The Holiday Season

Well it's early morning Christmas eve -day and I guess I'm practicing for Christmas Day - because I'm up at 7am and it's my first day of vacation! Christmas isn't a very big deal in Korea despite the significant christian population. I've heard very few stores playing Christmas music, there were no flyers with Christmas specials, and no Christmas lights up anywhere. And with no snow in Korea it hardly felt like Christmas was on it's way :(

We did make a great effort though not to let the season pass us by unnoticed! Milton and I had a Sunday afternoon Christmas open house early in December. We served vin chaud and everyone brought their favourite Xmas baked goods for a baking exchange.

We also went to a "Christmas sweater" party at Dean and Chelsea's, where they served home-made eggnog and they managed to make a cheese ball with some special ingredients sent from Canada.

We didn't have Christmas sweaters and had to make our own. Milton put a red Christmas bulb on a white t-shirt and said it was Rudolf in a snowstorm. I was all the other reindeer. I had my students trace their hands for the antlers and make me some reindeer that I pinned to my sweater.

The next event was a UNESCO dinner in Gwangju. A free buffet dinner and entertainment from each of the countries that had representation. We chose to sign Christmas in Killarny and Rudolf the red nose reindeer - not necessarily Canadian songs but the Koreans all swayed in their chairs and looked pleased with our performance.

We had another Christmas party last weekend and a secret Santa gift exchange. Milton had asked Santa for an air soft gun so he could play with his friend Matt who also has one. All the kids in Korea play with these little guns that shoot plastic bbs and every time I walk to the door of our apartment I'm worried that I'll lose an eye. Now I have to worry in my own apartment while Milton is doing target practice sitting on the couch and shooting at a mug on the kitchen table!

OK, OK... I'll admit, it was kind of fun to hear the "ping" sound of the mug being hit when I had a go at it. And it was also fun when sometimes I'd miss and hit Milton, but that was totally accidental ;) So maybe it wasn't such a bad Xmas gift.

Milton and I also made great efforts to create the Christmas atmosphere in our apartment. We had set up a Christmas tree at the end of November and the only music we've listened to for the last month has been Christmas music. I even bought a new french Christmas cd online.

We received our two big Christmas care packages from my family early in December and have had fight off the temptation to open them for what seems like forever! But we were strong and have left them untouched under the tree and can't wait to open them!

Also in attempt to keep with our Christmas traditions as much as possible, this past weekend Milton and i spent the entire day Sunday making our tourtiere for Christmas dinner. We did our best with what we could find in Korea and they look like they should be pretty good. we even made a few extra for the freezer that we will enjoy later in the year!

And so Christmas eve-day is here and it is our first day of vacation. We will be heading to Gwangyang tonight to spend Christmas eve and day with two other couples we've become good friends with here in Korea. We will be having tourtiere and perogies and cinnamon buns for Christmas morning. I've even passed on the Walpole girls' tradition of the Xmas drink contest, where every couple must come up with a Christmas drink to serve to the others and we vote on the best one. we will be relaxing quite a bit after that and enjoying our vacation.

Milton is now off from now until march 3rd, and I'm off until January 5th when I'll have to go back to school and teach a winter camp --- like summer school in Canada. And then my big vacation will be from Jan 20-march 3. We've booked our trip to Australia For the month of February to visit Aunt Allyce and Uncle Allan, and to meet up with Scott and Emma. Milton and I will also be booking flights to New Caledonia to get to the "Paris of the Pacific" - we've already found a restaurant online that is a 20$ all you can eat baguette, cheese and wine buffet!!! we are seriously suffering in Korea with no cheese.

We've heard that in Canada there have been several snow storms ensuring that you all have a white Christmas. We are really missing home this holiday season. We wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy holiday season! Love to you all, ellen xoxox

photo of Mokpo under snow a few weeks ago ----no white Christmas for us :(