The most wonderful time of the year

"It's Christmas in Killarney..." or, rather, Korea.

Having never spent a Christmas away from home ever was a wee bit depressing. The holiday season in Korea is not quite as obvious as it is in Canada. Who knew that I'd actually miss the mass commercialized holiday and the incessant carols being played from Halloween to Boxing Day.

But the foreigners in Jochiwon rallied against all the Grinchy odds and celebrated as best we could.

It all started with a Christmas party at Brenda and Sean's place. Pretty awesome. Full of carol singing and awesome cheese fondue and good times. I even came home with a bottle of red wine that I picked out myself.

Next up came Noraebang (sp?) a week later. Karaoke is a whole new experience here. And it was....awesome. But one of those 'you had to be there' times.

Christmas morning dawned two days later and, after a brunch of waffles and a kiwi smoothie (very good, by the way) Ruth and I headed to Daejeon to the Nam Sung fitness park for some awesome ice skating. Chilled with some middle school girls there, ran over some Koreans, and over all had, yes, a pretty awesome time. Hit up Costco for candy and cream cheese, had pasta at a weird french place (it was awesome pasta, better than some I've had even in Canada), and headed back to Jochiwon. Not the way I imagined I'd ever spend Christmas but altogether it was a pretty good day.

Boxing Day, which doesn't exist in Korea as far as I know, was spent calling family and lounging around at home and ended with a pretty, yes again, awesome concert by a youth orchestra at the Yeongi Cultural Art Centre.

Overall....pretty awesome.

....it's been awhile

So it's been awhile since anything was really posted on this here blog. I don't even have any excuses like I've been busy or anything. Because really I'm not busy at all.
Everything has pretty much fallen into routine. I'm at school from 8:30 to 4:30...ish...most days. At night I sit around, bake cookies...that sort of thing.

This is Jochiwon from the top of a mountain somewhere above town. In the bottom left corner just above the treeline you can see my building...aaaand that's my building from my old building....

My new apartment is bigger than the old one which would be great except that I don't really know what to do with all the space when I don't have anything to fill it with. The only furniture I have in the main room is a tv, my desk, and tiny table with an oven on top of it. Very...homey, what can I say.

So the weeks are fairly normal. And so are the weekends. A couple of times to Seoul, a few times to Daejeon, up a mountain or two, and making the trek to Homeplus and back. 

Our first weekend in Seoul was...an adventure. We did the tourist thing and looked at some palaces and such, climbed a mountain unnecessarily, saw a pretty awesome traditional dancing show thing and shared a hostel room with a Mexican Tae Kwon Do team. Overall a pretty interesting weekend.

A couple of weeks later we trekked up Obangsan Mountain outside of Jochiwon with Brian and Jeremy, a couple of Americans who taught at Korea University. It was pretty awesome except that we had to go over three other mountains to get there.

I think the sign on the....left is for the mountain....

There was a lovely little gazebo at the top and pretty awesome views in either direction.

Nothing much to report otherwise. I guess that's a good thing. I mean it's not like North Korea has invaded yet....just the students being drilled on what to do if anything does happen.