Hello Hello!
I'm afraid I don't have pictures for you this time around...sorry!
Anyway, I hope you all had a fantastic four day weekend, beginning with survival of the notorious bad driving winter weather (I heard a few family members of mine were unable to make the drive from northern MN due to weather - sad), followed by a huge amount of food consumption (that any other day would be frowned upon) which left you incapacitated on the couch, unable to even think about moving, followed by a little football, maybe some card games, movies, lots of sleep. Then maybe you decided to get a jumpstart on your Christmas shopping, either at 4 AM (or your alarm was set for 3:30...and you said screw that, I'll go next year, and then proceeded to sleep some more and venture out at a more human time) or at 1 PM? That's usually the way it goes, right? Oh, and of course you had pumpkin pie for breakfast on Friday. Don't even try to deny it.
Anyway, now that Thanksgiving is over I suppose it's time to start thinking about Christmas - yikes and...what?! Once again, time seems to be slipping through our fingers. Upon discussing this curiously alarming fact that Christmas is just around the corner with my friend yesterday, we concluded that South Korea must have some sort of time warp - we've only been here for about six weeks, not over three months, and Christmas is definitely not that close...so obviously all the calendars and clocks are lying to us here.
Well, even if the calendars are lying, that didn't stop us from having a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday evening. After running some errands and volunteering at the orphanage on Saturday, I headed to the bus terminal, baked goods safely packed away in my backpack, to get a ticket to Jangheung, the anticipated Thanksgiving celebration location among our little group of Americans, Canadians, and even a couple of our Irish friends.
To set the stage, let me tell you a little bit about the bus terminal in Gwangju. In a word, crazy. Similar to a big airport, or the mall on Black Friday morning crazy, with lots of people shorter than me. I got my ticket, waited for about 45 minutes amidst all of the people running everywhere, either to catch their bus, grab something to eat, or to meet someone coming in. I picked a good spot to wait for my bus to come, right in front of a really entertaining guy with a rainbow umbrella. I have no idea what he was saying, but he was hilarious, judging by his actions and the laughter of his friends.
Once on the bus, I settled down into the cramped but cozy seat, and read my book. I sat back, read, took a little nap, and dreamed of pumpkin pie. My ETA was about 6:30 in Jangheung (pronounced Jongheung.) Well, that didn't happen. My ticket, thanks to my newfound Korean literacy, read that I was traveling to Jeongeup - no big deal. Because Jangheung is a small town in the south, and many buses have different destinations within one transit, I assumed that Jangheung was on the way to Jeongeup, and since it was later in the day there weren't many direct buses left, so I figured they threw me on an indirect bus. Well, we all know what happens when we assume things...and if you don't you'd better take notes. When the bus made its first stop, which I knew wasn't Jangheung, it turned out everybody started getting off. Usually only a few people get off at each stop until you reach the final destination. I went up to the bus driver.
"Jangheung?"
"Anio - JeongeuP! JeongeuP! JeongeuP!"
Oops.
There was no one left on the bus at this point, so I grabbed my bags and ran into the tiny terminal. I hoped I could just fix my mistake by catching the next bus to Jangheung, and at the worst just heading back to Gwangju, though I hated to go back the way I came. I called Sara, who was expecting me at about this time, and said "Um, we have a problem. Can you look on the Internet to see where Jangeup is?"
After a minute she said, "um, it's not on Google Maps!" Oh great, I'm thinking, but then I realized I had spelled it wrong for her on the phone. I respelled it for her and she said "Oh, here it is...oooh. Yeah, you went the exact opposite direction. You're north of Gwangju..." Oops again. If I had to get on the wrong bus, why did it have to be the polar opposite of my destination? I realized my mistake had been at the ticket counter - the woman had misheard me (so not 100 percent my fault...but mostly) and I didn't think to double check when I read that the ticket didn't say Jangheung, as I haven't ever had a problem getting to where I need to go. Just when I thought I had Korea figured out, too.
So, after making sure that the crew in Jangheung wasn't going to wait for me to start eating, since that would result in a lot of unhappy people, I realized the only logical solution was to go back to Gwangju and then purchase the correct ticket to Jangheung. Missing pumpkin pie wasn't even an option that crossed my mind...plus if that happened I would have a whole pan of caramel brownies on my hands with no one to share with...even worse. Luckily Gwangju is a major travel hub, so I knew there would still be running buses to Jangheung, even though it was about 6:30 in the evening at that point. I bought another ticket, climbed back on the bus, and read my book to keep me from whacking myself on the head with it for my stupidity.
