Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from South Korea!

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New Years Eve 2007

Hello Everyone!


Happy Belated Holidays!! As you all can see, we had a VERY busy holiday season! It started a few nights before Christmas Day, December 23rd I believe, when Larry, myself, and many other friends headed to Jessica & Adam's apartment for a Christmas/Birthday celebration! It was both Jessica and Nolan's birthday, and so we wanted to give them a proper celebration...not tacked onto Christmas as many birthdays around the holidays sometimes are. Anywho, we sang our favorite song "Count the Numbers," had some homemade cider, wine, & desserts, and enjoyed eachother's company. It was a very nice evening.


Next up, Christmas Eve. For this celebration, we went to Mel & Gareth's apartment, where about 15 friends shared a potluck dinner and Christmas cheer. It was a very delicious meal and we had a lot of fun too! Some of the highlights of the evening were the Secret Santa swap, where Oriana was excited to give away her "13 cent piece of crap from China," and making fake snow in a bowl (Thanks, Chris!) Reading the back of the package was equally entertaining though...it said that if "accidentally swallowed, please induce vomiting immediately!" Hahaha!


And finally, Christmas here in S. Korea was also nice. It was our first Christmas away from our families, which was a little sad, but Larry and I made the most of the day and still had a really nice time. We went to see the Seoul Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker" with our friends Adam & Jessica...which was really great too, and made me reminisce of the 12 years I performed in the Dearborn Ballet Theatre's production of the same show. Afterwards, we went to have a huge Indian dinner with friends...MMMM...nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like curry! 😊


For New Year's Eve, we first had a romantic dinner at the Holiday Inn-Seoul (sounds cheesy, but we swear is a really classy hotel here!), before heading into downtown Seoul, where they had a BIG New Year's celebration in the streets. It was really crazy, and actually reminded me of New Year's Eve at Time Square back in NYC! At midnight, they even did a countdown and then rang a historic bell and set off about a million fireworks!! (They were selling the fireworks in bulk on the streets to anyone with 1,000won ($1)....!!!) Check out the attached video to see just how intense the Koreans celebrated this holiday! The craziest part....this isn't even the "New Year's" that they consider a national holiday!!! Instead, they nationally honor the Solar New Year, which will be taking place at the end of February this year.


As I told a friend in a recent email, I'd have to say that one of the most surreal things about living abroad for the holidays is to not have our time off from work around Christmas and New Year's. You know those holidays are going on at home, but it just doesn't completely feel like it here. Especially when most teachers had to actually work on Christmas and New Year's Day!! Luckily we didn't, and we still enjoyed ourselves, but obviously nothing beats celebrating with family and friends at home.


As for now, our next big adventure (vacation) is at the end of February, during the Korean Solar New Year. We are going to Australia and will be staying with some of my Australian friends that I met and worked with at Tokyo Disneyland. They were Ariels too! We will be flying to Sydney for about a week, and then to Melbourne for about 4 days. It will be super hot there, as February to them is like August for us....but we're looking forward to getting out of the snow here in Korea, and we're really excited!!


Well, that's all for now! Happy New Year, take care and please write soon...


Love,
Larry & Melanie


Korean for the Day: "Meri kurisumasu" - (Merry Christmas!), "Saehaebong mani pada" - (Happy New Year!), "Twaejitti" - (It's the year of the Pig!!)

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Comments

[Mel & Gareth]

Happy New Year!
Although very different to home thanks for helping to make Christmas a special (and white!) one. We'll have to do it again sometime - maybe in Oz?