constantly made bumping and drilling sounds. Even though I am not very sensitive and do not get easily distracted, the noise was going on for the whole day and even getting louder.

At that moment, the interphone rang. The person on the other side was the security guard, our apartment keeper. He had called to tell that I am being too loud and disturbing other neighbors. This was a complete nonsense. I told the security that I am the greatest victim of it because I could not study for the test and also got stressed because of the constant bumping and drilling sounds. The security guard promised me that he would warn the people upstairs to stop making the noise.

After another few minutes, the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and to my surprise, the noisy people from the upstairs had come down to apologize and ask for an excuse. They said, “We moved in a few days ago, and we had some facilities to fix.” They also nicely handed me a shiny green box, saying that it was a gift for our home. I felt better and went directly to the dining room, and opened the box.

Inside the box, there was something mysterious. I first thought that some kind of garbage was inside the box. I was sure that it was some kind of a rice cake, but covered with dark brown beans which seemed very unclean. The bean powders were all over the place, and it was black. Their intention was abstruse. I thought that the new neighbors tried to play a nasty prank on me by giving such black colored food to make me feel bad, for revenge. I threw out the whole box, and started to abhor my new neighbor.

Of course, the day after, I failed the Chinese characters exam again.

After a month later, I started living in KMLA dormitory. One day, when I was studying the Chinese characters, and the room on our upstairs was bumping onto the floors and making very noisy sounds. While talking with my roommates, I told about the rice cake incident. After a pause, unexpectedly, everyone in my room burst into laughter. I couldn’t understand why. Afterwards, they told me that the rice cake is named siru, and that Koreans traditionally pass out siru cakes when they move into a new area. I felt abashed about the story that I told so passionately. Since then, I am paying great attention about our tradition, in order to prevent incidents like this beforehand. Thank you.