Christmas Cheer

Hello everyone – a belated Merry Christmas and an early Happy New Year to you all! Now that Christmas is over, my second round of Korean classes are over, and I’ve wrapped up my third semester of teaching, I have a little more time to relax.

Not too much time though, of course, as I start teaching winter camp tomorrow – at least I had a few days with no responsibilities. I’ve had to be at work the past three days, but just four hours a day, and then I had the rest of the day to do as I pleased. I started swimming again, now that I have the time, so I’ve enjoyed getting in longer afternoon workouts and then still having an evening of productivity when I’m done.

Unfortunately, I got hit with a cold this week, so I’m afraid that will limit my New Year’s plans – I was supposed to go hiking on New Year’s Eve, but I don’t think that will happen, due to the chilly winter weather. As of now I’m not sure what I'm doing for New Year’s, but a Korean tradition is to wake up early and see the sunrise on New Year’s Day – it sounds like a neat idea, and I have definitely never gotten up that early to see the sunrise in the past, so maybe I’ll give it a try this year.

Backing up a bit to the end of the semester, this year, since I had a bit more free reign with my lessons, as a result of actually knowing what I was doing this time around, I decided to do a few extra weeks of Christmas, as it is my favorite holiday, and there are so many fun Christmas activities and ideas for lessons. My extra classes had a day of Christmas decorations to spruce up the English room, which proved to be so popular that my other regular English classes wanted to make decorations too, which Mrs. Lee acquiesced to once their exams were finished. Between making Christmas cards and decorations, playing Christmas trivia games, teaching Christmas vocabulary, and for their grand finale class (my last class of the semester with them) I treated them to mini candy canes (in order to teach them what ‘peppermint’ tastes like) and some Christmas cookies, while we watched a Mr. Bean Christmas episode during which I quizzed them on the vocabulary I’d dutifully been teaching them the past weeks, such as ‘ornament,’ ‘stuffing,’ and ‘reindeer,’ we all had a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed introducing the word and concept of ‘mistletoe’ to my kids, courtesy of the new Justin Bieber song. I found some fun YouTube clips (check out Kisseltoe on YouTube) that depicted exactly what I wanted to convey, but I’m afraid that despite my efforts, some of them may believe that all we do in December is kiss each other every time we walk into a room. Hence, the third grade boys loudly exclaimed that they wanted to move to America for the month of December. At least now they understand the reference. The conclusion of the semester the day before Christmas Eve was fitting, and we ended the week with a fantastic teacher dinner at a seafood restaurant. It was sad saying goodbye to my third graders, however, as I likely won’t see them again except for random meetings in town or at the bus stop. I got pictures with each class and gave them my e-mail address – hopefully I can receive a surprise e-mail here and there in the future. It will be strange to not have them around next year, but I suppose that’s just part of being a teacher.

Outside of the classroom, I attended my second round of Korean class this winter every Saturday morning, which was a lot easier than my first time around, even though I was a level ahead. All the practice and listening exposure I get at school has paid off over the past year – I’m really enjoying learning and using the language, and hope to continue taking classes after vacation. During the week, I kept up with my usual routine of swimming, going to the gym, going to book club, and studying at the local coffee shop. Once the cold weather started though, I started staying home more often, taking advantage of my cosy warm floor and floor mat, where I worked on Christmas presents and cards while catching up on American TV shows and movies on my computer.

This past weekend all of us expats gathered in Jangheung for Round 2 of Korean Christmas. Like Thanksgiving, we had a good crowd of about sixteen people, all who brought obscene amounts of food, along with a White Elephant gift which we used for a fun gift exchange. We played games, ate lots of food, chatted, played football, and had an all around good time enjoying the festivities. It was great to have so many good friends in my adopted home country to share Christmas with.

If you’re wondering what Koreans do for Christmas, it’s go on a date. Christmas = date day. They treat it like a couple’s holiday, so basically if you’re young and single, you don’t get to celebrate Christmas. The young children might receive presents from ‘Santa,’ and most Christians will go to church on Christmas Eve, but for the most part, it’s shopping, going to the movies, and going out to eat for Korean Christmas. Some families will have a tree, some families will make cookies, and it’s popular to buy a ‘Christmas cake’ from a local bakery and eat that with your friends and family for Christmas – kind of like a glorified Valentine’s Day. If you think about it, there weren’t even Christians in Korea until the late 1800s, and during the Japanese occupation (until 1945) most Christian activity was underground or secret, so the concept of Christmas has really only been around since the 1950s. Since then, it’s been commercialized, largely by the USA, but also Canada and Europe, so that these days it’s mostly a holiday for show. But hey, most of the kids have a basic understanding of what it is, and it makes me as a Westerner realize how deep the roots of our culture run, which is all the way down to knowing Christmas stories, movies, and origins.

