Concerning Thaaaaaaaanksgiving!

Hello!

What a great week. To start off with, I get to stay in my apartment. Yes, I still have to pay the monthly difference between it and the other studio apartments but in my mind, it is beyond worth it to have the comforts I have here. Namely, a bath tub, guest room, a counter, and space enough for a couch (or two). Yay! That's a huge load off, now I feel completely at peace here and comfortably settled back into my little Korean life.

As for the rest of the week, it was mildly busy as the last week of the academic session but as usual, I tried to plan ahead a bit so I didn't get too terribly slammed. No harm done. We did have an interesting morning on thursday as we had a professional photographer in to take some pictures of all of the 7 year old kindies who will be "graduating" into elementary school at the end of February. All of my NYU kids fall under this umbrella so I literally spent three full classes with them navigating them through five (count them, FIVE) wardrobe changes. America's Next Top Model, look out, this was a pretty serious photo shoot. I was in two of the five shots and one of them in particular was soooo painful because the photographer spent about a half hour with each child trying to get them to smile nicely which meant some incredibly sore cheeks on my part after 6 children's worth of this treatment. One of the pictures even had them in this formal Oxford style graduation gown complete with cap and tassel. Oh, Korea.

Friday night I went to English club again which was very interesting. The article topic of discussion this week was about the Korean practice of living with your parents until you are married. This represents a pretty big change from western practice so we had a great conversation about the different sides. It seems that here, there is such an established track to go through life and in that perfect track, children are the culminating and central event. As such, parents seem to almost feel inferior or remiss if they are not actively demonstrating their love, affection, and support to their cherished children and most often, this is through money and accomodation. Even members of the club in their early 40s admitted to still receiving financial gifts from their parents. We also did talk about how this practice is not just cultural, but equally the result of Korean economic conditions-- admittedly, housing is extremely expensive here compared to salaries, and with such a wealth of people, apartments are not thick on the ground. Obviously, everyone was very polite and receptive to my opinions as to why I value my independence (obviously still recognizing the support that I have gotten from mom and dad through my life...thanks parents!!). Even though I remain unchanged in my preference to live on my own and establish myself as a self-reliant adult, I do admire how vital family is to Korean social structure. So, I suppose as always, there is much to learn from both sides.

After the meeting, the members went out to a hof (a Korean answer to a bar which is more like a cafe as most Koreans go to drink beer and soju and get snacks with it) and then finished out the night at a noribong (remember? private karaoke room?). This part was pretty darn amusing. At one point in the night, I was serenaded by four middle aged Korean men singing "Barbie Girl." I couldn't make that stuff up. Then, we proceeded to sing some Beetles and topped it all off with some classic Christmas carols, as you do. Chad and I are in complete agreement that Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" is the best, hands down. As it is now after Thanksgiving (more on that soon) I can now give myself free reign to go on holiday glut mode and I'd imagine this will involve singing that song a time or two.

Saturday, I bustled about getting ready for my delayed expat Thanksgiving at my apartment. It turned out fantastically-- we managed chicken breast with a french sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad, crudites, rolls, apple pie, ice cream, home made whipped cream, and bananas foster on a two stove burner AND it all was hot. Damn I'm good. Mom- I was so channeling your years of Tuscany dinner parties, I nearly put post-its on all of my serving dishes, I kid you not...haha. I also ended up channeling dad because I followed his sadistic and torturous tradition of making everyone say what they are thankful for just when the food is hot and smelling delicious and mouth wateringly ready. The apple does not fall far (except when it temporarily rolls to South Korea...). The company was great as well- it was all of my foreign coworkers from ECC (Theresa, Toby, Renee and Chad), Theresa's Scottish friend Nikki, her Korean friend Eun Ju, and my Korean friend from the English club, Hooney. I put a bunch of candles around the apartment to disguise the horrible wall paper and combined with the Jack Johnson backdrop and flowing wine, it wasn't a bad atmosphere at all. Very cozy, especially as most people ended up sitting in a little cluster on the floor of my living room and had a sort of picnic. When we were done eating (and eating and eating), we had an impromptu music session of all of our great Jr. High favorites so "The Bad Touch" (you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals...), "The Thong Song," "Yeah," "Slim Shady" and "Shock Collar" all came out and we completely mystified our poor Korean audience. Pumped up, we then all decided to randomly go dancing, so we did. It was a great time, we stayed for about two hours and scandalized most of the conservative Koreans with our crazy moves but overall, I had a wonderful evening and it scratched my Thanksgiving itch.

Today was mostly spent sleeping as the last two nights I have gone to bed at 3...but I cleaned up my poor little apartment in the meantime. Good day, good week, and a much much better attitude. I feel like my frustrations are slowly being managed and that I am finally FINALLY settling in to Korea, making friends with locals, learning more about the culture and having more of an adventure. That is certainly a relief.

Next up: should be a pretty good week, my schedule was changed so that instead of a late break in the day on tuesdays and thursdays, they bumped a class up so I get off at 5:30 two days a week now, woohoo! Also, tomorrow, I'm going to dinner with another English club friend, Ella, an adorable Korean English teacher. Love to all! Hope you all had very merry Thanksgivings and a promising start to the holiday season.


B