Things I've Seen and Done: Christmas Edition

Christmas is a quite different experience in Korea. It's a relatively new holiday, so there isn't the same sense of tradition about all of it. It is basically a holiday for Christians to celebrate in church, for couples to have another go at a valentine's day style thing, or in some families, for little kids. Some of the stores put up Christmas decorations, but not all of them. It seems to be more concentrated in the specific shopping areas, or the big chain stores. Lots of little stores don't do anything special for Christmas, and for most people it's just another day. It is considered a national holiday, so people get Christmas day off, but they just get the one day. Because Christmas fell on a Sunday, nobody got an extra day off, and for most people, it was back to work on Monday. 

It has snowed a little bit in the last few days. There wasn't snow on Christmas, but this is the Wednesday before Christmas, as I was waiting for the bus. 

I went to the shopping district near my house and took some pictures of the Christmas decorations on the stores.  

"Gift for My Fair Lady"

These big flowers were made of sparkling Christmas lights. 

I'm not quite sure why there was a fluorescent unicorn inside of this wreath, but there we have it. 

This isn't really related to Christmas, but there is a cosmetic chain called "Food Skin" that always makes me smile when I see it. 

There were some awesome hats. Donald duck, panda bears, cute baby wolves....

I think the "Angry Birds" merchandise was my favorite though. 

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 10

I haven't seen or done much that was picture-worthy this week, but it's definitely been a full week. There's been the usual flurry of grading and end-of-semester paperwork that has taken up most of my time. Things are also starting to get all Christmas-y around here. On Saturday night, I went to hear Handel's "Messiah". It doesn't matter if I'm hearing a professional or amateur production, or what side of the world I'm on, there is still a wonderful moment when everyone holds their breath in anticipation of the first notes of the 'Hallelujah' chorus, and stands up. 

Before the "Messiah", there was a children's choir that sang some songs. We came in for the last song or two, but they were surprisingly good! They were from a local international school, so their English was quite good. To go to an international school in Seoul, you either have to have a foreign passport, or you have to have lived overseas for a certain number of years. All of the children in the choir looked Asian, so who knows which category they fell into. 

There are a number of light trees like this around the city. This one was outside of the church where the "Messiah" was performed. 

This tree is outside of Seoul City Hall. It was pretty massive, and the lights kept changing colors and doing all sorts of other crazy, flashy things. 

Today (Sunday), I went to the America-Korea Friendship Holiday Concert. My school gave me tickets, so I went. The 8th Army Band played the first half, and a youth violin orchestra played the second half. It was quite good! I tried to get some video of the violin orchestra, but it just didn't turn out well. :(

After the concert, my boss took some of us out for coffee, and we ran into the president of the university. During all of this, we had some conversations about a potential future project for me. If it all goes through, it will be ridiculously amazingly exciting! But it's still in the talking stage right now, so I can't say much more. But if it happens, it wold be super super amazing! Stay tuned for more reports. 

That's pretty much been my week!

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 9

Things are starting to hit the crunch time. This coming week is the last full week of teaching. It's going to be ABSOLUTELY INSANE. I have so much paperwork to deal with in the next few days. I might do something unprecedented and go into work on Thursday this week. This past week was also a little crazy. Part of it was school stuff, part of it was that I was involved in multiple Christmas music performances this weekend. So I have seen and done lots of things, but none of them were very interesting. 

This is part of the stack of textbooks I had to evaluate for the English camp I'm teaching in January. It will be switching things up a bit. I'm teaching six and seven year olds. 

I tried to make applesauce this week. I peeled and sliced all of my apples, and put in the recommended spices. I left it to cook just like I was supposed to! Unfortunately, the finished product wasn't very delicious. I've only ever seen one kind of apple in Korea, and I just don't think it was up to the job of making applesauce. 

Trash gets really complicated here. There are special bags you have to buy for different kinds of trash. There are multiple categories of recycling to deal with. These are the bags that you use for food trash (there are lots of rules about what does and doesn't count as food trash) that is full of the peelings from the ill-fated applesauce. 

I've done a lot of cooking this week. As a result, I've done a lot of dish washing. I also haven't had much time to play my cello lately. The result of this particular combination was the fingertips on my left hand started to peel. They peeled for three days before all of the callouses from my cello practice were gone. It's going to be rather painful to get them back again. 

I opened my last package of golden oreos this week. I pulled one out, and on one side it looked perfectly normal. Just like a golden oreo should. 

Then I flipped it over, and I saw this. Somehow, this one cookie had gotten put on upside down. It was a little strange. 

