FIRSTLY, Merry Christmas to one and all reading the latest entry in my blog.I hope that you all had a teriffic day yesterday, and although Christmas Day is over I'm sure there is plenty of celebrating left to be done as most people aren't poor unfortunate souls like me who have to head back to work on Monday!
I think I've mentioned once or twice about the difficulties of spending Christmas in Korea this year. I've never been a big one for celebrating Christmas my doing anything spectacular, partly because I have a small family and also because most of what little family I do have live on the opposite side of the world, or down at the other end of the country. Makes things kinda difficult.....
But this year I guess I am truely appreciative of what little celebrating we usually do as not only did it feel strange waking up on Christmas morning in an unfamiliar bed in my box of a room, but it also didn't truely feel like Christmas because back home in England it was still 1am in the morning!
My body decided that it didn't want to let me have too much of a lie in yesterday morning, so I spent most of it watching a DVD before getting a call from Charlie (who had headed to church in Seoul) to see if I wanted to meet up for lunch.
I was curious as to what exactly a typical South Korean Christmas Day was so heading outside I met by the seeming ordinaryness of just another working day for most people. I realise that about 25% of people in Korea are religious but my family isn't terribly religious yet they still observe Christmas a holiday and a time to be with your family. As mentioned previously, most Koreans don't seem to bothered about the whole thing and I discovered this when asking my kids what they had planned for Christmas Day.
Walking to the bus stop just up the road from my house I soon discovered that it wasn't infact Christmas Day, well not really, it was more like Friday December 25th, same as any ordinary day!
I had a theory that most of the small shops and stuff around me would be closed as they are run by families and perhaps some of the larger business might well be open for a short time. But as I discovered it was business as usual for just about EVERYTHING. Busses were running normally, there were plenty of taxis around to be able to catch and even the two convenience stores which bookend the top and bottom of the road where I live were open for business. It was bizzare.I met Charlie in Suwon station which by this point was crammed with people, as it would be on any other friday, and we decided to head to a restaurant called Rebis. It's a glamorous looking place on the outside and we always see tons of people eating in there, so it turned out, we actually managed to pick something cheap of the menu and avoid it being ridiculously expensive, as we first feared.
I had a traditionally Christmas spaghetti bolognaise, whilst Charlie had a chicken and rice dish which is exactly what Jesus would have wanted us to eat on his birthday....
Out of the house and with very little to go back for the pair of us hung around the AK Plaza for a little while, spending sometime to see if there was anything on at the cinema before heading into the arcade downstairs. It's a really wierd situation as obviously back home I am used to everything being closed up but here it seems as if everyone in Suwon had come out of their house and headed to the shopping mall to spend the afternoon there doing one thing or another!We headed home on the bus at about 2.30pm and Charlie decided to take a nap whilst I sat and watched TV and played on the computer for a bit (that seems to be the only thing in line with a 'western' Christmas Day) and then the three of us hug out in Charlie's room for the rest of the afternoon chatting and playing PS3 before it came time to get some dinner.
Going back to Suwon Station we decided to splash out on an expensive hamburger for dinner at Kraze Burger and even that place was unusually packed for a Friday evening. When we headed home I was actually able to get in touch with a few people from home which was nice and it made it feel a bit more like Christmas!Hans came round to see us later on and the four of us played a couple of games of 'Yut Nori' or as Charlie refers to it 'Pick 'em Up Sticks' before it got a little late and I decided to get myself to bed.
All in all it was an extremely surreal Christmas Day and whilst it wasn't the most fun I have ever had on Decemeber 25th, it wasn't as depressing as I expected it to be. It's tough to be so far away from my family of course, but I survived and I'm sure that when I come back in April I can make up for missing out on things like that by catching up with all the people who I would have liked to have spent the actual day with.
Hope you all had an excellent one and I will report back soon on more Christmas activities! Merry Christmas
Ben x
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