Merry Christmas!

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Dear Blog Readers,

Merry Christmas! Our first Christmas in Korea has been spectacular. This is not duly reflected in the size of our Christmas tree whose height can only kindly be described as stunted. Fortunately, I didn’t laugh at it too much because my laughter was exhausted when my Dad showed me the Christmas tree that they have for this year. I can only describe it in the form of a grainy photo from Skype. It’s about a foot high. Mum insists that it’s a ‘Jacob’ Christmas Tree because it will grow in sync with Jacob. Anyway, we were surprised with how many gifts and cards we had underneath our tree this year, worryingly; I think I had more presents under this tree than I did last year back in England!

Coincidently, we sent our presents off to England on exactly the same day that my Dad sent our packages from England so the race was on! It was very close but Korea won by one day and both packages came within a week of sending them! We were really pleased that we all had our presents in time for the big day. I felt sorry for my Nana though. She’d sent her Christmas cards from York to Lichfield (about 100 miles away) and they still haven’t arrived yet because of the bad weather!

A few students have been off with swine flu. Consequently, many of the students have donned the surgical masks (which scares me a bit). They’re also surprised by how concerned I am if one of my students has gone to hospital. I told them that at home, if somebody goes to hospital, they’re probably on the verge of death. The teachers, however, do stay working even if they are on the verge of death – the commitment is phenomenal! I had another translation classic in my morning inbox on the messenger service:

“This morning theory of sexual decline for final exams, and processing.”

I was handed a pamphlet on Wednesday by one of my sexually declined students in my Extra class. I asked him what it was a through a variety of hand signals, gestures, and a strung together sentence, “It’s a ‘Don’t Die, Please’” pamphlet. Apparently, Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world so I’m pleased a ‘Don’t Die, Please’ pamphlet is making the rounds. On the way home from school, I managed to catch the last moments of the lunar eclipse. It looked pretty spectacular because the Moon was a reddish colour with a crescent of white (it would normally have been nearly a full Moon).

I had a phenomenally chewy lunch at Naebuk on Thursday. I simply can’t express the jaw ache I was suffering after my chewy dried fish with chewy rice pasta washed down with some chewy seaweed soup. I was amazed in my Extra class that when I replied to a question, “What do you normally have for breakfast?” “I normally have a fry up. It’s called a Full English Breakfast.” “Oh, you mean a heart attack on a plate?” Amazingly, a fry-up has made it into the English textbook – and anything that is in the textbook is memorized to heart…attack.
Friday was Christmas Eve. I’ve not really felt very Christmassy in Korea because it’s not really that big a deal here. However, I was excited at the prospect of a Christmas dinner in the evening at Leonard and Michelle’s house.

Before that though, I’d made my Extra class students a Christmas card with phrases in for them to use in theirs. I tried hard to write their names in Korean. For one student, Lee Dong Joo, I made the classic error of writing the ‘o’ in Hangul, as a ‘u’. He was mortified – “Simon Teacher, who is Lee Dung Joo? Dung!!!” Ah well, at least I set the comedy ball rolling as their Christmas cards were brilliant. One student didn’t want to be there, but he apologised in his Christmas card to me, “But I sorry to you. Why? I didn’t join class. Very sorry.” I didn’t ask them to write one for me but 4 out of the 7 did! One student exclaimed, “Let’s do better! I hope you to get helthy!” – I’d taught him the word healthy earlier in the day too, damn! Another student wrote a Christmas card to his friend Paul which basically turned into a ransom note for the “much received happy money.” However, my favourite when to ‘Ronaldo’ who wrote two cards, one to the Korean president, “Hello, how are you? I’m fine thank you. Bye. From Obama.” This was followed up by the only logical and obvious reply, “To Obama. Hello. How are you? My name is Oh Fra One Free. I love you. Bye Bye!” He then drew a picture of Oprah Winfrey just to make sure I knew who he was talking about. Classic.

Laura spent the day cooking a cake in preparation for tonight’s meal. Amazingly, Yuni, her co-teacher, had never baked a cake before! Laura was in her element and made an absolute cracker. On the way home, we went shopping for the secret santa that we were having at the meal in the evening. I bragged about my present all the way home which planted the seed for Laura’s curiosity…

After a delicious meal of ham, chicken, potatoes and vegatables with dessert of no less than 5 different cakes! We settled in for the secret Santa. Leonard got the Mickey Mouse alarm clock, which apparently started ringing after it had been wrapped! I got a nice thermos flask. It came to Laura’s turn, and the curiosity took over and she decided to open mine, just to see what all the fuss was about. I’m not sure if curiosity killed the cat or if the monkey shaped hat the Laura was now donning simply scared it into oblivion.

Christmas Day was great. I’d prepared Laura a Christmas stocking filled with gifts. It’s really easy to buy for girls here because everything is so chick and girly. However, buying the stocking proved difficult – the first place I was directed to was a bunch of women’s lingerie! We had a great haul of presents this year underneath our tiny Christmas tree. We got the mandatory group video Skype done and opened presents via the Internet – how 21st Century of us. Laura bought me a really thick hoody which has a moose on the front with ‘TONORT’ streamed around it – we think they were meant to put Toronto. I also got an Armani wallet but our suspicions that it could be a forgery are strengthened by the word ‘Armadillo’ in the front sleeve.

Tink and Laura

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Photos

Christmas Party
Good spread!

Extra Class
The Unintentional Comedians

Cakes
Great desserts.

Great Hat
Hahahahahaha. Epic Secret Santa Fail.

White Christmas?
Definitely some snow!

Tree
Christmas Tree and presents!

Tree
Wide-angled view to get all the presents in.

Stocking
I went for the traditional version.

Oh no
Package from home.

Marmite
I wish I'd videoed the reaction.

Perusal
Cosmopolitan magazine. It's as close to newspapers as I can get.