I knew before even moving to Korea that the holidays would be the hardest part. After all, family is what holiday's are about. However, because I had Bobby by my side and skype just a click away, the holidays turned out just fine.
We started off our Christmas festivities with something called Santacon. During this event, people were encouraged to dress up like Santa and spread the holiday cheer. We sang Christmas carols and caused a ruckus with our friends.
Next up was our Christmas party at work, which was also the same day as the presidential elections in Korea. The party started out great. We all grabbed a Cass or Hite beer, cozeyed up on the heated floors of our school gym and started to eat all of the delicious Korean food in front of us. We then started our secret santa gift exchange, where we had to guess who got us a gift. I got a beautiful chuck green scarf (perfect for the freezing winter weather) and Bobby got a jar of ginseng for good health.
Shortly after our gift exchange ended, the news announced the next Korean President, a women- Park Geun-Hye, and the cheerful atmosphere of our party took a 180. It went from people laughing with joy, to crying about their country's future. Korea now has the first female president in all of Asia. She isn't just any women, she is the daughter of Korea's assassinated dictator, Park Chung-Hee, who was a dictator for eight years. Many of our Korean teachers told us that they needed to leave Korea because they could not live here with a president like "her".
Moving on.. For the whole month of December we cancelled our Kindergarten classes and just practiced for our Christmas English concert, which was on December 22. The Korean teachers were very stressed out about the short time limit for the kids to remember all their lines, dances, and songs. The kids were constantly yelled at and were under a lot of pressure from the Korean teachers (and probably their parents too). We practiced and practiced and the kids did GREAT, we should have a DVD of the performance soon!
Here is a photo of me with Bee class practicing our song "What's the Time Mr. Wolf?"
Olivia and Sophie watching other classes practicing their play.
Younger brother and sister, Micheal and Kemi.
The COREM foreigner teachers before our first act in the Kinder Concert.
During the month of December, we also received a few Christmas cards which warmed our hearts. The first one was from one of my Saturday class students. He wrote me a card and gave me a very nice hand cream. Check out how good his handwriting is!!
Next, we received a few SUPER CREATIVE cards from my soon to be, brother and sister in-law.
On Christmas Eve we went to our friends apartment for a white elephant party. Everyone brought a silly or serious gift and no one knew who brought it. We all sat on the warm floor and played Christmas games and had a great time.
Before we knew it, Christmas day was here and it didn't feel like Christmas at all. We woke up, made some hot tea, and then sat down and skyped our family. First up, Bobby's family. Every year Bobby's Dad does a secret santa and we made sure we were included this year, even though we were on the other side of the planet. We got a big box in the mail weeks before, and had to wait patiently to open it.
We were thrilled when we opened our gift! It was perfect.
Alex and Amy (I am assuming mostly Amy) made these cute elf ornaments for us. I think these will look very cute on our future Christmas tree when we move back home.
Even though we missed our family more than they could know during this holiday season, we were blessed with many fun experiences that we will never forget. One down, one to go.
Merry Christmas!
-Jestine
