Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christmas in Korea

I asked my students if they celebrate Christmas. After about a week or so of asking every one of my classes, I found that the majority of them said 'yes'.

Now, I don't know whether they really understand the implications of the word 'celebrate'. It usually means doing something extra special for the occasion, whether that includes meeting up with family, having a special meal, going to church, or whatever.

One of the third graders I spoke to said that he ate with his family. Another said he had a nice meal. Another was wearing a new, sharp looking v-neck sweater underneath his blazer. Promising, I thought.

It turned out that the first guy was just eating a normal meal with his parents and brother with no discernible element of celebration apparent. No cake. No party poppers. Nothing remotely special.

The second guy's 'nice meal' was a pepperoni pizza that, after talking to him for a bit, I found out he eats relatively regularly anyway.

And the last guy went out and bought the sweater himself - he said that 'it wasn't good value...'

Not much celebrating going on then.

There wasn't a great deal of celebrating going on in the Gray-Whatling apartment either, to be honest. Without being with our families during the holidays, what we do is a watered down version of Christmas. We tried our best like we always do and it ended up being pretty good in the end.

We had a lovely meal, a genuinely lovely meal, on Christmas eve. It was delicious. We journeyed to a place called Uno Chicago Grill in Ilsan about 30 minutes bus ride from Gyesan. I'll tease you with some pics:

Before


After



 Only the pickles and the coleslaw got out alive.

This is Sarah looking beautiful at the restaurant:


This is me looking rough:


The meal involved Sarah and I massacring a 10 ounce New York steak and a large rack of baby back ribs lashed with a BBQ sauce. Throw some chilli, nachos, bread sticks and fries into the mix and you can guess we never had to eat until the next day (we ate this around 2:30pm).

On Christmas day itself, we woke up, gave each other presents, then went and had a buffet lunch at a restaurant called Ashley's in Home Plus, had some coffee and finally chilled out at home until we it was time to chat to our family in the evening.

Sarah got me an excellent Swiss watch, which I can't wait to wear - the strap needs adjusting because I have the wrists of a toddler. She also got me a smart looking coat, but that needs exchanging - again, I'm too thin. I got Sarah a ring and a nice jumper. She's already worn both in public, which is a good sign.

And that was Christmas 2011 :)

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