The first part of the holiday season didn’t get off with a bang, more like a sizzle. The strangest part was not having the stores packed with Christmas decorations and crap toys as soon as we were done with Halloween. For some strange reason I missed the hokey carols that usual belt everywhere and make you sick. I guess you don’t know what you got until it’s gone. I thought I would miss certain things more than others, but in reality it was the little things I missed a lot instead of the big things (other than family and friends of course). I missed things like baked goods around the house, random people from your past being home, buying things for people, and in general the homey holiday atmosphere everywhere. The weather was bleak with no sign of snow (even worse than at home), there were no carols, and very sparse holiday decorations. It helped to be less homesick though, because with all the fanfare of the holidays around it would have made it a lot worse.
Just like in the West, we had a big drama day before school let out for vacation with all the kindergarten kids and their parents. Pretty standard though, no baby Jesus and not even a sniff of eggnog or a carol. It was a lot of fun to watch Tina (now gone from SLP) rock it like Tina Turner with the 5 year olds. My classes did Four Silly Fisherman, A Mushroom in the Rain, and Aladdin (all classics).
On a randomly warmer weekend decided to get a little sightseeing in and see Dongdaemun (one of the big ancient gates of the city wall) and hike the shamanist temples on a hillside near Seoul (supposedly close together). After a huge hike through random neighbourhoods, searching for traditional roofs and monks (randomly following the ancient wall on our right the whole way, even though we were lost) we figured out that the shaman temples are actually in Dongnimun (be extra careful of spelling in Korea, Re: Sinchon and Sincheon, Incheon and Inchon, etc.). We checked out some of the crazy market shopping around the area. There are huge department stores, some just for one thing like beads or fabric.
The last weekend before everyone left for home or vacation we checked out the World Freestyle Snowboarding festival. It’s usually on a mountain or in some northern city but this time it was downtown Seoul. They had constructed a huge huge ramp and jump and trucked in all this extra snow. The thing was huge, and so was the crowd. The boarders put on an awesome show.
When we got tired of freezing, we headed to Hongdae for Santa Con. Most large cities have this, but I’ve never seen it in person before. Tons of people meet up in an area dressed like Santa and just have fun. The largest one is in Moscow with over 10,000 people, but Seoul’s crowd of Father Christmas wasn’t too shabby either. We were basically on a huge pub crawl, with mobs of Santa’s moving around the streets drunkenly handing out candy. It was a lot of fun.
Like I mentioned, the Christmas lights in Korea were a lot to be desired, but Seoul had an okay light festival that we went to check out one night. The Christmas thing here mostly just translates into an effort to increase sales at the shops, but it was a nice effort I guess.
The foreigners were missing reunions and home, and all the holiday celebrations so we all went out to a nice dinner at Venus, an Italian restaurant a short walk from our area. We got dressed up nicer than usual and ditched the expensive hotel idea downtown for some amazing pasta, steak, and a lot of red wine. It was nice to create the family atmosphere and try and get in the holiday spirit, even though it wasn’t quite the same as at home. Lisa and I decided to have our own special dinner at the Westin Hotel in Seoul. We got dressed up nice too, haha, and instead of buying ourselves something that was too heavy to bring home in our luggage, we spent a nice classy meal. It had many courses of food that I didn’t recognize, but we figured it out. And we enjoyed a full bottle of the restaurant’s cheapest bottle of wine.
Overall it wasn’t a too bad holiday, all things considered. Spending 11 days in Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand afterwards helped a bit too. I already can’t wait until next year. It will be more exciting for sure, to have everyone around, all friends and family home, catch up from two years instead of one. I will complain less about the Christmas tunes everywhere, and probably overindulge even more in sweets and food. Can’t wait. Happy belated holidays.
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