Well, when it rains it pours. It turned out once I got back to Gwangju and purchased a new ticket (with impeccable pronunciation at the ticket counter, I might add) the bus didn't leave for another hour, which put my ETA at about 10:00 instead of 6:30. But hey, there was nothing I could do about it - good thing I had brought two books along instead of one. I wandered around the terminal for a bit, and waited for the next bus, which I finally boarded a little before 9.
So, after three and a half hours of bus, and about 15 minutes of navigating through a dark Jangheung, I finally made it for the Thanksgiving festivities! My friends had saved me a plate of everything and had very kindly waited to break into the desserts until I got there. As they dug into pie, pumpkin bread, banana bread, and caramel brownies, I happily munched on my plate of potatoes with mushroom gravy, salad, cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread, and...nope, no turkey. Due to the expense of acquiring a turkey in Korea we opted for delicious teriyaki bulgogi instead (Korean beef.) So there was still a hint of Korea in my Thanksgiving dinner, but the best part, as always, was being with my pseudo-family, a random group of English teachers who had nothing in common with each other before orientation week. After traveling together, visiting each others' cities, and sharing our teacher stories over many meals together over the past few months we have formed a fun group that can now check a successful Korean Thanksgiving off its growing list of activities.
As I arrived, I found my fellow teachers in various forms of discomfort due to their very full stomachs, whether curled up sideways on the couch, sitting upright (seemed to be the most painful), or sprawled on the floor, in order to "stretch my stomach out for more pie!" I took heed at this slightly disturbing sight and stopped myself after one plateful of food, then happily indulged in some pumpkin pie, the image of which has been taunting me all week via my PowerPoint presentation on Thanksgiving (and via my dear brother eating it right in front of me when I Skyped the family on Thanksgiving...thanks for that Reed. I wasn't jealous at all.) I realized how much I had come to rely on the guarantee of pumpkin pie once a year for Thanksgiving - it just isn't the same without it. Bless Sara for her pumpkin pie in a springform cheesecake pan. Also bless her for allowing me the delight of eating piece of her homemade apple-pear pie, something every Korean should learn how to make with their strange, delicious fruit that really does resemble a cross between an apple and a pear. The rest of the night consisted of as little movement as possible, as we all sat around in Sara's cozy living room, chatted, and attempted to get a game of cards going. (Nope, too lazy...and a bit of confusion on the rules...apparently Americans and Canadians play the game Presidents differently...) We all slept fantastically well that night, needless to say.
The next day was proclaimed a 'lazy day,' which started off with sleeping in (at least it did for Sara and I), eating pie for breakfast, and taking a walk around Jangheung, which was especially beautiful in the bright sunshine. We walked along the river, sometimes in the shade of the mountains, crossed the stepping stone bridges to pay a visit to the market, then walked along the paths that lined the river, while discussing how incredibly fast Korea time flies by. We came back and tucked into leftovers for lunch, somehow managing to fit in a little more pie.
Midafternoon found me back on a bus to Gwangju (good thing too - I was going through bus withdrawals at that point,) where I returned, made a pit stop in town to take care of something, and then headed back to my home sweet home, where I watched The Terminal while doing some cleaning and organizing. I felt like this weekend was much more balanced and less crazy than the past weekends - a good thing for me. Now I'm back in action at school, planning lessons for my 14th week of teaching - incredible. I have to switch gears and get into Christmas cookie baking, shopping, and planning mode before Christmas sneaks up like Thanksgiving did! The end of the semester for us is December 25th, and then I have to start teaching what they call 'winter camps' - more on that later.
As I looked back on the weekend (while on the bus home, of course) I realized that the best part of the weekend was getting together with my friends and trying to make the most of being away from our families for the holidays. There is something comforting about the familiarity of pumpkin pie, stuffing, and cranberry sauce at this time of year that made being away from home that much more bearable. And this weekend proved that you don't need turkey and decked out shopping malls to bring out the holiday spirit - just being together with friends to enjoy shared time is enough to be thankful for and to count blessings! So with that, I hope you had just as good of a Thanksgiving experience as I did. I wish you all a happy back to work week and good luck with your Christmas planning!
I'm afraid I don't have pictures for you this time around...sorry!
