Christmas Festivities, Part 2

     Because I don't have much time before I leave on vacation, I'll throw out a few quick posts about what I've been up to for the last few weeks.  Short of winter vacation (which is deserving of its own series of posts, as the kids did some brilliant things in a span of 2 weeks), here's a recap on my life leading up to vacation, more or less:

The 5th grade boys at Wolya Elementary were thoroughly ready for some Christmas movies and Christmas hats.

And they love climbing on each other, wrestling for "who gets to wear the hat?" and posing for pictures.

The photos of cute kids in Santa hats keep on rolling--here's Harry, a 3rd grader from Singwang Elementary, my Tuesday school.  Though we only got through 10 minutes of "Shrek the Halls," they were getting spirited.

5th grader Michael, actually looking into the camera for a picture.  This guy is a great success story this semester--dude would barely look at me, much less speak to me or answer my questions for the first month or so of the semester.  Now, his hand goes up every time and he's so anxious to answer and speak!  Good things happening for this young man.

Awesome, awesome 5th graders.  Carl on the left, Tae Hee on the right.  Tae Hee made me an awesome "thank you, Teacher" letter that she wrote to me at English camp, and you'll get to see that in all its translated glory at a later date.

Post-Christmas party picture with the 3rd graders of Sonbul Elementary, my Wednesday school.  In their case, we were able to watch the entirety of "Shrek the Halls," as well as some Justin Bieber videos, all while eating lots of snacks and getting way too hopped up on Fanta at 9:30 a.m.

Cutest, nicest 5th grader of the whole bunch, Kim I-Sul.  She's my best friend after classes, as she's always coming by the room to speak a little English and run around and play games with me.  She likes to wear my scarf, and suggested I wear it for a picture.

Here are some nice evening Christmas decorations outside one of the many churches in Hampyeong.  I didn't walk inside or get to any Christmas services, but these lights were always great to walk by each night as I stepped off the bus and walked to my apartment.

On Christmas Eve, I was lucky enough to be given a tour of Chosun University, in the southeast corner of Gwangju, by my good friend Kim Jia.  And this campus is BEAUTIFUL.  Not only does it offer great views of the city, but it offers some spectacular buildings and hiking landscape--its no longer a surprise to me to see so many fit, young people after taking a hike around this campus--up and down, up and down, up and down.

Here is the main administrative building.  Stunning.

An awesome view of Gwangju, from the southeastern side of the city, from a great little picnic spot on campus.  Much thanks to Jia for the great tour.

Here is Jia walking down the steps toward the city.  There are groves of pines like these everywhere on this campus--for being a "private" university, it's big!  Somewhere in the ballpark of 25,000.  Chosun even has its own English magazine that students author and print every month!  

December 23rd, in Gwangju.  Christmas weekend.  Wasn't sure if I'd shown all of you this yet, but this is a giant wire/light combination shaped into a Christmas tree close to downtown Gwangju.  I had the pleasure of standing under this and just admiring the lights and feeling much closer to home for at least an hour each day that weekend.

Friday night called for one of the few things I know how to do to celebrate Christmas in a totally foreign country--drink beer and be with friends.  Here are me and Monti at our favorite watering hole downtown, German Bar.

And here, later in the evening, are Monti and Erik at another favorite watering hole with lots of good beats and beautiful Korean women: Mix.

Great to have some snow on the ground for Christmas Eve morning.

Zach and I were happy enough to buy some Christmas doughnuts.  It was a weird weekend in that we knew we weren't doing much real celebrating that paralleled home, but the simple things like finding snowman and Christmas tree doughnuts at Dunkin' Donuts made it that much easier.

My Christmas present to myself.

Christmas Eve in downtown Gwangju.

We made the trek to the bus terminal, in hopes of checking out Ashley's for Christmas Eve dinner.  Ashley's is more or less a western-style buffet with lots of familiar food and free wine all night for about $20.  We were so excited, we nearly forgot that there was a 2-hour wait anticipated.  So while at the terminal, looking for our next best option, we caught a free concert of some dancers.

Here's the crew on Christmas Eve.  From left to right: Sokhom, Aaron, Zach, Monti, Fraser, and Erik.  Though we didn't drink all those beers, they made it easier to choose--you can literally point out any familiar beer and expect it to come out.  That's all I really wanted on Christmas Eve, just to drink and hang out with good friends drinking good beers.

Christmas card material for the Gray family.

My new favorite beer from another country, and my choice of 2-carbon beverage for the evening.  Leffe Brown hails from Belgium, and it's damn good.

Met up with Jia, her sister, and a friend at German Bar once again for some Christmas Eve camaraderie.

