BRRR... it's cold outside!

It is 10 degrees outside right now and even though I have experienced worst, the cold seems to be unnnbeeearrraable. With that being said, this week has been quite a breeze! There are 3 english kindergarten classes in my school. One of the teachers who usually has about 13-14 kids in his classroom, had NONE on Monday due to the "swine flu". When I say "swine flu" I mean the kids got a common cold and their mothers think it is the swine flu. So Tuesday I only had 2 of my 9 kids show up which made a perfect day to cut out snow flakes and make little Christmas ornaments! My boss finally decided to have a 2 day break for Wednesday and Thursday for the school which was a nice surprise for all the English teachers! I took the time on my two days off to fill out Christmas cards, do some last minute shopping, and send out some Christmas packages.

On Thursday, Karla, Rebecca and I went to Dongdaemun which is a huuuuuuge shopping area with decent prices. Unfortunately, the shopping area has their best things available later at night so we didn't get to experience the entire area, but I still got to atleast scratch my shopping itch just a little bit. The shopping here is EXTREMELY agressive a long with everything else in Korea. The area we shopped in was basically a hallway sectioned off by curtains for each clothing vendor. There really wasn't much time to sit there and look and debate what you wanted. You had to make a quick decision whether or not you wanted to buy something or else your life was endangered of being trampled on by a line of Koreans. Afterwards we headed to a large shopping area which was more foreigner friendly called Myeongdong. It had many American brands including one of my favorite stores, Forever 21. I about died and went to heaven. It was nice to finally go somewhere and not everything be a "free size" because let's face it...there is nothing "free" about the clothes sizes here. The girls and I ended up having dok galbi for lunch which is chicken marinated in this red pepper paste mixed with vegetables cooked on a grill. So good that I needed a bib. :-)

Now I am back at work today and had a pleasant surprise finding out that all of my kids were not coming today because some were still not feeling well or it was "too cold" outside. I can't leave, so I finished my book, surfed the net a bit, and decorated my classroom some more for Christmas. Now THAT is what I call a hard day at work...

T.G.I.F.

Thanksgiving

If you know me then you know that Thanksgiving Day ranks up there as high as Christmas for me. Food, family, food, naps, sweatpants, relaxation and did I mention food? I was a little worried that my first holiday in Korea away from home would take a major toll on me. Korea’s thanksgiving, Chuseok, has already passed so the nice thing was that I didn’t have to be reminded of the American holiday coming up that I would be missing away from home for the first time in 22 years. On Thanksgiving Day here I got to make paper plate turkey with the kids. It was fun to teach them about eating turkey, stuffing and how American Thanksgiving traditions usually consisted of football and watching the parade on TV. Turkey here is rare here in Korea unless you want to pay a pretty penny for it. I was already going to deal with the fact that my Thanksgiving dinner would consist of rice and kimchi. Fortunately, we had a potluck dinner and had a friend that was able to pick a thanksgiving set from the military base for a whopping 130 U.S. dollars. We were able to divide the cost between about 10 people or so. The set had one cooked turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, vegetables and pumpkin pie. Then we also had the sides everyone else brought which turned out to be an impressive Thanksgiving meal in Korea. I missed out on eating in my sweatpants, taking a nap, being with the family, and having leftovers for a week, but all in all I would say it was still a good Thanksgiving!

It was really expensive to buy whipped cream for the pumpkin pie so we thought maybe we could make our own...bad idea. We were stirring for litterally an hour and it never turned into whipped cream. Can't say we didn't try!

Sorry I haven't blogging as much as I like, but I will try to keep everyone up to date more.

Miss and love you all!