Awkward Toast

Christmas Day

Christmas in Korea Family Adventures Pt. 3.14 (?)

On Christmas morning I woke up at the Banana Back Packers and was relived to see that most of the other girls had left already. Having probably stolen somebody’s bed, I was a little worried about a potential morning confrontation.

In the kitchen, I made some awkward toast, trying to stand my ground and stay out of the way. At the kitchen table, a nice Christmassy conversation about Chinese-Australian political relations was way over my head and the seats were all taken. I brought my (white) toast and tea to the common room, where some back packers were just finishing up and moving out. A another guy was sitting there as well and instead of talking to him I decided to read. Eventually, the cool I’m-a-beatuful-friendly-world-traveller-girl started talking to him. I decided to check my email at the awkward computers with free Internet. Then I went to meet my family.

We spent Christmas morning at Starbucks (interesting side note: the Starbucks on Insadong-gil is the only or at least the first Starbucks in the world to have a sign that is not in English. Starbucks is written in Korean script, phonetically translated, but still in Korean. Apparently there was some controversy over Starbucks opening a location in such a historic place. Anyway, this is were we had our coffee every morning.).

After Starbucks, we went to the National Museum of Korea. It was a huge building full of different exhibitions and many paintings and things. I am not a huge fan of museums unless they are interactive or the Mennonite Heritage Village Museum. The building and the grounds were by far the most interesting part. The museum is pretty new, I think it has only opened in the past year or two, everything is brand new and it is kind of an open space concept. The entrance is a huge open room; I have not seen many spaces that rival that space in size. It was incredible. Also, the lay out was perfect for someone who would like to see every single thing. I appreciate that kind of planning. The grounds will be a definitely must see come spring and summer. There were all kinds of trees and ponds. It looked amazing even now in winter. I assume that in summer it will be breathtaking. I’ll go there with Bryan; it’s free!

We had lunch at the restaurant beside the reflecting pond, which caused me to reflect on the meaning of reflect. Reflect as in to see a mirror image or reflect as in ponder. I concluded that is play on words and most likely means both. It was a deep reflective thought. Walking into the restaurant, we though it might be a little too posh for our kind. But after reflecting on the menu for a moment, the prices were in fact reasonable (a word I had to explain recently [a another word that I often fail at trying to explain]). And we had one server who never let our water classes empty and I reflected on how he was really cute in a shy super geeky way. I kept trying to make him uncomfortable by shooting smiling glances in his direction.

After lunch we meet Sally at City Hall with the notion of going skating on the rink in front of City Hall. However, we failed to take into account that it was Christmas, one of the only days off and that anybody gets and that we were in Seoul, the second biggest city in the world. There was no fucking way that on the coldest day I’ve experienced in Korea we were getting into a line which literally stretched around the entire rink, no fucking way. We decided to go for coffee, but all the coffee shops around City Hall were full, like packed full. We went back to Insadong to try our luck there. The coffee shops, and we tired a number of them, were also totally completely, standing room only full. We walked around for so long trying to find a place to go for coffee before supper that it was finally supper time.

One of the (many) good things about Korean dinning is that the restaurants are designed to accommodate big groups and most people don’t go on dates for Korean food; they want exotic things like spaghetti or pizza. We had no trouble finding a restaurant. We had previously decided on mandu for our Christmas Dinner and quickly found a restaurant serving some. One of the servers came to our table to tell us that it would take a long time to make enough mandu for the whole group. We said that we didn’t mind waiting, which pleased her (I make some of the conversations sound like they were happen naturally when in fact the server spoke no English and it took a lot of gesturing to finally figure out her meaning). A long wait for food by Korean standards is like normal in North America, at restaurant we expect to wait at least 10 minuets for food and that would be pretty fast. Here, almost all the food comes out immediately. Some foods, like BBQ, takes a long time to cook at your table, but it comes immediately and side dishes are sometimes brought to your table before you even order. So our long wait for the mandu was like 15 minutes. We went through a lot of Kimchi in that time (I think that kimchi might actually be spelled gimchi, but I have gone with kimchi up to now and will continue to do so, it’s already been added to my dictionary).

After supper, the family wanted to rest. Everybody went back to the hotel to nap or whatever (sex) while Sally and I grabbed a hot chocolate at Starbucks. It was less busy than before and it is also much easier to find a table for two than for eight. We fell into a very long conversation and totally lost track of time and were actually late getting back to the hotel for the gift portion of the evening. The gift portion mostly involved me giving my family a gift of things I found in my cupboard the day before, like teas I don't drink and instant coffee. Jamie gave me beautiful hand died flannel Tony Chestnut scarf and mom gave Sally a book, some tea, and some banana bread. I gave Sally some coffee and Jae Hoon Calendar. We hung out for while, Sally left shortly after the gifts. I made people hang out with me until the it was worth staying in the hostel or another night. Eventually, I ended their suffering and left. Back at the hostel, I tried to update my blog, but was way to hopped on chocolate to concentrate and I felt awkward being so exposed on the public computers that eventually I gave up. I sent a few Christmas emails and then just lay in my bed, not sleeping for a long time. I had left my backpack on my bed, hoping to firmly stake my claim. It seemed to work, but I still felt anxious. I relfected on the day, easily the strangest Christmas ever.