Christmas in the mountains.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This was my first Christmas away from home. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Of course I missed being at home and spending time with my family, but thanks to wonderful technology, I was able to video chat with both Jen and Court in England and the rest of the fam in Tallahassee. It definitely wasn’t the same through a web cam, but it was good to see everyone’s faces and chat for a while. It’s really a bitter sweet feeling, because while I would love to be with my family during the holidays, right now I am perfectly happily being over here. I say it all the time, but I am truly having the greatest time here in Korea. It’s a mixture of great travel spots, great friends, and just once in a lifetime opportunities, and I’m trying to soak up every moment of it. (Oh and it doesn't hurt that I love going to work every day.)

Soeraksan National Park in Sokcho, Korea was our destination over Christmas break. Whitney, her friend Austin, Erica, Jason, Steve, and I all got on a bus toward Sokcho at 8:30 on Thursday morning. 5 and a half hours later we made it and we were all starving, so we decided to find the nearest restaurant and eat whatever they would serve us. We found a Chinese place and had some delicious chicken and fried rice. Once we were all full and happy we set out to find our hostel, which was a little bit of a challenge, but we eventually found it. It’s a long story but we ended up getting one room with one bed for all 6 of us. Luckily they heat the floors here, so most people opted to sleep on the floor anyway. I ended up getting to sleep on the bed due to my butt injury. Let’s just say I don’t walk well on slick ice.

On Friday we explored the National Park a little bit. We saw a giant Buddha, which looked almost the same as the Great Buddha in Japan. It was really neat, especially with the mountains in the background. Then we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain, and according to the pamphlet it’s “one of the most unique adventure attractions on Earth.” I don’t know about that, but it was really pretty. We could even see the waterfalls – frozen waterfalls that is. The view was beautiful and the weather was nice too. It even started snowing a little bit, and I got really excited – because it was a “White Christmas!” It only snowed for about 3 minutes though. :(

After that we took a hiking trail up to one of the waterfalls. It was a lot of fun. The waterfall was really pretty and it was neat to see it half frozen and half not. The sound of the waterfall is so relaxing and it’s just one of those places where I could just spend the whole day. Well, except in the winter. On our way back down we decided to go off the trail and take a quicker way to our hostel. It was fun hiking through the woods and across a rocky river.

That night for dinner, we all wanted a nice Christmas meal, so we went up the hill from our tiny hostel to a nice hotel with a western style restaurant. It was by far one of the best dinners I had eaten in a while. Even though we were pretty bummed that they were out of French onion soup, they did have a nice side salad with Italian dressing and also butter rolls. I had the chicken cordon blue, and it was delicious. After dinner we walked back to our hostel and got all cozy in our slumber party room. It was a good day, and a nice Christmas. I stayed up and talked to my family on video chat for a while and then went to bed.

The next day we walked around the park a little more and saw a temple and just enjoyed the scenery. We planned on going to a hot springs later that day, but then we found out that there was only one bus that was going back to Gwangju that day and it was leaving at 3:30. So, Erica, Jason, and I were tired and ready to go home so we bought our bus tickets and headed back that day, while Whitney, Austin, and Steve stayed back and went to the hot springs and stayed overnight an extra day. The bus ride was really long, but it was nice to get home after a long weekend, and sleep in on Sunday.

Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I’m headed back up the country on another bus to Seoul for New Years! Love you all! Happy Holidays! :) Enjoy this little video I made of my kids singing:

It's hard to eat Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks

So last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and it was a little depressing to be working and not spending it with family, eating turkey, and watching football. I spent the whole day trying to explain to 5 and 6 year olds what Thanksgiving and turkey was. So anyways, all the foreign teachers, which are all Americans, decided to have our own Thanksgiving dinner that Sunday. We also thought it would be fun to invite all the Korean teachers too, so they could get a little glimpse of what we eat on Thanksgiving. After much debate we decided to have it at our place. That day Erica (another Kinder teacher) came over and we all cooked our assigned dish. Unfortunately none of the apartments have ovens, so that kind of put a cramp in our cooking. We made the mashed potatoes and corn, and Erica also made yummy carrots and deviled eggs :) So since they don’t have turkey here, we opted for the next closest thing – chicken. And well, since we don’t have ovens to cook a chicken, we decided to order it. Now, usually at school when we want to get food we have the Korean teachers order it for us, which works perfectly. But since we ordered it ourselves, it didn’t go as smoothly. We called and Erica ordered what we wanted and how many, it took a little while for her to understand and then she kept talking and saying stuff in Korean, and then I got on the phone and told her where we lived (which was an accomplishment in itself). We hung up and weren't really sure what happened, but knew we ordered something. A little while later the delivery man was at our door and he had one tiny little box of chicken in his hand. Well, we got the chicken we wanted but we needed a little more than one tiny box to feed 20 people – we thought we ordered 4 boxes. So then we ordered again from another place and somehow ordered 3 more boxes correctly. :) The feast turned out pretty good. Everything tasted great. We had a lot of the Korean teachers show up too. After eating we played this fun Korean game, which is sort of like jacks.

Our Thanksgiving spread

Playing the Korean jacks game

On Saturday a few of the other teachers and I went to this store called Home Plus, which I don’t know why we hadn’t discovered sooner. It’s a big grocery/home goods store that has more American food than anywhere else. Not a whole lot, but they have things like block cheese, American beers, salad dressing, and the thing I was most excited about - GOLDFISH!!! :)

On Sunday we went to the “Wii Bong”, which is this cool place where you pick out a game, order a coke or hot chocolate, and then they take you to your own personal room and just play Wii. It was a lot of fun. We played Mario party, and it was hard to decipher a lot of the directions since everything was in Korean.

On a side note, an example of some corporal punishment in the Korean schools. Last week one of my afternoon elementary students told me that her friend got in a fight and so the teacher grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the ground and kicked her….She might have been trying to say that the other girl did that – but I’m pretty sure she said the teacher did. I asked her like 3 times. And it surprises me a little, but Korean teachers don't mess around with punishment - they can do whatever they want to the students. They like to pick them up by their ears too.

Top 5 things I miss (besides friends and family):

5. Real pizza. (you know without mayonnaise and corn)

4. Macaroni and cheese.

3. Driving (though sometimes it’s kinda nice not having a car)

2. A soft comfy bed

1. A Dryer! (I've never appreciated dryers as much as I do now. I hate hanging my clothes, and they are always so stiff.)

Dinner at a new restaurant - Delicious galbi!

China video