...And started one hell of a snowball fight at night's end.  Around 2:00 a.m., we left German Bar to see that Gwangju had been pelted with at least 2-3 additional inches of snow.  We were so giddy that we started a great multi-national snowball fight in downtown Gwangju with some Korean and Pakistani guys, while the girls just looked on as if we were idiots.  And we were.  We were little kids again, hiding behind cars, throwing snowballs, making snow angels, all that good stuff.  Honestly, those 15 minutes will go down as some of the top 15 minutes of my entire year in Korea.  For the first and only time, it really began to feel like Christmas at home.

Ecstatic to have a white Christmas.

The best part of the whole weekend, short of the snowball fight?  The fact that, at 11:00 a.m. the next morning, Christmas day, there was no wait at Ashley's at the bus terminal--while folks were mostly probably in church, we were having some familiar food and sipping champagne.  Here's another postcard shot from the Gray brothers.  Good company with whom to close out the Christmas weekend.

     And then it was back to Hampyeong for a series of great Skype conversations with family from home.  I wish I'd taken some screenshots of that on my computer, but that's what ultimately made me feel like home--or ultimately made me feel like I couldn't be farther from home, I'm not sure which.  Winter camps started the next day, so there wasn't much time to dwell on the idea of Christmas here in Korea.  And those next 3 weeks of camp proved to be the most exhausting, but most rewarding 3 weeks (maybe) of my entire teaching experience thus far.  But that's for another time.

     Anyway, I should always take this time to note that this will be the end of all blogging for at least a few weeks.  I'm leaving for vacation starting today, staying in Seoul for a few days and nights, before flying to Bangkok and spending 8 days in Phuket, Thailand, island hopping, hiking, relaxing, and really just about anything but teaching and being cold in Korea.  It'll be great to get away, and I promise lots of good pictures and stories when I return.  You'll hear all about it in due time.  

     Thanks, as always, for reading.  Hope everyone is safe, sound, and happy wherever they are, and I hope all of my fellow teachers in Korea are enjoying their vacations!  See you in a few weeks!  Lots of love, and all the best,

-Sam

Christmas Festivities, Part 1

     After a day of fun in the snow with the kids of Sonbul Seo Elementary, it was time for a great weekend.  This one, the weekend just prior to Christmas, was among my favorite yet in Korea.  With the snow, Korean people really seem to slow down as much as they panic, and I think most foreigners in particular were just really excited to have some snow on the ground.  Though there was considerably less snow in Haenam, where our friends Zach and Monti live, Erik and I decided to come down for a night of food and drink.  What you'll see first are some snapshots from the night.  

This was a brand new concept that blew my mind.  What you see in the middle is really lean, delicious cuts of beef there were delicious...and you can also catch the familiar look of garlic frying on the side, to the lower right, but what exactly is all that yellow stuff?  As it turns out, this restaurant in Haenam specializes in mixing things up a bit--on the left, you see egg that is to be fried for a lettuce wrap, and at the top of the grill, you see cheese that is also melting and will be combined with everything else.  Korean barbecue is delicious on its own, but add egg and cheese and...well, damn.

Here is the finished product: beneath all of this, we have our usual layer of various lettuce leaves, while you see a nice cut of steak topped with red pepper paste, garlic, egg and cheese, and a tangy salad-like mixture of greens for garnish.  Wrap it all together and WOW.

After dinner, we decided to check out a soju room.  This is where, more or less, you sit in a room designed for anywhere between 1-6 people and drink soju/beer and eat chicken and other good snacks. They have a sliding glass door that closes you off from other rooms, so it feels a little intimate and still doesn't feel like the right drinking concept for many of us.  But we're free to make plenty of noise and have plenty of ridiculous conversations.  Here are Erik and Monti thoroughly enjoying.

Ah, and this was an interesting guy!  Monti opens his apartment to others looking to "couch surf," which many of you have no doubt heard of in passing--couch surfers, more or less, travel the world and check a main website which details those people willing to host said travelers for free on their couches or other facilities across the world.  So, if anyone ever stops through Haenam, South Korea, Monti's couch is an adequate spot for just about anyone to spend the night.  This particular weekend, we were blessed with the presence of Remi, a 30-something-year-old Frenchman who came to Korea for an apparently epic crane migration in Suncheon.  He was awesome to go out and have some beers with, and talk to about just about anything--beers, France, women, the world, etc.

And here are some other dudes from the general Haenam crew.  On the left is David, a big, jolly, bearded dude from Canada's East Coast, and William, a hardcore leftist Texan.  Also, Hampyeong's very own Erik Gray.  This is taken at Haenam's Wa Bar, which is a big pub that feels very similar to home and carries an adequate beer selection on bar with bars from home--familiar beers from all around the world.