Anyway, I hope you all had a fantastic four day weekend, beginning with survival of the notorious bad driving winter weather (I heard a few family members of mine were unable to make the drive from northern MN due to weather - sad), followed by a huge amount of food consumption (that any other day would be frowned upon) which left you incapacitated on the couch, unable to even think about moving, followed by a little football, maybe some card games, movies, lots of sleep. Then maybe you decided to get a jumpstart on your Christmas shopping, either at 4 AM (or your alarm was set for 3:30...and you said screw that, I'll go next year, and then proceeded to sleep some more and venture out at a more human time) or at 1 PM? That's usually the way it goes, right? Oh, and of course you had pumpkin pie for breakfast on Friday. Don't even try to deny it.
Anyway, now that Thanksgiving is over I suppose it's time to start thinking about Christmas - yikes and...what?! Once again, time seems to be slipping through our fingers. Upon discussing this curiously alarming fact that Christmas is just around the corner with my friend yesterday, we concluded that South Korea must have some sort of time warp - we've only been here for about six weeks, not over three months, and Christmas is definitely not that close...so obviously all the calendars and clocks are lying to us here.
Well, even if the calendars are lying, that didn't stop us from having a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday evening. After running some errands and volunteering at the orphanage on Saturday, I headed to the bus terminal, baked goods safely packed away in my backpack, to get a ticket to Jangheung, the anticipated Thanksgiving celebration location among our little group of Americans, Canadians, and even a couple of our Irish friends.
To set the stage, let me tell you a little bit about the bus terminal in Gwangju. In a word, crazy. Similar to a big airport, or the mall on Black Friday morning crazy, with lots of people shorter than me. I got my ticket, waited for about 45 minutes amidst all of the people running everywhere, either to catch their bus, grab something to eat, or to meet someone coming in. I picked a good spot to wait for my bus to come, right in front of a really entertaining guy with a rainbow umbrella. I have no idea what he was saying, but he was hilarious, judging by his actions and the laughter of his friends.
Once on the bus, I settled down into the cramped but cozy seat, and read my book. I sat back, read, took a little nap, and dreamed of pumpkin pie. My ETA was about 6:30 in Jangheung (pronounced Jongheung.) Well, that didn't happen. My ticket, thanks to my newfound Korean literacy, read that I was traveling to Jeongeup - no big deal. Because Jangheung is a small town in the south, and many buses have different destinations within one transit, I assumed that Jangheung was on the way to Jeongeup, and since it was later in the day there weren't many direct buses left, so I figured they threw me on an indirect bus. Well, we all know what happens when we assume things...and if you don't you'd better take notes. When the bus made its first stop, which I knew wasn't Jangheung, it turned out everybody started getting off. Usually only a few people get off at each stop until you reach the final destination. I went up to the bus driver.
"Jangheung?"
"Anio - JeongeuP! JeongeuP! JeongeuP!"
Oops.
There was no one left on the bus at this point, so I grabbed my bags and ran into the tiny terminal. I hoped I could just fix my mistake by catching the next bus to Jangheung, and at the worst just heading back to Gwangju, though I hated to go back the way I came. I called Sara, who was expecting me at about this time, and said "Um, we have a problem. Can you look on the Internet to see where Jangeup is?"
After a minute she said, "um, it's not on Google Maps!" Oh great, I'm thinking, but then I realized I had spelled it wrong for her on the phone. I respelled it for her and she said "Oh, here it is...oooh. Yeah, you went the exact opposite direction. You're north of Gwangju..." Oops again. If I had to get on the wrong bus, why did it have to be the polar opposite of my destination? I realized my mistake had been at the ticket counter - the woman had misheard me (so not 100 percent my fault...but mostly) and I didn't think to double check when I read that the ticket didn't say Jangheung, as I haven't ever had a problem getting to where I need to go. Just when I thought I had Korea figured out, too.
So, after making sure that the crew in Jangheung wasn't going to wait for me to start eating, since that would result in a lot of unhappy people, I realized the only logical solution was to go back to Gwangju and then purchase the correct ticket to Jangheung. Missing pumpkin pie wasn't even an option that crossed my mind...plus if that happened I would have a whole pan of caramel brownies on my hands with no one to share with...even worse. Luckily Gwangju is a major travel hub, so I knew there would still be running buses to Jangheung, even though it was about 6:30 in the evening at that point. I bought another ticket, climbed back on the bus, and read my book to keep me from whacking myself on the head with it for my stupidity.
