Our Christmas class

So every year we try to do something fun with the kids before Christmas. This year we decided to get my family involved and asked my nieces and nephews back home to send my students a video message. Just something short about themselves.

We then showed the messages to my students and allowed them to respond in whatever way they wanted. The results were so wonderful, we have some amazing videos, cards, mini presentations about Korean food and some origami.

Everyone involved had a lot of fun. My students loved seeing my family back home and were so excited when I told them that I would send all of their cards back to Ireland.

I absolutely love doing these fun activities with my kids, it allows the lower level students to express themselves in other forms and it allows my higher level students to show off their English skills.

Here is a collection of some of the cards, videos and other miscellaneous materials that we made:

6th Grades Christmas messages to my family.

Merry Christmas!

Don't cry over a turkey...

At least we have our tree decorated! (It has since collapsed, but we have managed
to keep it upright)

Being an expat definitely has it's pros and cons. Unfortunately the biggest con for me is having to spend Christmas in Asia. Christmas is the biggest holiday for my family and unfortunately this will be the 5th Christmas in a row that I won't be spending it with them.

Myself and Jason try to make the best of our Christmasses here in Korea. We usually go to Nampo-dong in Busan to see the beautiful decorated streets or watch movies, bake cookies and drink egg-nog and wine. Unfortunately we have both been so busy this year that we haven't managed to do any of those things. It has been hard, so now it's the Monday before Christmas and I have no Christmas spirit :(

Ghosts of Christmas past in Nampo-dong.

...and again.

And one more.

We did decided however that we were going to cook a turkey for Christmas dinner. Of course being in Asia makes it hard to find a turkey so we packed ourselves and Willy in to the car and went on an hour and a half journey to Costco looking for our turkey. We were both so excited to be able to buy some food for our Christmas dinner. But, as life goes, they had no turkeys. I was so upset. Yes I know, getting upset because of a turkey is ridiculous. But it felt like so much more. I'm fed up with living the expat life. I'm fed up with having to go searching for 2 hours for something that is in every shop back home. I'm also fed up with missing Christmas with my family.

I try to be positive in my blog postings but sometimes it's hard.
So I came in to work this morning feeling down about life when I noticed a Christmas card waiting for me on my desk by some of my wonderful students. It cheered me up and has given me the spur to try and find some Christmas spirit before Thursday!

The beautiful card.

Wish me luck everyone and I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas wherever you are! 

I know that this guy will always try his best to make our
Christmasses fun :)

A girlie weekend in Seoul

This photo is courtesy of Ane.

I love taking photos of the places that I go but sometimes I get scared of what the world is becoming. I look around and see people in coffee shops not communicating with each other, with their heads stuck in their phones or people spending hours trying to take the "perfect" selfie.

So this past weekend when I went to Seoul with my good friend Ane, I actually had too much fun shopping, drinking, eating and chatting to really take photos! I think everyone needs a weekend like that every once in a while. Unfortunately I only took about 5 photos and realized afterwards that I should have taken more for the blog...oh well.

So, I'm not going to lie, I love Seoul. I love how it becomes even more multicultural every time I visit and you can find anything that you want there.

We flew up from Busan on the Friday evening, it gave us plenty of time to check in to our hostel and have a nice dinner. We stayed in Itaewon. Itaewon is a huge foreigner area and you can find every type of foreign food or drink imaginable here. I love staying here when I visit Seoul because I can get so many things that just aren't available in Gimhae.

I always say that if I lived here I'd be fat and penniless. That first night we went to The Wolfhound, an Irish pub for some dinner. There is also one in Busan that I love to visit. We had some delicious fish and chips and I got some alcoholic cider so I was a happy girl. We spent the night just chatting. I love having friends that I can literally chat with for days on end and never run out of conversation! We then met Anes friend from home (South Africa) and spent so much time chatting that before we knew it it was 3am!

The next morning we decided to look for some brunch (BRUNCH!! It's impossible to find in Gimhae) First we went to a beautiful coffee shop and I ordered a coconut latte, which was absolutely to die for! Brunch was equally good, we had salmon and rucola and a chicken sausage dish.

My amazing coconut latte and Anes Mocha latte.

The beautiful Christmas decorations where we had brunch.

