Things have been pretty busy around Iksan and Osan lately. After the kimchi festival Stormy and I made some new friends that we have been visiting almost every weekend since that fateful weekend about two months ago. I have recently purchased a new digital camera that is the greatest digital camera known to man. SO I've been inspired to take more and more pictures than ever.
All the traveling makes me feel like I live on the KTX...here I am "driving" it :)
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. I love that it's kind of like Christmas without all the financial stress. This year I was going to have to make due with what I could create from the Korean supermarkets, but luckily my military friends in Osan came through for me and I was able to enjoy turkey, cranberry sauce, dressing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole and ham. I would have had pumpkin pie, but on his train ride here Chris thought it was important to teach his newly found Korean friend about the joys of Thanksgiving and its true meaning by sharing my pie! I would have been a little more disappointed if it had not been for my Thanksgiving dinner with foreigners here in Iksan. We all gathered bring both traditional and nontraditional food items to the YMCA for a lovely feast. We were blessed that Costco had apple pie and pumpkin pie in stock for the season. God bless you Costco :)
What I found to be the highlight of my Thanksgiving this year was that I was able to go to work, come home and call my family using Skype. I saw everyone and heard all the chaos of the background while I ate my Thanksgiving dinner that Chris brought for me and chatted it up with all my family members. It wasn't the ideal situation, but it was as close to home as I could have felt in Korea!
Thanksgiving lessons were really fun for me also. I took my computer to school and showed my students videos of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and a short informational video about the history and traditions of Thanksgiving. My students were really interested in the differences between American Thanksgiving and Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving).
For my kids classes, I taught the older kids the meaning of Thanksgiving while they wrote a couple of things they are thankful for all while watching a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. And my little kids made turkey's out of their hand prints. It was super cute and such a fun day for me :)
My turkey was a little punk rock--- My kids learn so quickly :)
Ye-Jin and me with our turkeys
My boys working hard to figure out how to make turkey making more fun for them
They found a way-- Make the middle finger extra long...go figure.
Turkey making!!!
Young-Bin and Paul watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Young-Bin happens to be my favorite student. He is so funny. He is always taking whatever I teach him and twisting it to make it funny. Like I taught them superlatives (good, better, the best) and he said Erica is the best crazy! Erica is the worst! :) I freaking love him. He has also picked up my meowing habit that I use when my students start speaking to me in Korean. I meow back at them to show them that I have no idea what they're talking about...Youngie, as I call him (he calls me Eri), and I have conversations in cat sometimes haha!
The weather it is a changing. It seems like fall was only one day long and then we were catapulted into winter! The weekend before Thanksgiving I was in Osan having dinner with my friends when we realized that it was snowing outside! Literally, it felt like we had one day of that lovely in-between weather that I love about fall. I have invested in mittens, a stocking cap and a dense supply of Korean boy sweaters to get me through the winter on my bike :)
The boy sweaters here are super cute and fit snugly on me. They're also really cheap ($15) per sweater. I think it's a deal!
Along with the cold weather comes the fog. I have never seen fog like this ever. I expect a little in the morning from time to time, but the fog here lingers all day long. There are more foggy days than clear recently.
This is what my walk to work usually looks like
This is the walk with the fog!
Fog sweet fog
I was obsessed with photographing the fog...Here's a video
I have been spending a little more time with my Korean friends lately. Last week I was having a bit of a bummer week when I ran into one of my former students/ good friends on the street and he invited me out for dinner. When I met him he had ran into some other friends and invited them along. I had also invited my friend Dayla along. We ended up having an awesome night of party crashing, fire chicken (the most spicy fried chicken EVER) and all around good times.
This guy felt the need to feed me a piece of fire chicken...
Here is the party we crashed! Good times had by all!
We didn't have enough of each other on this night so we met up again on Friday for round two and it was another great time!
This is Jin-Oh. I love his glasses, but the boy is seriously blind!
Ryan likes Jin-Oh's glasses too!
This is my friend KJ -- He is much fun! We pretend that he is Korean-American and that he doesn't speak Korean. It's a lot of fun to fake out our Korean friends :)
Now we're in December and I'm gearing up to go home next week! I can't believe I haven't been home in nine months. It feels like all that time has passed in a blink! Stormy's mom sent us some gingerbread cookies to get us in the Christmas spirit! They were so cute and even more delicious!
Notice the surprise face in the picture above? Stormy and I decided it was a good idea to get our eyebrows waxed and when I came out I found that I now look permanently surprised :) haha! Oh the adventures!
Here is a picture of our waxed results
Since I've had a bad hair cut in Korea, I know that the best solution to any follicle issues is simply to cover up the mistake with a disguise. To my delight, when we went out in Osan Saturday night I was greeted by an ajuma (little old lady) peddling glasses that would solve my problems for the night...I think it was a success!
Have a very Merry Christmas!!! I'll be blogging about my adventures home next month! :)
