Christmas in Korea

Okay, this is a little late, I apologize. The last week of work before vacation was a little hectic due to the winter camp we've been planning for in the ET, so I haven't had the ridiculous amounts of time to work on this thing that I usually have!! Thank-you to everyone who sent me a card!! Love you guys!!

Christmas was good over here in Korea, but I really missed a lot of family and friends over there in Canada. Ahhh... eucre (sp??) and drinking on Christmas eve with the family! That year dad decided he could out-drink everyone and ended up wearing a purple, flowery women's hat (and later spent the rest of the night puking). Bridget baking lots of food at 69 Peppler, playing Christmas music which would be met with lots of complaining from me! sigh.

For X-mas a-la-Korea, on Saturday I met up with Laurel in Gwang-ju where we went out for dinner at a Korean restaurant (I know, weird huh?) downtown then watched an unremarkable Hollywood Christmas movie (The Holiday). My movie watching standards, which were never high, have decreased dramatically since moving here. Last night I was glad to find this god-awful movie featuring Julia Styles on my sometimes-in-english-channels-but-don't-expect-too-much tv. It was about this girl who fell in love with this guy who ends up being the prince of Denmark and all the usual crap happens; "You lied to me!!" "Sorry bout that. I didn't want anyone to know" "I am so mad at you!!" "Will you marry me?" "Okay, but I'm still pissed at you. I'm a down-to-earth American who's very intelligent and not at all interested in being a Queen." etc etc.

Okay, what was I talking about? Ahhh... well anyway, we went to a korean restaurant. Here's what a typical meal in Korea looks like (that's Laurel looking dumb on the left):

In the middle is a little mini grill for the pork that will later be wrapped up in a leaf with some sauce. There are also a couple servings of Kimchi (of course), some dried seaweed with sesame oil, some seaweed soup, some sort of cooked mushrooms, green chili peppers, various leafy greens, bean paste, cabbage salad, rice, garlic, onion etc etc.

Then we headed out to "Speak Easy" a waygooken owned bar in Gwang-ju where there was a big Christmas party happening (along with a band). Here are some pictures of the night of revelry in which I acted with the utmost decorum the entire night:


So here's Stu and Jessica, both looking cute and maybe a little drunk.


And this is Melisa and some guy named Francis, who was definitely a little drunk.


Virginia, Chad, Nicola and Santa (Amy), representin' for the Jeolla Privince.


Max and Jeannie. Not sure what the face is about, but it's a funny picture.

So yeah, that was the day before Christmas eve, and while a lot of fun, was "a bit of a shit-show" (meaning there were lots of really drunk people I think) as someone succinctly put it. On Christmas eve, I went over to Alex's for dinner where he had made CHILI. First time in over four months. It was delicious. Then we sat around watching Korean music channels.