Then it was time to head to Myeong Dong for some shopping. Myeong-dong is a huge shopping area in Seoul and as my Christmas gift this year Jason decided to give me a shopping weekend. I've been feeling pretty bad about my weight lately and the fact that I'm a double xl (if I'm lucky) here in Korea doesn't help matters (I'm usually a size medium back home). I've also had some comments from teachers in my school about my weight which affected me quite a bit so we both thought that some shopping up in Seoul would do me well.

SHOPPING!

We had a great day shopping and 300,000w later we decided to head back to Itaewon for some Greek food for dinner. Afterwards we headed to some pubs and began chatting and once again it was after 3am when we were heading back to the hostel!

Enjoying our girlie chats.

Our final day in Seoul was spent with both of us sniffling and feeling under the weather so we had a yummy brunch of paninis and a cheese and bread set. We then headed to the train station for the trip back to Gimhae.

All of the carbs, but it was amazing!

I'm sorry that there aren't many photos, but we just too much of a good time :)

Where we stayed:

POP hostel: We booked a twin room but were given a double room which was fine with us. It is in a really nice location, right in the center of Itaewon but down some nice side streets away from the action. They are basic rooms but did the job perfectly.

Website: http://www.guesthouseseoul.net/

You can see their tripadvisor reviews here.

How to get there: We booked an Air Busan flight up as the regular KTX seats were booked out and the flight was only 10,000w more expensive than the 1st class train tickets.

We then went to Seoul station on Sunday and managed to get seats on the next available train to Gupo station (in Busan) in their movie section. Unfortunately for us the movie showing was the new Dumb and Dumber...it was shocking!

There were Christmas decorations everywhere! 

It was the perfect way to get in to the Christmas spirit.

Christmas in Korea

This is my 3rd Christmas being away from my family. All three were very different from each other but each special in their own way. As much as I enjoyed Christmas here in Korea, absolutely nothing is going to stop me from going home for Christmas next year. Christmas is my favourite holiday and I miss everything about our Curtin Christmas, even the fighting!

We usually get up in the morning and my amazing mom already has the turkey in the oven and the fire lighting, the day then consist of eating, drinking, laughing, fighting and mayhem!

Here in Korea, this Christmas probably most resembled a typical Christmas as such. There was too much food and drink, laughing, lots of mayhem and some fighting (among the dogs)

Myself and Jason decided that Christmas wouldn't be complete without a turkey and wanted to try and cook one this year (how hard could it be?!) So we picked a frozen one up in Costco. This was our first time to Costco here in Korea, For those of you at home, Costco is an American supermarket that sells things in bulk. It is THE place to go for foreign foods here in Korea!

As I said the turkey was frozen and not knowing a whole lot about turkeys I just presumed that I could take it out of the freezer on Christmas eve and let it sit overnight...how wrong I was!

After doing a google search I realised that it takes up to a week to defrost a turkey the right way, with less than 24 hours before dinner time I panicked a little. The only other option was to immerse the turkey in cold water for 7 hours, changing the water every 30 minutes. We began this process at 8:30 on the night of Christmas eve! Even though we were facing a night of no sleep we decided to make the most of it, we got a take away from our favourite Italian restaurant, lit some candles, played Christmas music, drank some wine, skyped home and played with the dogs. (we are minding our friends dog while they are home for Christmas) .

So 4am came and we decided to remove the packaging and check the turkey, we were getting pretty tired at theis stage and there was no wine left so we were both heartbroken when we discovered that the turkey was still completely frozen in the middle. A panicked phone call to Jasons dad (the one good thing about family living in different time zones) and we solved the problem.

By 7am it was all completely thawed out (finally) and it was time to cook it. Our oven only has up to one hour setting so we were able to sleep for 45 minutes at a time for the next 3 hours. By 10:30 it was finally finished and we managed to get 2 more hours of sleep!

                                                        The finished turkey (finally!!)

But it was all worth it. We had a great day with great friends. Everybody brought food and there was wayyyyy too much for us. We ate, drank and were merry...what more could you want on Christmas day. Whatever happens I think myself and Jason will always remember that first time we cooked a turkey.

                                                      Our wonderful Christmas crew!

Oh, and did I mention that it was delicious? ;)