That about covers what I’ve been up to this past month. I have about three weeks of winter camp – four hours a day, about 12 kids each day – to teach, and then I’m off to Seoul to start my vacation. I’ll be flying around Malaysia and Indonesia, concluding in Bali where I’ll be meeting up with my best friend from college. More on that later – I’ll try to update again before I leave for vacation, but if not you’ll be hearing from me when I get back. In the meantime, you all stay safe and warm, and have a fantastic new year! Miss you all!

Above - a snowy Christmas Eve morning, downtown on my way to Korean class. 

A Christmas Wish Come True

Good morning everyone!

I'm sure all of you are busy baking cookies, shopping, and preparing for Christmas this week. I can't believe it's in four days. I had a fun weekend that turned out much differently than I expected - but in a good way. I've been keeping up with Christmas episodes on TV, playing Christmas music for my classes, and this week I'm teaching all Christmas lessons, so I am definitely feeling the holidays, but my experience on Saturday at the orphanage is what really captured the essence of Christmas. Oh, but first - here's a lovely picture I took when I walked outside the door at school last week - the mountain valley views are forever changing and always beautiful.

If you remember, I mentioned last week that this past Saturday was our Adopt A Child day at the orphanage. One of the volunteers organized the entire Adopt A Child program, which was a huge success. A few weeks ago, he asked the girls to each write down four things they have on their Christmas list, including their name, age, and size. After some translating with the orphanage director, he put out a notice on Facebook and put an announcement in the Gwangju News, calling the foreign community of Gwangju to help make a special Christmas for the girls. He had a tremendous response, and soon had tons of people calling him to volunteer to buy gifts - he personally assigned each person with a gift, took down their contact information, and established two drop off points for people to drop off their purchased and wrapped presents at. Within three or four weeks, he had nearly every present accounted for, and he personally took care of the few remaining. He expected a much smaller amount of people to respond and hoped that the girls would get at least two gifts on their list - but in the end, all the girls got four gifts each, due to the Gwangju community effort.

After our last Korean class (I passed!) and a visit to the bake/book sale orphanage fundraiser that was put on by my book club, my friend and I headed over to the orphanage. There was quite a bit of activity, and we ended up staying the whole afternoon to enjoy the festivities. Some of the girls are placed in a homestay program, similar to foster care, so they were all there with their homestay families to celebrate also. The afternoon started off with lots of performances by both a local band and then by the girls themselves. I was so impressed. There was singing, dancing, and playing of instruments. It was neat to see them having a ton of fun and showing off for their audience. Us volunteers even showed off our skills by singing a rendition of We Wish You A Merry Christmas for the girls. Here is a video of one of my favorite performances: the star of the show was the little cutie in the front, which I'm sure is no surprise to you.

After the performances, there was a big meal provided for the girls and the volunteers by local donators. We socialized and played with the girls, enjoying pizza, fruit, snacks, and salad...that I ate with chopsticks. When in Rome.

After lunch and cleaning up, the homestay families left, and all of us volunteers waited in anticipation for what we knew was coming next. Sure enough, guess who showed up? It was Scottish Santa Steve, otherwise known as just Santa. A big cheer rang out, of course, and there was an extended photo shoot with Santa - the girls were thrilled.

After Santa's arrival, it was time for...presents! I was very impressed at the organization - the presents were all brought in in cardboard boxes, and, with his helpers, Santa called out the names of the girls, who came up one by one to get one present at a time. Instead of ripping them open immediately (which I would have done, I'm sure) they sat and played with their wrapped presents, eagerly waiting to see who would get called next. It was really fun to see the girls that I bought presents for - I got two clothing items for two different girls - smile with excitement as they received my presents. I couldn't help but think how wonderful it was of Al to organize everything - who knows what kind of a Christmas the girls would have had otherwise? It was really inspiring and great to know that so many people had made just a few donations each to bring Christmas to so many girls. I couldn't think of a better way to see Christmas in action, and was so thankful to have the opportunity to see firsthand the joy that was brought to the little girls.

We all had a lot of fun during the present distribution - sharing the excitement with the girls who proudly came over to show off what they had gotten. One of the little tootsies got ahold of my camera and started taking pictures of everyone (note: if you want silly pictures of people, just find a two year old to carry around and take pictures for you - it's also highly entertaining.) We gave her a taste of her own medicine by sneak attacking the camera away from her and taking her picture with me - we made sure to give it back right away though, of course. Clearly she has a bright future in photography - here are Sara and Santa Steve, post Santa costume.

