Kore-istmas 2010

• Well, my mom has asked me very kindly to do at least one last blog post for everyone before I leave Korea. So you can thank her for this post. This post will be about Christmas in Korea… Kore-istmas.
• My plans for Christmas day were to go to my friend Sunny’s house and spend the day with her and her sister and husband. We were going to order Christmas dinner from the army base, participate in their first ever white elephant gift exchange, drink homemade eggnog, play board games, and watch “Love Actually.” These were the plans at least.
What actually happened is that on Thursday Sunny canceled these plans. I was absolutely heartbroken at the thought of having to spend Christmas alone! I was so upset, but she said that instead we could go shopping, get dinner, and watch a movie on Christmas Eve. This unfortunately did little to console me.
That Thursday night we went out to dinner and I learned a very important difference between Christmas and Kore-istmas. For Koreans, Christmas Eve is more important than Christmas day. This is the day were couples go out to fancy dinners, shop, and stay out all night drinking / dancing / singing karaoke. Then Koreans spend all Christmas day sleeping and nursing hangovers.
So, Sunny thought she was doing me a favor by including me in her plans for Christmas Eve. She didn’t know that for westerners Christmas day is more important than Christmas Eve. (For my Korean friends, Christmas day is like your Chuseok; it’s when families get together to share a food and gifts. If you are married, Christmas Eve is the day you celebrate Christmas with one family, and then Christmas day is when you celebrate Christmas with the other family.)
• So let me share my Kore-sitmas eve experience with you. First, Sunny and I met with her sister at the COEX mall. So I put my name down on the 2 hour long wait list for the Mexican restaurant and we did some shopping. This was the first time that Sunny and her sister have ever spoken English in front of each other!!! Can you believe it?!?! They have never used English in front of each other before! I suggested that they do a once a month dinner where they speak English to each other. Sunny shook her head and said, “No. Speaking English is not good for digestion.” Hahahahah!
• After we enjoyed a fantastic Mexican dinner, her husband picked us up and we drove around town looking for a specific kind of karaoke room, nori bang, (which we never found). When we were driving around Sunny’s sister and husband would only speak Korean. Then Sunny would yell at them, “In English!!!” and they would stop talking. So, I learned that “in English” is a Korean swear word similar to “shut up!” So, when Sunny’s sister’s musical iphone app was annoying us all, I yelled “in English!” Everyone liked my use of this Korean phrase. I seem to be learning more and more Korean each day!
• As we were driving around looking for a special nori bang, we were listening to all Korean pop music. Sunny felt it was her duty as a good host to find me some English music, preferably Christmas music. So she began flipping through the radio stations and was so excited when she heard the phrase “Merry Christmas.” She quickly flipped back to the station thinking she had found an English Christmas carol, and I was in tears laughing at the situation! The song was not in English, it was in Spanish!!! So I sung “Feliz Navidad” for them as they too laughed at the situation.
• Now it is Christmas day as I write this. Today, Bonyun’s brother Babe (after Babe Ruth) and I had lunch and then he took me to Santa’s Village, I mean, Study Village. He showed me his neighborhood. This is where all of the people studying for the government exams live. Usually, when you walk down a street in Korea you find many hagwons (private academies) for children, Study Village is a neighborhood full of hagwons for adults. For example, law school and engineering hagwons. Everyone here are “Study Machines” like Babe. Their lives consist of studying, and only studying. In fact, Babe went to the hagwon Christmas morning before meeting me. That’s right, he had class even on Christmas day!!!!
• After leaving Study Village, I went and saw an improve group perform. I was really pleased because even though I didn’t have anyone to go with me, I was brave and still went by myself. It was -9C outside (the coldest Kore-istmas Eve on record for the past 30 years) so I had a lot of reasons just to go home instead of wandering around a strange neighborhood looking for an art gallery in the freezing cold. But it was well worth braving the cold weather alone. The performers were all foreigners and it was done in English, plus it was a fundraising event for refugees fleeing North Korea. So not only did I get to laugh at some improve actors, I also got to donate money to a good cause. They were pretty funny, they did a lot of the typical Whose Line is it Anyways games. So I got some good laughs, and I also made friends with the person sitting next to me and I had someone to talk to on the subway ride home. And to make a very long blog post short, that was the end of my second Kore-sitmas in Korean.