Missing family and friends and the festive season this time of year. It’s a bit festive here but it’s not the same as home. Skyping with family helps. Below are some scenes from Christmas Eve and Day.
Only two more weeks until Christmas. Am I ready? No. And to top it off it doesn’t feel much like Christmas. Not that I’m complaining but it’s been on the warm side here. An afternoon park walk, some American Chinese food, and playing a little park lotto…at least seeing real-life elves working hard makes it a little more Christmas-y around this part!
It truly feels holiday-ish around here. The cold front, the gloves, the warm drinks and my favorite, the mulled wine have all arrived. I think my newfound love of the holidays is due to mulled wine!
It was definitely a strange Christmas being away from family and friends. Christmas was good but I’m not sure that it was a “normal” Christmas (but really, what is a normal Christmas?). Thank you for all the presents and calls – it made Christmas more enjoyable and not as lonely.
So Christmas was interesting because Kyle and I were invited to our Korean friend’s Christmas Eve party which by the looks of it was like a bad prom.
Yes, those are purple balloons taped to the ceiling. Did I say it was like an 80’s prom? The atmosphere was what I think a junior high dance would be like. Fortunately we had booze to liven things up.
Unfortunately it was really bad wine. It was Carlos Rossi (only the classiest) Grape Concord Sweet Wine. It tasted like bad grape juice. I still don’t know why anyone would buy a wine called “Concord Grape Sweet Wine”? Why not just buy concord grape juice?! There was also crappy Korean beer and snacks. The snacks were tuna sandwiches, tomatoes with toothpicks in them, delicious bacon wraps, and chips with fake cheese (yum!). For some reason I thought the tomatoes were amusing.
It was a nice party and I’m glad we went for the experience. On actual Christmas night one of our sweet friends made us delicious Indian food and then we ate cakes that did not say “Merry Christmas” but that said “Merry Santa Daddy”. Classic Korea.
Our sad little Christmas tree is up and it even snowed the other day. The weather is pretty mild and I would be fine with a tropical Christmas so the weather doesn’t bother me much. I am planning a Christmas shindig this weekend and apparently the holiday fever has taken over because even the penguins dressed up!
At Everland, an amusement park in Seoul. Photo credit: nationalpost.com