My first Christmas in Korea!

Christmas stayed pretty busy, which I was glad about. My first Thanksgiving was memorable at being totally forgotten about by everyone but me and totally devoid of family, which was depressing. Thankfully, I actually enjoyed this holiday, a lot. :)

The holidays started with Christmas parties at school. For every class last Tuesday, I bought big packs of chips and snacks and a bottle of Chilsung Cider(like Sprite) and we just played games or colored pictures all class, depending on what class it was. I had fun in all of my classes that day, for the most part, and it was an easy day for me.

That evening, the 23rd, the teachers all met at Cassie's apartment after work at 10 to have a little Christmas party before our four day vacation. We ordered in chicken, the others drank wine and beer(I had coke), and we talked, laughed, and played lots of Jenga. We ended up heading home a little after 2 am but it was a great time together as coworkers and something we don't do enough of, I think.

Christmas Eve morning, I slept in late and then went out shopping to get a present for Gichon, who's name I had gotten for the secret gift-giving. I took the 4:40 bus to church and shortly after arriving, I went back out with the guys to get some ramen since we were hungry and bored while the praise team(all the girls) were practicing.

The evening ended up being a real blast. We started out with some Christmas songs, followed by the children's Sunday School program, which was really cute and there were about 4 plays throughout the night. After the service was finished, we all headed downstairs for some food. The table was spread with Deok(rice cakes), fried chicken, soup, fruit, various kinds of bread, mandoo(dumplings), and Gimbab. After stuffing ourselves, we all headed to Young-sun's house.

Once there, we played games, ate Christmas cake(a Korean Christmas tradition), talked and exchanged our gifts. Young-sun got my name and got me a very soft green pillow cushion. At 1:30 am, we headed out to go caroling at all the churchmembers house. At the first house, we got a big bag of snacks, at another place we got a huge bag of tangerines. At Dahea's house, we all went in and ate a cake roll and drank plum tea and at Jin's house(who's family has now left for America :( ), we went in for some coffee. We finally got back to Young-sun's house at 3:30 and finally got around to sleeping at 4:00.

The next morning, we had to get up around 9:30 for the 11:00 Christmas service so we could prepare. The praise team had to practice their songs and I had to practice with our little group for the Christmas cantata. It was a nice service with some praise songs, the cantata, and a message. We had the traditional holiday food rice cake mandoo soup for lunch, which was really good and prepared in a special, especially delicious way. After lunch, we just hung out at Young-sun's house and most of us took a nap for a couple hours and I finally headed home around dinner time.

It was a wonderful time and I loved being able to spend so much time with my friends. I don't know what I would do here without them.

And now to the rest of my holiday vacation. On Friday, I took the 1:00 bus to Bundang, Seongnam City to meet an old Homeschool Friend student(Edwin) that I had become close to but never met in person. I met him at the huge and well-known church(for homeschoolers), Global Mission Church. After I grabbed some lunch, we headed to a pc room to do some gaming together.

After sudden attack for two hours, we caught the bus to his house and happened to be on the same bus with his dad. His family is very nice and his mom made bul-go-gi especially for me since she knows it's my favorite and told me to come often since they are like family, which was amazing since it was the first time I had met any of them. lol

We played some cards and listened to some music before heading back out again. We met a friend of Edwin's and went together to a Sauna where we spent the night. In the morning, we ate breakfast out and headed to a pc room again where we played sudden attack for about three hours. After lunch at Subway, we went to a karaoke room(my idea) and sang our lungs out for two hours.

We got some coffee afterwards at the most amazing cafe in Korea. It's called Cafe De Gortieu and I had the best coffee(caramel mochiatto) that I've ever had in Korea. And it was for an amazing price. Due to a campaign because it's a new cafe, we got two for the price of one - $3.50. After coffee, we gamed for another two hours, had pizza, and I caught the bus for home. It was a great time and I hope to do it again sometime in the future, if not just for that amazing coffee. lol

Sunday was pretty normal and yesterday was very boring. I had a whole day with absolutely nothing to do. Everyone was working except me so that left me all by myself to watch tv and play computer games all day. Felt like a very unproductive day. hehe

It's kind of nice being back at school again, but the stress of work is there again. Mostly because we've got a lot of stuff to worry about right now. It's report card time(haven't nearly finished), schedule-writing time, have to write a bio for the new school website, and we're starting a totally new schedule from tomorrow. It's stressful getting new classes when you've gotten used to how you've done things with other classes that you're comfortable with after 3 months. Of course, many of them are the same but there are many new ones, too.

One kind of nice thing is that I start at 4 everyday with no breaks, rather than starting at 3 three days a week with a one hour break in between two classes. Time goes much faster when the classes are back-to-back as opposed to having an extra hour to do nothing, which makes the night feel longer.

For now, I'm looking forward to another holiday the day after tomorrow, followed by the staff trip to Everland on Friday and Saturday. I'll update you as those happen. Sorry for the long post and I'll hopefully get pictures of Christmas Eve soon.

Long time no blog...

Sorry everyone, it's been a long time since I've written, I know. Life has been busy and I've gotten lazy, what more can I say? :P

I've had a good past two weeks and an even better Christmas. Two Saturdays, I went skating with some friends and two little girls from church. I also happened to run into a little girl from school who was skating with her friend. I ended up having four little girls push and pull me around the rink for an hour. It was a blast. :D You can check out the pictures on my Facebook.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that and post a separate post for the Christmas holiday time, it's bound to be long. :P