After about three hours at the orphanage, the festivities began to wind down, and we made our exit (after detaching our little photographer from my camera...and my arms.) I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend the afternoon. Since we had eaten at the orphanage and figured we'd better not try for a repeat of last weekend's dining marathon, Sara and I headed back to my place for a while to regroup and run some errands, then we went out to meet some friends later.

I had planned to spend all day Sunday finishing up my Christmas gifts, decorating cookies, and getting a head start on my lesson planning for next week. However, due to staying out late Sara stayed over at my place, so instead of my planned early wake up, I ended up sleeping in (I kept having to reassure myself it was okay and I'd still have the day to work.) However, after a relaxing cup of coffee at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop - Kenya Espresso - we made the spontaneous decision to throw out any plans of productivity and instead spend our afternoon at the...movie theater. Harry Potter 7 had made its release in Korea on Friday, and we heard from some friends that it was worth seeing. I hadn't seen a movie in months, and had never seen one in a foreign country, so I considered it a new and necessary experience. After stumbling around a bit trying to figure out how to buy a ticket, we purchased them (with the help of some Korean guys who could see our obvious fail to understand how to buy them) and only later did we realize we actually bought tickets for the IMAX viewing instead of the regular screen - better than the other way around, I suppose. After a very authentic Korean lunch (aka - mouth on fire spiciness that left us both slightly warmer and in a lot of pain...so good though) we purchased popcorn and pop to complete the experience, then headed inside.

Note to self: IMAX is probably a better idea when you're not in the front row...however, those were the only seats that were left. (When we purchased our tickets at the machine we had to select our seat numbers on the touch screen.) After attempting to adjust our heads and necks (I felt like I was almost laying horizontally) we settled back and zoned out to enjoy two and a half hours of Harry Potter. I thought the movie was really well done, and am definitely anticipating the final movie next summer. It was also nice to just relax and focus completely on a movie. My head was still spinning when we left the theater due to the proximity of the screen, but as I walked out I was struck with the odd reminder that I was still in South Korea - the day had seemed so typical of a weekend at home that I had nearly forgotten I wasn't at the River Hills Mall or BayPark Cinema (Mankato or Green Bay.)

I realized that even though I was so far away from home there were still experiences that seemed completely normal to me. Friends going out for coffee, families going to an afternoon movie, watching a movie in English in the theater (though you'd have to ignore the Korean subtitles...) The sense of familiarity was comforting, especially as Christmas draws closer and closer. I have to say though, the best and most comforting feeling was manifested at the orphanage this past Saturday, when the joy of giving was so obviously shared by all who donated gifts, and the happiness of watching the girls' faces was contagious. The effort of the community that pulled together to make Christmas happen for these girls was incredible, and I was so happy to be a part of it. As you make your final rounds at the mall (especially on Christmas Eve) this week, and then hopefully get to watch your family and friends open your presents, I hope you experience the same feeling of happiness that I felt this weekend. Making those girls' Christmas wishes come true was the best present I could have ever gotten.

I wish you all and your families a very Merry Christmas! Stay warm and safe on the roads, all you brave winter weatherers!

Christmas in the Air.

Hello all!

I'm a little late in getting this post out today - I've been working like a Santa elf to get my Christmas package shipped home today - it's a relief to have that done.

I hope you all had a great weekend - I actually don't have too much to write about today, as I enjoyed another low-key weekend (I'm getting better at them.) Friday night I headed to a nearby coffee shop to study for my Korean test on Saturday (which went fine...though I studied the wrong chapter...) and then after doing some banana bread baking for an upcoming bake sale, I headed to bed. Saturday after Korean class I headed to the orphanage, which was a ton of fun. We are trying to implement more of a proper ESL program for the girls, so the Korean high school girls who volunteer with us have sort of taken charge and provided activities for the girls, like ABC worksheet and word puzzles, etc. They administered a skills test a couple of weeks ago, and now are organizing the girls by skills at different tables. Our job now as volunteers is to sit at the tables with them and help them along, either by providing clues or adding on to their basic knowledge. We sang the ABC song and helped them work on their penmanship, along with other activities. There ended up being so many volunteers on Saturday that the kid to adult ratio was nearly one to one. It was a lot of fun for everyone, and as always the time flew by.

