Merry Christmas!

* It's Christmas!!! Even though I registered at the American embassy and got my foreigner's id card Santa was not informed of my change of address. He still delivered all my gift to my parents house I think. Good thing Melissa is coming to work with me in a few days! She can bring my x-mass gifts to me! Yippy skippy! I am so excited for you to get here Melissa! I hope you find a way to put my sister in your luggage and bring her too!
* All of the stores are open today. Its so strange but I guess because people have the day off from work, shops figure its a good day to stay open. Korean's seem to like the look of x-mass, the lights, trees etc, but don't really celebrate it. They decorate everything for x-mass but then don't give gifts or have family dinners. Its kind of a couples holiday here. Couples go out to dinner on x-mass eve, drink a lot because they don't have to work the next day, sleep in, and then go shopping together.
* I took some of my veggie ham I got the other night with Hye Jung to the Y'z League hagwan. This is a kind of after school program that the publishing company I work for owns. Here there are a few Yankees, Hoosiers, and Brits, and even one other vegetarian to share my lentil based synthetic ham with. She was so excited; she has been living in Korea for 7 years now and this was the first time she has come across veggie smeat. I let her keep the left overs because I still have half a slab of it at home. She was so happy that I brought faux ham for us to eat that she invited me to go see the Sherlock Holmes movie tomorrow, I'm really excited about that!
*Dinner at Y'z League was a different kind of Christmas dinner than I expected. Because the principal of the hagwan is Korean, she served all Korean foods, with the exception of the gingerbread house. Instead of turkey they served shrimp, instead of mashed potatoes they served glass noodles, instead of dinner rolls they served California rolls, and instead of fudge they served mushy bland rice cakes. Although there was little for me to eat at dinner I still appreciated the invitation this Christmas party. After dinner we played some crazy Korean game. It involved throwing four sticks on a rug and depending on which way they landed you got to move the game pieces a certain number of spaces. I have no idea how to play, I just threw the sticks when they were handed to me. (I would rather take Bunko at Brandee and Gary's any day). Half way through playing the game we noticed that it started snowing. That's right, I actually got snow on x-mass!
* At the dinner I got to meet Mike's wife and daughter. Mike is British and his wife is Korean, their daughter was sooo cute! Lucas, I don't know how you are going to do it, but I want a little Korean baby like this one. She is awesome, she uses British swear words that she learned from her daddy. For example when a little boy tried to take a tangerine from her she shouted "cock!" at him. She also totally rocks the beret! Too cute!!!!