Rules and regulations

Korea: 06/26/11 Night

Still not feeling up for describing my trip. Instead I will talk about random moments today.. all I did was hang around the house, since my cousin and his wife/kid came to visit.

-My aunt made 2 kinds of bindaedduk (Korean pancakes) today, and along with leftover fried chicken it was a lot of food for everyone at the house. After we ate, I kid you not, she goes "Ok, we gotta get ready to eat lunch!" And then we ordered jjajangmyun, tangsooyuk, etc. I will never go hungry here.
-Just a few minutes ago, a piece of ginseng rolled onto the floor. My grandma looked at it, said "I've been looking for that for such a long time!" and starts gnawing on it.
-I accidentally started speaking casually to this random "cousin" that I recently met, who noticed and was like "It's ok, let's just speak casually (as opposed to properly/respectfully)". Just reminded me that there are a lot of rules and customs in Korean culture that I'm either not used to practicing (giving/receiving things with 2 hands, for example), or are pretty black and white in the US but can be gray here. I kinda get a free pass since I'm a foreigner/Americanized, but at the same time, these customs are so second nature to them, I feel like deviance is still noted. ANYWAY! Just my 2 cents.