Christmas edition!

I know, I know, I've been ridiculously lazy about posting (sorry,) but here I go. I'll start by letting you all know how our Christmas went here. On Christmas Eve, we got off from work at the usual time, 10:40pm, and then we had some Christmas galbi (meat) with many of our co-workers at a fantastic restaurant called simply "the shovel." (This restaurant brings food out to you on grills that closely resemble snow shovels...made of cast iron.) After filling our bellies with cut-up strips of some lean, delicious meat, Kait and I headed home to our little Christmas tree. We got the Christmas tree itself from some friends of friends whom we have yet to meet; it is a little plastic tree about 3 feet tall, but it didn't have a base when we got it. In order to improvise on this, we used an eight-pack of canned kidney beans that we had recently purchased from Costco. We simply cut one can out of the plastic wrapping, and placed the tree in the newly made hole - voila, a tree stand! Anyways, once we got home, we each opened one present each, as we decided to before hand, and each were from the stocking that the Callahans sent us (thanks again!) I got a wallet, and Kait got some Swiss mix and socks/legwarmers. (Yep, you guessed it. Kait opened 2 presents.) Other than that, nothing terribly exciting happened on Christmas Eve.

Christmas, however, was pretty epic. We started the day by opening the rest of our presents. Kait got, makeup, a light jacket/sweater, facewash, a blanket, and a cofee grinder, and I got chapstick, a cell phone, and a gift card to a book store. We both got vanilla extract, herbs, dried cherries, chapstick, popcorn, and chocalate. Plenty of good loot overall.

After opening presents, we prepared to have people over to our house for some coffecake and egg brunch with many sides of fresh fruit. While we ate, we put on "It's a Wonderful Life," my personal favorite regarding Christmas movies, though the original "Home Alone" comes in a close second. (I think some of us will be quoting the latter for a few months at least.) Meanwhile, we were also preparing our dish - sweet potato french fries - for the company dinner that we were going to later in the day.

Before that, though, we went ice skating at Su Sung Lake, though in an arena - not on the lake itself because it was not anywhere near frozen. Though it was a fairly small arena, there were a lot of people, and my skates were three sizes too small for me, we all still managed to have a very good time skating away for a brief while before dinner.

We went to dinner at a place called Hof 'N' Joy, located very near the company's main school. It was a very large room that had enough tables and such to seat 60 empolyees who attended the party. Before long we dined on delicious turkey, stuffing, potatoes, salads, and more side dishes to really remember. But it was all very good. After dinner we played "bad santa," which is where everybody brings a gift to give someone, but once the game starts - and a gift has been opened - then someone may steal that gift rather than open a new one. Even though this game went on for a long time, it was very entertaining, and a great way to spend time with friends.

After dinner, we decided to head back to our neighborhood with one of our co-workers/friends - Carolyn - to play some cards together. This is where my night got really interesting: I drank the bottle of wine that I walked away with from the party. However, let the record state that I offered to share the bottle with the other two card players present, but they graciously declined. Overall, it was a very fun and fulfilling day, cram-packed with interesting things to do, and wonderful people to be around.

Other than that, there are a few other interesting things to note, which I will go into below:

Interesting foods eaten:
-Duck gizzard. Yes, you heard me, duck gizzard. We ate this after we visited some burial mounds at a museum located in Daegaya, outside of Daegu; we went there with our friend Lee.

-Chicken ass:
No, I am not even kidding. And I don't mean the meat around the aforementioned area either. I mean, the actual....well, you get the idea. If you asked me how it was, I could only say that it was very, very crunchy. If I could invent an adjective, I would say "cartilagy." We actually ate this by accident when we went to a local pub. We pointed to one dish, but the server apparently misunderstood, and gave us some potatoes and chicken ass. Once we saw what we got, we were in denial about it and commenced to eat some to try this new food, but we later came to terms with it and are now coping. At least we had some beer/soju to wash it down with...

-Pizza: Although this may not sound different, when you put corn, pasta noodles, and potatoes on a pizza, it adds to a whole different experience.

-Interesting occurrences:
"Hello": Often, we will walk down the street, and random Koreans whom we have never met nor seen before walk up to us with an excited look on their faces as they say "Hello" or "Hi." When I say hello back - I always make it a point to do so - they get even more excited and start giggling (if they are girls) or talking excitedly amongst themselves.

-"Handsome guy": Like the above occurrence, I often get people who just walk right up to me - perhaps even within my personal bubble - and say, "Handsome guy!" The different part about this is that the only people who say this to me are males.

-The Mokiotang: (spelling?) This is basically the public shower and bath room in the gym that we go to. At first glance, it is not that different from a regular public bath house, but once you have gone in fairly regularly, you begin to notice various things that seem odd to someone from the American/western culture. The main thing that I have inevitably noticed is scrubbing. Now mind you, this is always a normal occurrence in any shower room, but when someone is doing it to someone else, then it becomes - to me - abnormal. For example, there are maybe three or four employees working in the locker room/bath house at most times. Usually these are elderly, or at the very youngest, middle-aged men. You can pay one of these men to scrub your body with a course rag while you lie down on a padded bench in the shower room. Oh, and you are generally lying face up. The employee scrubs you from head to toe - at least mostly - to get you clean, a completely normal occurrence that happens every day. Also, sometimes I see what appears to be father and son in the shower room together, and they are scrubbing each other as well; I have seen this up to the point that the son is a teenager.

-Holding hands: Males have no problem showing public displays of affection here, be it at a young age - like when they are in my classroom - or older - such as after they have come out of a bar. Anything from hugging to holding hands to placing an arm around their friend's waist while walking down the street is completely commonplace and provides no need for anyone to raise an eyebrow. It is a very interesting facet of this culture that I have noticed in that homophobia is relatively non-existent here - to my eyes at least. People don't have a stigma held against males showing pda, so there is absolutely no reason to avoid it.

-Politeness: There are really a lot of polite things that people do here that I wouldn't really think to do in the states. For example, I was on the subway about a week ago, carrying a shopping bag full of Christmas gifts in my hand, and I was standing next to an older man; I was standing because no seats were available. Once a seat opened up between us, we each looked at each other, and I gestured that the man could sit down. Then, what surprised me was that he gestured for me to give him my bag so that he could hold it for me on his lap. I just thought that that was such a subtle example of politeness, but I don't know if he was thanking me for giving him the seat, or if he always does this for people no matter what. It is possible that he was thanking me for recognizing the hierarchical structure upon which Korean culture is generally based. (Ie: older men should be respected by younger men, a pretty simple principle.) So maybe that was his way of saying "thanks" for my recognizing the structure. Or maybe not. I do know, though, that other people have had this experience as well. Back in the states, if someone offered to take my bag for me, I would be worried stiff that they would run out the door with my goods, but here, the though scarcely crossed my mind.

-Servers: When you are at a restaurant, the servers don't come by periodically to check on you - at least not normally. They have a button on the table for you to call them whenever you need them, or you can just raise your hand and say the Korean equivalent of "here" to get their attention. I think it's actually kind of nice not to have someone constantly coming by just to ask how are meals are and such, and I have all the power to get help instantly if something isn't quite right. Something tells me this may be an area of reverse culture shock when I go back to the states.

There are probably other things that I can't think of presently, but Kait can't think of anything either, so I think I got the major occurrences that are really different here. I hope everyone reading this had at least as good of a Christmas as we did, and that the new year will be a good one. Best wishes,

Ace