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A strange Christmas
Entry 43 of 114 | show all | print this entry |
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· Jochiwon, South Korea
· GMT +8:00 hours
A strange Christmas
As I type it's 4:30pm (7:30am in Ireland, 2:30am in Canada) on Christmas Day and this, I can say with certainty, is the strangest Christmas Day I've ever spent... following on nicely from the strangest Christmas Eve. We worked up until 6pm last night before hopping in an 11-seater mini-van with 9 Koreans to spend the next 5 hours driving to, from and around Daejon, Koreas 5th largest city. The trip included a stop off for dinner, a fruitless search for a
coffee shop (any coffee shop) and a late night visit to COSTCO, the last place either of us expected to find ourselves at 10pm on any Christmas Eve. The night just continued to get stranger and was rounded off by sharing a sweet-potato flavoured Christmas cake (Korean style - with chopsticks) and the contents of a slab/24 of Budweiser (the Koreans choice, not mine) & Miller back where we are right now, in the dorms of Korea University, the very same dorm that will become a strict 'no alcohol' zone once teachers start arriving from Thursday on. As I said, weird, and definitely memorable.
Right now we're in our own dorm
room of the university and we're trying as best we can to feel all festive. And quiet frankly, short of sitting down to watch Superman or Home Alone and dive into a turkey & ham dinner, we're doing okay. We both have our Christmas hats on and have already opened our lone Christmas present, the one that most definitely couldn't sit under our 2-foot high Christmas tree, the same tree that is flashing deliriously at us from the corner of the room knowing that today, above all days, is its day to shine brightest. Meg has already scoffed the Christmas goodies she took delivery of from Canada yesterday (thanks Sarah & Dave... you shouldn't have, but we're glad you did) and the likes of Cliff Richard & Brenda Lee are singing out through the speakers in my
laptop telling us all about 'Saviour's Day' and the joys of sleigh rides and rocking around Christmas trees. We have the day off from camp duties but when we do get back into it tomorrow we'll be continuing the task of doing detailed daily schedule planning for each of the 9 camps I mentioned we're here to plan for and, once they get up and running, monitor. Between now and then we'll probably, umm, not sure actually. Enjoy our time off I guess. We'll be calling home later this evening, when the time difference from Korea to Ireland & Canada is more favourable. But apart from that we'll be trying to take advantage of our day off, something the last few days has taught we're not likely to have again until the end of January. But right now we're heading out to try and get something to eat. God, how we'd love a plate of turkey, ham, goose or duck - we wouldn't be fussy.
UPDATE
We've just returned back from the university cafeteria and can report on our Christmas dinner. It was fried chicken and bean-sprout soup (with rice & kimchi, of course). While the dinner doesn't immediately shout 'Christmas' there was a Korean dressed as Santa, complete with stick-on beard, doing the rounds in the cafeteria handing out em, canned coffee and savory-filled bread. Didn't I say it was a strange Christmas?
Day 132 to 134 Observations (December 23rd to 25th 2007)
· We're dreaming of a white...
It is cold enough but it still hasn't snowed over here and at this stage we're dreaming of a white New Year. Hey Canada, any chance you can send over some snow? Jochiwon, Korea. Thanks.
· Sweet
Timing is indeed everything. Yesterday, 4pm Christmas Eve, Meg took delivery of a parcel from Canada, a parcel we now know contained a board-game and a few home-baked Christmas goodies. Meg proclaimed Christmas isn't the same without home-baked Christmas goodies so the timing was perfect. Now, if we could just organize getting some snow here.
· Get Out
We're too busy. We arrived here in the dorm of Korea University at abut 8pm on Thursday. Yesterday, Monday, at noon we we're given a tour of the campus facilities and buildings (so we would know where everything camp-related is and in what buildings the various camps will be held). In the intervening days we never left the dorm and only viewed the outside through the windows of the Camp Korea office or our dorm room. That should indicate how pre-occupied we have been by the all-consuming job at hand.
· DIY
If walking around an almost deserted COSTCO (for those not clued in, COSTCO is a wholesaler... think Wal-Mart, wholesale style) at 10pm on Christmas Eve has taught us anything, apart from how weird life can be, it is that there is good money to be made in the professional photography game, assuming you can get it. Prices for developing digital prints range from 140 Korean won (€0.10, CND$0.15) for a 6x4 print up to 2,500 Korean won (€1.90 or CND$2.5) for an 11x14 print. Our wedding photographer charged us $20 for a 4x6 and $70 for an 11x14. Granted, we would expect her quality to be better than our own prints printed in COSTCO but still. Good money indeed, especially considering we gave her close on $700 (€500) to take the pictures in the first place.
· Coming to a screen near you - a primer
Patience is a virtue. We haven't made the Camp Korea video yet, the one I spoke about in the last entry. It'll be sometime this week we hear. The only video you'll see us in these days is our very own video we posted to the website earlier today. It's sort of a primer for whats to come and is for your eyes only (or anyone else's for that matter). The message attached to it is as simple as can be for the day that's in it - Merry Christmas everyone.
Where I stayed:
Korea University
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