My first step to making this a good Christmas was to get up the make the apartment feel like Christmas. I did this with copious amounts of Christmas music and decorating the heck out of my little bitty apartment.
I got a little tree and some ornaments from Daiso (the "dollar" store). I also strung some little "around the world" origami dolls that I made and put them all around the tree.
One of my little Sunbeams (I teach the 3-4 year-old kids at church... it's exciting) gave me this awesome little snowman popsicle stick Santa Claus. My favorite part is the bell that jingles when you shake it. He shook it in my ear to show me that it makes noise. How sweet. :)
Underneath my tree sits a little nutcracker that my dad sent in a box to me a couple weeks ago. He guarded all of the awesome presents that I had been storing under my stairs from when Dad came to visit in October. I collect nutcrackers so this little guy is an awesome reminder of all the nutcrackers that are lining both sides of the stairs back home.
You already saw my newspaper-chains that I hung from the banister of my loft. They are still there and I also added some snowflakes I cut from leftover origami paper I had bought to make my flock of cranes. They look really colorful and pretty. I lines the side of the staircase with them and hung a few above my kitchen area.
I also drew a little wreath to hang on my door. Then I made a little countdown so I could take down a day until Christmas.
The actual Christmas day was fun, too. I called Mom on Skype while I was getting dressed so I could say, "Merry Christmas!!" Then Jesi got on at Grandma's and I got to talk with her and all of cousins as they were getting ready for Christmas Eve dinner. It was fun. I got to tell them about how Santa had already gotten to Korea (I showed them the Almond Roca he had brought for me) and how now he was crossing the Atlantic to go see them (it takes a while to cross that big ocean). It got a little crazy at the end with all the cousins trying to get on at once. Aunty Amy and Grandma didn't stand a chance of nabbing the camera from that crew.
Kendra and I exchanged our gifts before hopping the subway to Ichon to go to Mitch's place for a day with all the singles from church. We ate breakfast complete with sausage, bagels, and AMERICAN bacon (you might think there's only one type of bacon, but bacon apparently differs country to country). We chatted and watched Kung Foo Panda for a while before doing a gift exchange. I got cookies and a really pretty journal (I ended up getting the gift Kendra brought... haha).
Then a bunch of us hoofed it onto the Army base to go see Tron. We left about ten minutes before the movie started so we were almost literally jogging the whole way there. Woof! Everyone always tells me that going on base is like being in "Little America." I'm really glad all of America doesn't look like that, though, because to me it looked more like the portable areas at Chamiza Elementary back in New Mexico. Maybe we didn't go in far enough. It was fun, though, to see all the signs in English.
The funniest part was that when I paid for my ticket (with a 10,000 won bill) I got back $3.40. That's right: American dollars! It looks really weird. Also, I don't know what to do with it. I'll probably put it with my passport and just have a few bucks for when I get home to the airport. :)
As a side note, Tron was awesome. The old movie from the 80's rocked, and so did this one. Love. The music alone was worth it. The 80's had some awesome music.
After we got back from the movie, we finished up the movie they had started back at Mitch's while we were gone (Forbidden Kingdom with Jacki Chan and Jet Li... that alone should tell you how awesome it was). Then we whipped out the Trivial Pursuit game and just group answered the cards for fun. They were super old so it was fun to hear questions and answers about the Soviet Union, etc. Did you know that the game Monopoly was banned in the Soviet Union? Makes sense.
The most awesome American part of the day? That was when Mitch took out the leftover TURKEY and we made turkey sandwiches! Turkey sandwiches are my favorite part about Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. Turkey is pretty hard to come by and most people don't have ovens to cook one even if they got one, so it was pretty exciting to see the turkey.
We sang songs, listened to some people play guitar, and then headed for home at about 10pm. Overall, a really good Christmas day.
One last Christmas bit: a video for your viewing pleasure! This comes from the video files of Durkee who records and posts videos of his time in Korea. These 12 days of Christmas will definitely give you a feel for some of the fun (and more interesting things) here in Korea.
Quick culture note: Instead of "true love" he says "chingoo" which is Korean for "friend." And the tongchin? Yes. I have heard of it, I've seen it happen in the halls with my middle school kids, and it is way awkward. I hope it doesn't progress to the U.S. because I can see middle school boys in the U.S. being aaaalll over that. Watch and you'll understand what a tongchin is once you see his first day of Christmas.
Enjoy! And Merry Christmas!
0 comments:
Post a Comment