After having a surprisingly pleasant Thanksgiving, I was ready for the Christmas season. I more than love Christmas. The music, the cold air, the buying of gifts for people you love, the lights, the smell of pine. Sure, a lot of people complain about the modern commercialism of Christmas, but I always try and look past that. Christmas is my favorite time of year, but I've never spent Christmas away from my family. So, practically right after Thanksgiving I decided to find a way to make Christmas in Seoul feel as much like Christmas at home as I could. Obviously I was going to be missing the most important part of the holidays, my friends and family, but I was determined not to wallow in how odd it felt to be living in a foreign country during Christmas time.
My mom helped send some Christmas cheer early on by mailing a tree the perfect size for my tiny, box apartment. It wasn't the same as cutting one down at Enchanted Winds Christmas Tree Farm like we do every year, but it was a good replacement. After some internet searching and calls made by my spectacular Korean co-teacher, two rooms were booked for myself and a dozen of my friends. For those back home who don't know, a pension is like a hotel room, but Asian style. They give you big mats and blankets and pillows and you sleep on the floor. Asians love the floor. Sitting on the floor to eat, taking naps on the floors of the gym and throwing down some blankets to sleep on the floor. Lucky for us, our rooms had a giant bed, a real living room AND a couch, so sleeping was easy. This was no regular pension.. it was the Elf Pension.
This was the place we stayed in. I'm fairly certain that the Romanovs were the previous guests, but this was never confirmed. Actually, they told us that we were the first waygooks (Korean word for foreigners) to ever stay there. It might not have been my parents' cozy Maple Valley house with a fire burning and Sunny snoring, but it was pretty amazing.
This was the view from our room. There was plenty of snow, beautiful sunshine and, best of all...
adorable dogs. What else could a person want?
Our first night there, we all hit the slopes. The province our pension was located in was right near Phoenix Park, which is where the winter Olympics are going to be held in a few years. The snow was shit and it was probably the coldest I've ever been in my life, but we still had a good time.
That night after snowboarding we all got together and exchanged Secret Santa gifts. At Thanksgiving dinner we had all written down our names and each taken one. The name we drew was the person we had as our Secret Santa. We set a gift purchase limit of about $30 and also stated that we had to MAKE a gift. Some of the boys were a tad unsure about this, but I was amazed and awestruck at how perfectly it all worked out.
Here is the gang before we opened our gifts. Jessica is hidden taking pictures and Lydia is blocked sitting on the floor, but the 13 of us had an amazing time and I can honestly say I was shocked at my gift.
My good friend, Andrea, drew my name for Secret Santa. She got me a completely necessary tripod as I have been wanting one for quite some time. I recently took a photography class and have been getting a much better understanding of my DSLR, so getting a tripod made me happier than I can possibly explain. For her made gift she had a calendar made on the Apple website and mailed it to my parent's house in Maple Valley. The calendar starts in March, which is when I will be home, and features pictures of all my favorite friends from Korea. It arrived recently and my mom showed me via Skype and it is AMAZING. I was certainly spoiled. It was a very, merry Christmas.
Christmas Eve day the girls went sledding while the boys went snowboarding. While they were on the slopes, we got dinner ready. We ordered a full Christmas dinner from the Marriott in Seoul and hauled it up to the resort. It took quite a while to heat it all up, but there was a feast of Western food, which is all we really wanted! We had an 18 pound turkey, which Andrea carved beautifully, carrots, string beans, stuffing, baked pumpkin slices, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and rolls. It couldn't have been better. We spent the rest of the night playing games, singing songs, and, well, being merry.
There are so many ridiculous songs and quotes about finding Christmas spirit and spreading Christmas cheer, but this year those didn't seem so ridiculous to me. Sure, I had some of the comforts of home here in Korea, but this was nothing like the Christmas I knew. And yet, somehow, with a group of wacky waygooks I felt so much Christmas joy and love. It wasn't home. But it was great. I missed my friends and family, but if I wasn't able to be with them, there was no place else I would have wanted to be besides the Elf Pension with these people. I'm very, very blessed and, as always, Christmas reminded me of that.
Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and welcome to happy new year! See you in 2012!
PS I'm not sure if this link might not work, but here is a little video Andrea made of our Christmas. This probably sums our trip up better than I just did. Enjoy.
Elf Pension Movie
No comments:
Post a Comment