’tis the season

It’s Christmas time!

I started the festivities early this year which seems kind of normal because back home there’s so many different holiday parties to go to: work, friends, family. But when I told my co-teacher and staff they I was going to celebrate Christmas with my friends a few weeks before Christmas they all looked at me like I was crazy, but any who.

Because my group of friends here in Korea all have different schedules, all our winter vacation dates are at different times, even though we all the same amount of days. We all have winter camps to teach, some longer than others, some more than one even more then two schools. Just like my summer vacation we have to fulfill the 22 hours of teaching a week. But I’ll save that drama for another update.

Since we all have different vacation dates, we had a holiday party a few weeks before Christmas.  Which was totally fine with me, just another excuse to be with my favorite people.

Christmas in Seoul 

I went to Seoul (of course it was Seoul) Friday night after school. Nicole and Ashley had gotten there right before me and already started to transform Sydney’s apartment very Chrismasy. I absolutely loved it. They really did an amazing job to start to get everyone into the holiday spirit.

Before we had our little celebration later we decided to have a little girl’s day only that Karen wasn’t able to meet with us cause she was still packing for her bags. Nicole and I laid in bed for most of the morning talking about all the foods that we were going to eat we went home for our vacations. I think that lead to us going to have an American style brunch. We headed to Gangnam to a cute restaurant called butterfinger pancakes which really hit the spot. We were beyond excited to eat. The wait to be seated was about 30ish minutes, which really wasn’t too bad. But in Korea you’re expected to be seated fairly quickly. So waiting to be seated at a restaurant in Korea seems out of the ordinary for Koreans. Once our food came out we the excitement in our faces couldn’t be hidden.  We ate the food WAYYYYYY to fast, but we didn’t care ahah. End result: food coma right there at the restaurant. And what’s the best solution to a food coma, that’s right shopping. We head to 8seconds to do some damage to our wallets, well me at least.

We headed back to Sydney’s place where he downloaded a whole bunch of Christmas movies that we’d end up watching later on. We started watching Gremlins which I have never seen before and people started showing up and Sydney’s apartment started looking even smaller than normal. Honestly, the entire felt a like home: easy, just friends hanging out, it was comfortable. Once everyone showed up we ended up squeezing nine people into there apartment but it was just fine. Syd then went out and bought us some chicken and a cake. For dinner we watch Home Alone, which is one of my favorite Christmas movies.

Sydney did good when he bought the ice cream cake, all the girls whipped out their phones to take a picture of it.

group shot!

Polaroids are always my favorites

After a few cups of eggnog, wine and shots of tequila we headed out to Hongdae for more drinks. I actually ended up not going to bar with the rest of the group but instead headed to a coffee shop with Ashley where we caught up on some girl talk. Just as we were about to leave in piles our group of friends. We actually headed to grab some pizza before me and Ash left before the rest of the group around 2am-ish and I have no idea what time the rest of the group finished.

Christmas at school

Christmas eve is the last day for the students before their winter breaks, which I don’t understand. With my 3rd and 4th graders the only Christmas activity that I did with them was making Christmas cards. Which my co teacher had already prepared a template for them to complete. For my 5th and 6th graders, it was more like my Halloween party where we did a mini lesson and then played Christmas games (pass the parcel and pin the nose on the snowman). Days leading up to our Christmas party I made Christmas cards with my kids and made snowflakes with my 5th graders. Overall, I say it was good.

One of my kids snapped this picture of me during the Christmas picture. I super excited with the way the fireplace I made turned out. My kids would walk into class and stand around the fire place and “warm” their hands. super cute.

Christmas day

I had to work on Christmas eve. When I think about it, I actually worked on Christmas eve last year too, but it was much more chilled and relaxed. I pulled an all nighter the night before trying to finish all my lesson plans for my winter camp/after school classes/teacher classes/story-telling classes which I didn’t. I’ll save this for another rant. So Christmas eve, was the last day before winter vacation, which I’m not use to at all. I spent the entire day siting in front of my computer working on my lesson plans only to get up for the award assembly and lunch. After work, it was just a chill dinner with a few people and coming back to my apartment and completely knocking out. Christmas day I hung out in the afternoon with a few people at a coffee shop just taking it easy. Then later heading in to Daegu to meet up with Ashley and Nicole for dinner, deserts and norabang. Not your typically Christmas but nothing in Korea is very typical. For me, its always nice to go in and meet with my friends and just talk without any drinking. I enjoy the company, just talking to each other about everything and anything.

Shabu Shabu for dinner

So this was my Christmas. Who know’s what New Year’s has in stored for me.

So  much more next time.

xoxo