It made a nice design in the frosting though. For all of those people who can't eat a sandwich if the bread doesn't match, you'll be glad to know that I made sure to reassemble the oreo in the correct way before I ate it. 

There are tiny stores and road-side stands all over the city for shoe repair. Some of them have different names, but the name of this one made me laugh a little bit. It's called "goodoo byeongwon", which translates (literally) to "shoe hospital". 

Finally, I went to a Christmas cookie exchange over the weekend. This was all of the bounty before we started to divide them all up. It was a pretty spectacular way to spend a Saturday morning!

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 8

We had to get photos taken for the yearbook a few weeks ago. On Wednesday, I walked into my office and found a sheet of these on my desk. It isn't a particularly good picture. But it made me laugh. I'm pretty sure that my head isn't shaped quite like that. I didn't know it was possible for a scalp to stick almost straight up like that!

Support Bacteria! It Supports You! I noticed this on the side of a wall in my neighborhood. 

I was so incredibly excited to find this in a store recently. And it was only $5!!!! Oh, the simple joys in life. I bought four boxes to stock up for Christmas baking. 

Maybe I just didn't frequent coffee shops in America enough. But it seems like the coffee shops here have much cuter things with the passing seasons. 

I had to transfer all of my attendance marks to clean sheets because I have to turn them in and I've made notes all semester. I had to do this for six classes. I thought I was going to go cross-eyed by the time I was done. 

This is a hoddeok. It is similar to an elephant ear, only instead of being deep fried and dipped in butter and sugar, it is stuffed with a wonderful brown sugar/cinnamon/pine nut concoction in the middle. 

See that wonderful gooey stuff? It tastes amazing. But it is boiling hot. I've never managed to eat a hoddeok without burning my mouth. These only seem to show up at the street food stands in the winter. They are about  four inches across, and this particular hoddeok cost about $.70. 

I was waiting for a bus the other day, and I thought that this was an interesting picture. There seems to be a decent amount of construction going on in this part of town. 

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 7

This has inexplicably sitting on an apartment building near mine for the last few days. I don't know why there are random rows of toilet paper sitting on the ledge of the building. I don't know how long they will be there. Maybe this is the Korean version of TPing someone's house??

It was Thanksgiving, and we had so much amazingly delicious food! There was a ham. A real ham that didn't come out of a can! 

There was also a massive, 20 pound turkey that was delicious at the Thanksgiving dinner. It was so wonderful to have food that was familiar and normal without having to travel to seven different stores and pay 3x the normal price. 

These things are currently rocking my world. Imagine something that is a little bit like the puffy cheetos, except of being cheesy awesomeness, these guys taste like brownie batter. Amazing. 

This and the next two pictures are a comic panel from my school's English magazine. For some reason, the combination of the text and images struck me as pretty funny. You can click on the pictures to make them larger. 

This is also from the school's magazine. It was the letter from the editor at the beginning. Maybe I'm getting too old, but I just don't get the sense of loss with the completion of Harry Potter. 

This is really what I've been spending a lot of time doing this week. That's right. Grading. This is just the stuff that I wasn't able to finish at school this week and had to bring home with me. It's a sure sign that the end of the semester is near. I think I graded about 100 quizzes, 50 journals, 100 book reports and I have about 30 essays left to finish from that stack. Whew. 

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 6

Mornings that include something like this are infinitely better than mornings that don't!

There are so many beautiful chrysanthemums out this time of year. 

I saw this when I was on the bus. Who wouldn't want to shop at a store called "Wonder Woman"??

I'm not really sure what a "Western Ice Bar" is, but the "TEXAS" just makes me want steak...

Just outside of the Western Ice Bar were all of these random blocks on the sidewalk. They all had a different country on them. They were different from the normal lineup of countries I usually see in Seoul. 

The big department stores have their Christmas lights out now, and they're really pretty!!

Crosswalks in Seoul go the normal way, from corner to corner, but they also have crosswalks that cut diagonally across an intersection. It's pretty cool!

I bought some fruit for lunch in the little store that is in my office building. All was going well until I opened up the container. 

There were four apple slices, two orange slices and two chunks of pineapple, all individually wrapped. 

There is a student art exhibit going on right now. This is one of my favorite paintings. It is sparkly!!

The exhibit was both indoors and outdoors. There were cute sunflower cats!!

And friendly, fuzzy eskimo men. 

Remember the Itaewon Global Festival that I went to a few weeks ago? My friend and I got some Korean calligraphy done, but it was just a piece of paper. I went to a stationary store last week and got some supplies and made a wall hanging out of it! It looks so much prettier now.