And then it was time, on Saturday, to make the trek to Mokpo (about a 40-minute bus ride from Hampyeong and about an hour bus ride from Haenam) for the big pre-Christmas party.  By 5:00 p.m., it was time to put on the Santa hats and start drinking.  Moe's is Mokpo's little bar where many foreigners hang out, and it tends to host just about every foreigner event.  This was no exception.

This is Marie, a delightful girl from California, who is one of the more energetic, positive and kind people I've had the pleasure of meeting in Korea.  She lives and teaches in Mokpo, and was one of only a few folks actually dressed in the full Santa swag.  

And here's my oldest friend in Korea--Gina, who, as I've said time and time again, is the reason I pretty much came to Korea.  She's an old friend from home; I've known her since I was about 8, and she made one hell of an argument about why I should come teach here.  Great to catch up with her a bit.

And here are our lovely bartenders, who claim to be sisters--Lindsay and Jinny are what I believe they call themselves.

And this photo marks the beginning of the 2011 "Running of the Santas" Christmas hash run.  Now, I should explain: a "hash run" is a tradition that began among foreigners here in Jeollonam-do province, specifically on weekends of holidays and special gatherings.  A "hash run" consists of participants dressing up in some ridiculous or festive outfits (Halloween costumes, Santa hats and suits, robots, zombies, they've tried many things), running around the city of said "hash run," and drinking before, during, and after the run.  Typically, in warmer weather, booze will be hidden across the city as part of the fun festivities--and it is the participants' job to drink until it's all gone, and until the race is complete. There are signs, as you can see, written on the ground in flour, including crosses (indicating that the correct route is one of 4 directions), arrows (indicating a correct direction), and abbreviations like "BN," which means "Beer Is Near."  Koreans laugh and take picures, we laugh and take pictures AND drink a bit, and everyone is happy.  This run was my first, and the first for many foreigners, and we accordingly drank a bit more than our colleagues.  All in good fun.  Cold night, though!

Here are hashers Gabe, Gina, Britney, Marie, and Hayley all sitting down for drinks.  As I said, usually, the drinks are served outside (bottles of beer, for instance, hidden in bushes), but on such a cold night, the pit stops for alcohol all included nice, warm pubs.

Me and Marie enjoying the night thus far.

Friends Mackenzie, Marie, and Monti enjoying the festivities.

Here's one of our last stops on the run, a noraebang (NO-RAY-BAHNG, literally "singing room"), or more or less a karaoke hall, where all 30-40 hash runners were able to engage in some Christmas carols on top of our delicious 2-carbon beverages.  Here, as you can see on the screen, are foreigners rocking out to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline."

And offering a hearty "cheers" to yet another successful hash run in Mokpo.

Readers, I don't believe you've yet met Dan Glucksnis, so here is your introduction.  He's straight out of Reading, Pennsylvania (close to home for much of my family), but went to school at Northern Michigan University (in my neck of the woods), so we talk about all things Northwoods and hockey.  He lives in Yeongam, not far from Mokpo.  Happy to see Dan and his beard this night.

The one thing you must make sure of, after each hash run, is that you've saved enough energy for the rest of the night's festivities!  After this particular hash run, there was a big party at Moe's, and many more foreigners filled the joint.  These two beautiful faces belong to Nathan and Rachel, my two favorite North Carolina natives.  Although I've only seen them in Mokpo on these party nights since orientation, it's a treat to spend some time with such good people.

Here's the scene--just a lot of cool foreigners in great Christmas gear drinking beer, dancing it up a bit, and having a damn good time.

Mokpo foreigners Shari and Sarah got a hold of a Moe's patron and did not let him go.  Made for an awesome picture.

The next morning at E-Mart (more or less a Korean all-purpose store like Wal-Mart), Monti found a bottle of Manischewitz, a favorite Christmas (ney, Hanukkah) treat for many of us back home.  Who woulda thought?

A quick look at the (limited) Christmas gear in my apartment.  Here is a tree I bought at E-Mart for roughly $3.  It came with cheap ornaments, in a box, with fold-down branches.  Cheap, but effective.

Some tinsel and holly I used to decorate my bookshelf.  Again, cheap but effective.

A Christmas stocking that hangs over my night stand.  For merely $1.  

     With that concludes this post on pre-Christmas festivities.  I must say, as I always am, I was absolutely blown away by the 48 hours of camaraderie I was able to experience, far away from home as I am.  Can't thank everyone enough for making my holidays a little bit easier to get through.  Another great weekend was over, but it meant a great Christmas weekend just down the road.

Thanks for reading!  The countdown to my Thailand trip is at 6 days, and I've been staying busy doing some day trips around Korea to pass the time before my flight.  Hoping to have my blog completely up to date by the time I leave.  Lots of love, and all the best.

-Sam