Holiday spirit
Nice! Christmas is this weekend!! I sure wish it would have fallen during the week, so we all didn't get screwed according to vacation time. So here, I don't even get the Friday or the Monday off. Given, Christmas isn't as big of a deal here as it is back home. Imagine, not seeing Christmas decorations right after Halloween??!! Shocker. Here they start all the retail showiness of Christmas about 2 weeks before, which is about right, if you ask me. Only about 30% of the population is Christian here, so that's why Christmas is more low-key.
As for my holiday plans....Friday at school it will pretty much be all-Christmas-all-the-time. Sweet! The students have something called a "cookie party" where they will all bring in their store-bought, generic tasting cookies. Baking isn't a big thing here, because lots of people don't have ovens. I have to come up with other creative ways to bake cookies. Since the floor is heated here, I figure throwing some raw dough on it and letting it sit for a few days should do it.
Since the foreign teachers (that's me) don't really have any 'family obligations' on Christmas, we are all going to hang out together. We are paying a hotel $200 to make us a turkey dinner with all the fixin's. Yippee!! Then of course there will be eating, drinking and merrymaking. It's great that we all get along.
We're doing Secret Santa at school this week...I pulled the name of a Korean teacher who is great with child (aka "knocked up"). I don't really know her that well so I didn't know what to get her. I went to a place similar to The Body Shop back home (although they have those here too), and was looking at buying one of those fragrance pots that you drop oil into that makes the room smell nice.
***A note about shopping here*** "Aggressive sales people is an understatement. In a store the size of a bedroom, there are literally 6-8 sales people. As soon as you walk in the door they pounce. The entire time you are shopping, they are at your heels the whole time, watching your every move. It's like that shadow game we all used to play when we were young. Good God, I hate that.
Anyway, I think I have it a little better; because I'm foreign, the sales people are a little more timid with me because they know they'll have to whip out the ol' English skills. So there is a lot of embarrassed giggling and stammering as they try to throw their sales pitch my way. No habla. Anyway, they usually sick the best English speaker on me, and this particular time he was pretty good. He asked who I was buying a gift for, and I let him know she was pregnant. I guess it was a good thing I motioned it, because he snatched the fragrance light away from me and said that it's very bad for pregnant women. Ok. So I didn't know that. They are very paranoid about that stuff here. Oddly enough, their vitamin C drink (sold in little glass bottles at convenience stores) has nicotine in it, so don't talk to me about health. But fine, so I almost injured an unborn child. Who knew?
So needless to say I put the fragrance light back and got her some lotion. Happy Holidays.
As for my holiday plans....Friday at school it will pretty much be all-Christmas-all-the-time. Sweet! The students have something called a "cookie party" where they will all bring in their store-bought, generic tasting cookies. Baking isn't a big thing here, because lots of people don't have ovens. I have to come up with other creative ways to bake cookies. Since the floor is heated here, I figure throwing some raw dough on it and letting it sit for a few days should do it.
Since the foreign teachers (that's me) don't really have any 'family obligations' on Christmas, we are all going to hang out together. We are paying a hotel $200 to make us a turkey dinner with all the fixin's. Yippee!! Then of course there will be eating, drinking and merrymaking. It's great that we all get along.
We're doing Secret Santa at school this week...I pulled the name of a Korean teacher who is great with child (aka "knocked up"). I don't really know her that well so I didn't know what to get her. I went to a place similar to The Body Shop back home (although they have those here too), and was looking at buying one of those fragrance pots that you drop oil into that makes the room smell nice.
***A note about shopping here*** "Aggressive sales people is an understatement. In a store the size of a bedroom, there are literally 6-8 sales people. As soon as you walk in the door they pounce. The entire time you are shopping, they are at your heels the whole time, watching your every move. It's like that shadow game we all used to play when we were young. Good God, I hate that.
Anyway, I think I have it a little better; because I'm foreign, the sales people are a little more timid with me because they know they'll have to whip out the ol' English skills. So there is a lot of embarrassed giggling and stammering as they try to throw their sales pitch my way. No habla. Anyway, they usually sick the best English speaker on me, and this particular time he was pretty good. He asked who I was buying a gift for, and I let him know she was pregnant. I guess it was a good thing I motioned it, because he snatched the fragrance light away from me and said that it's very bad for pregnant women. Ok. So I didn't know that. They are very paranoid about that stuff here. Oddly enough, their vitamin C drink (sold in little glass bottles at convenience stores) has nicotine in it, so don't talk to me about health. But fine, so I almost injured an unborn child. Who knew?
So needless to say I put the fragrance light back and got her some lotion. Happy Holidays.
posted by Shannon at 8:45 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Shannon! My name is Kelly and I am the mom of Korean-born little boy, who is now 5. We adopted him when he was 10 months old.
I just wanted to tell you how much I am enjoying reading your blog about your experiences in Korea.
The Cookie story and the trip to the doctor had me cracking up.
Keep it up!
Kelly
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