Christmas

I realize I haven’t blogged in a long, long time but that just goes to show you that a) time is flying over here, because it feels like I just wrote my previous blog and b) my life in Korea can be as routine and un-noteworthy as my life back home in Canada, which I would never feel the urge to blog about.

That being said, seeing as I missed Christmas with you all back in the home country, I thought I would share with you about Christmas celebrations here. They started the last week of November when Sonya and I started drilling our kindergarteners for their Christmas presentation on December 9th. That whole process and presentation was not comparable to anything you can envision from an elementary school in Canada. There was a lot of stressing, shouting, bribing and demanding that these children memorize faster, sing louder, dance better, smile bigger and generally perform like they were 15 and not 5 years old. Seriously, the first time we rehearsed on stage I kept having to turn away laughing because it was just so hilarious to watch their serious faces as Sonya kept up a constant stream of “No, other way. . .why are you standing there. . . sing louder. . .LOUDER. . .I can’t hear you. . . move over there. . . I still can't hear you. . . what are you doing?!?!” But by the time the performance came around, I was fully committed to this method (My favourite tactic being guilt: “Do you want to make your mom sad? Pretend I’m your mom right now. . . I can’t hear a word you’re saying- see, I’m crying!” ) Sorry, not photos of this, I was busy wildly gesturing and stage-whispering to my students from the side-line.

These photos are actually from Christmas Eve Day- when our students had to sing for their presents from "Santa".

Although it's only indirectly related to Christmas, I can't forget to mention December 16th, the day that it snowed, because we all know the festive feelings softly falling snow evokes. . .although in Korea it evokes a few other things as well, such as the appearance of umbrellas, see below (which I must confess I initially made fun of, but later realized the ingenius practicality of it- no snow melting on your hair and rendering time spent straigtening it moot) and lengthy delays in traffic (buses arriving half an hour late at school, which I also made fun of and will continue to do so).

The weekend before Christmas, our directors offered us their time-share rental near Muju Ski Resort. So we spent Saturday there eating a Christmas dinner and then spent the evening snowboarding (boys) and sliding (girls). A certain person kept bailing right out of the gate, which led to a humiliating experience for us Canadians as we were repeatedly “taught” how to properly use our sleds.

Just a festive photo of the SLP ladies

On Sunday, we returned home and it was literally straight on to another Christmas gathering for the Redeemer girls with more food and the added bonus of presents.

Another festive photo of some different ladies

On Thursday, aka Christmas Eve Eve, we had our staff “meat party”, which ended up being an enlightening experience in regards to some Korean drinking traditions. I won't get into my thoughts regarding this particular evening as this blog is public domain and no photos I have adequately depict the tone of this evening, so we'll leave it at this brief mention and you can ask me about it later.


Christmas Eve was spent working until 5:40pm and then rushing home to multi-task last minute emails, a Skype conversation, dinner and apartment cleaning before I left at 7:00pm to catch the bus for Incheon, which was 40 minutes late on the coldest night ever.

I spent most of the ride trying to cling to the spirit of the season by listening to Christmas music on the iPod I received as a surprise gift from my family and naughtily opened weeks before Christmas. Note the engraving

When we arrived at our airport hotel at about midnight, Kristin, Anna, Mary and I exchanged Secret Santa gifts, so my tradition of opening gifts on Christmas Eve remains unbroken.

Christmas Day, on the other hand, was a whole other story. . .