After volunteering my friend and I made ourselves slow down a bit and enjoyed a nice afternoon sitting and chatting at a coffee shop downtown. Most of the coffee shops here (since they have English names and Western influence) are decorated for Christmas, and they usually have some sort of Christmas display. So between the Christmas tree display that I conveniently planted myself in front of and all of the busy shopper people watching (yes, that's a term...I made it up) I got to do from the window, downtown Gwangju definitely had the feel of Christmas in the air. I must admit, I had been a little skeptical about Christmas in Korea, since they don't celebrate it nearly to the extent that we do. (About 25 percent of Korea is actually Christian these days, so they celebrate it as a church holiday, but now western influence has infiltrated it enough so that most Korean families have a tree and a big family meal on Christmas...but still not like most western countries.) I purposely avoided playing Christmas music in my apartment, and I tried to brush it off, as I figured Christmas would just have to be something I look forward to upon my return home, since thinking about it made me sad for home. However, I can't ignore the days on my calendar as they draw me nearer and nearer to Christmas (I also can't ignore the excitement of my students for their winter vacation, which starts Christmas Eve.) So like it or not, Christmas coming fast and furious, even here in Korea.

We met up with two friends of ours who were in town for the day and had a nice dinner out at an Italian cafe - we got our pizza fix and got a lot of chatting in. After dinner they all headed back to their respective towns and I headed over to Art Street to pick up a few Christmas supplies. I've mentioned Art Street before - here is a picture to the right. It's one of my favorite places to walk through, especially at night - much quieter and less busy than the nearby downtown streets, and the cute little galleries and shops tucked in among the narrow, cobblestone street give it almost a European feel. The entire street is decorated with these lit up archways, giving it an extra special experience. It was a nice quiet end to my busy day.

On Sunday I woke up with absolutely nothing planned, but I had two goals in mind: to clean my apartment, then make my Christmas cards and get everything packed up and shipped home on Monday. If you would have seen my disaster of a room you would have been very impressed with my ambition. I'm continually impressed with my skills for making such a small room so messy when I have a busy week - I'm barely ever home, and when I am I'm usually getting ready to go somewhere again. This particular week it looked like Christmas presents and card making supplies were thrown into the tornado that swept through my room, in addition to the usual clothes and random books/notebooks. It was quite the mess. I always seem to find something better to do than clean...but I put my foot down yesterday morning, played a BBC documentary about Indian history on my computer to keep me company (did I mention I'm going to India next month? More on that later.) and got started scrubbing.

Later that day I decided to do some Christmas shopping. I was Santa Claus on a mission when I finally reached my destination: the huge bookstore/stationery store in the bus terminal. I knew what I was looking for, and I was quite pleased with my purchases by the time I checked out (somehow some other cutesy little things not on my list found their way into my bag too...I wonder how that happened?) Then I spent some time wandering around Shinsegae, a fancy department store with brand names like Louis Vitton and Gucci that currently has a fantastic Christmas display up. There were many parents and children admiring the display - it was fun to see their oohs and aahs. The picture above is more to capture the adorable little girl on the right than the display itself! Between shopping for Christmas presents and taking the time to admire the Christmas displays, I was definitely in the Christmas spirit.

The picture below is an interesting contrast - there was some sort of Korean celebration happening right across the hall from the Christmas display at Shinsegae. I've seen a display similar to this for a Korean wedding celebration- much like we send flowers for a funeral or special event, they send flowers with either the event or some sort of good luck saying written on it - I've no idea what they say, but they were pretty to look at and they smelled really nice.

After getting back home, I worked on my Christmas cards at a nearby coffee shop. As I wrote my many holiday greetings to my friends and family back home (sorry, my handwriting is still messy - Korea hasn't changed that,) which will be on their way to the States very soon, I was reminded that no matter where you are in the world, you can still have Christmas. I was expecting a non-Christmas this year due to the lack of red and green merchandise in all stores, the lack of cold weather/snow, and especially the lack of my friends and family. However, that night in the coffee shop it really hit me: the Christmas spirit doesn't come from Santa displays or loudly blaring Christmas tunes that bombard you wherever you go. It comes from the spirit of giving and the universal idea of caring, sharing, and spreading joy to those you are close to, or even to those you aren't. Though I'll miss being with my family a
nd friends so much this holiday season, it's nice to know that I can still send them Christmas cards and little sticker packets with random Korean sayings on them just to show that I will still be thinking of them. It's also nice to know that being so far away takes the pressure off of other people feeling obligated to get a present for me and instead I can just fully enjoy Christmas by giving to others. (Plus there aren't any Barnes and Nobles in Korea - I'd be kind of hard to shop for this year, hey? )

So, though I take the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, this year I ask you to make sure that among your crazy busy holiday schedules, weekend mall avoidances (sometimes necessary to preserve sanity) and last minute Christmas Eve shopping runs (you know who you are) you take the time to remember that Christmas is all about giving and bringing joy to others, whether in a card, a Christmas cookie, or even just a couple quarters in the Salvation Army bucket. I guarantee you I'll be trying to do the same, all the way over here in Korea as I prepare for my first Christmas away from home.

Wishing you all a happy and blessed holiday season! Have a great week!