Well, when it rains it pours. It turned out once I got back to Gwangju and purchased a new ticket (with impeccable pronunciation at the ticket counter, I might add) the bus didn't leave for another hour, which put my ETA at about 10:00 instead of 6:30. But hey, there was nothing I could do about it - good thing I had brought two books along instead of one. I wandered around the terminal for a bit, and waited for the next bus, which I finally boarded a little before 9.
So, after three and a half hours of bus, and about 15 minutes of navigating through a dark Jangheung, I finally made it for the Thanksgiving festivities! My friends had saved me a plate of everything and had very kindly waited to break into the desserts until I got there. As they dug into pie, pumpkin bread, banana bread, and caramel brownies, I happily munched on my plate of potatoes with mushroom gravy, salad, cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread, and...nope, no turkey. Due to the expense of acquiring a turkey in Korea we opted for delicious teriyaki bulgogi instead (Korean beef.) So there was still a hint of Korea in my Thanksgiving dinner, but the best part, as always, was being with my pseudo-family, a random group of English teachers who had nothing in common with each other before orientation week. After traveling together, visiting each others' cities, and sharing our teacher stories over many meals together over the past few months we have formed a fun group that can now check a successful Korean Thanksgiving off its growing list of activities.
As I arrived, I found my fellow teachers in various forms of discomfort due to their very full stomachs, whether curled up sideways on the couch, sitting upright (seemed to be the most painful), or sprawled on the floor, in order to "stretch my stomach out for more pie!" I took heed at this slightly disturbing sight and stopped myself after one plateful of food, then happily indulged in some pumpkin pie, the image of which has been taunting me all week via my PowerPoint presentation on Thanksgiving (and via my dear brother eating it right in front of me when I Skyped the family on Thanksgiving...thanks for that Reed. I wasn't jealous at all.) I realized how much I had come to rely on the guarantee of pumpkin pie once a year for Thanksgiving - it just isn't the same without it. Bless Sara for her pumpkin pie in a springform cheesecake pan. Also bless her for allowing me the delight of eating piece of her homemade apple-pear pie, something every Korean should learn how to make with their strange, delicious fruit that really does resemble a cross between an apple and a pear. The rest of the night consisted of as little movement as possible, as we all sat around in Sara's cozy living room, chatted, and attempted to get a game of cards going. (Nope, too lazy...and a bit of confusion on the rules...apparently Americans and Canadians play the game Presidents differently...) We all slept fantastically well that night, needless to say.
The next day was proclaimed a 'lazy day,' which started off with sleeping in (at least it did for Sara and I), eating pie for breakfast, and taking a walk around Jangheung, which was especially beautiful in the bright sunshine. We walked along the river, sometimes in the shade of the mountains, crossed the stepping stone bridges to pay a visit to the market, then walked along the paths that lined the river, while discussing how incredibly fast Korea time flies by. We came back and tucked into leftovers for lunch, somehow managing to fit in a little more pie.
Midafternoon found me back on a bus to Gwangju (good thing too - I was going through bus withdrawals at that point,) where I returned, made a pit stop in town to take care of something, and then headed back to my home sweet home, where I watched The Terminal while doing some cleaning and organizing. I felt like this weekend was much more balanced and less crazy than the past weekends - a good thing for me. Now I'm back in action at school, planning lessons for my 14th week of teaching - incredible. I have to switch gears and get into Christmas cookie baking, shopping, and planning mode before Christmas sneaks up like Thanksgiving did! The end of the semester for us is December 25th, and then I have to start teaching what they call 'winter camps' - more on that later.
As I looked back on the weekend (while on the bus home, of course) I realized that the best part of the weekend was getting together with my friends and trying to make the most of being away from our families for the holidays. There is something comforting about the familiarity of pumpkin pie, stuffing, and cranberry sauce at this time of year that made being away from home that much more bearable. And this weekend proved that you don't need turkey and decked out shopping malls to bring out the holiday spirit - just being together with friends to enjoy shared time is enough to be thankful for and to count blessings! So with that, I hope you had just as good of a Thanksgiving experience as I did. I wish you all a happy back to work week and good luck with your Christmas planning!
Gina - how do you find the time to write so much? I admire your tenacity! I can't believe you took the wrong bus to Sara's, but hopefully you enjoyed Thanksgiving all the same. I experienced my very first Thanksgiving on Saturday, and had pumpkin pie for the first time too! Yum!
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