Luda-LudaChristmas

This past week at work has been exceptionally draining. We are on a long stretch since our last holiday day off (first week of October) and does it ever do a number on you! While I do enjoy that several holidays in Korea are a few days long, I do miss having a holiday practically once a month back home. I have seven more teaching days and nine more full days before my vacation begins and I know it's going to be rough! This past week we had a lot of work to get done as well, and by the end of the week, most of us teachers could feel it all taking a toll on us emotionally. Not only do we create monthly tests which were due this past Friday, our school puts on a huge end of year festival in February. All of the sever year old classes will be graduating and the school is in the process of compiling their graduation books. This meant that all of us who have seven year old classes had to do grad write ups for each of our students, due this past Friday as well. It was a pain and there was some miscommunication and ridiculous expectations that caused more stress and frustration than what was needed. In the end we negotiated with our supervisors (the day before they were due) and it ended up being less of a pain than to begin with but still rough. It did get me thinking more about March when the new school year starts though. I am going to miss my current students so much!! To top it off as well, I am still trying to get over a cold so most of my nights this week were spent in my bed resting or sleeping. I'm feeling better, but still have a terrible cough.

This past week Sally had her birthday party. She's cute. Here is a picture of the two of us. It was funny but awful because the day before her party she was telling the other students that she was going to bring special presents and chocolates for everyone as goodie bags and kept telling them to make sure they brought her a gift. Kids.  

We got a new teacher at work, Laura Teacher who came from Chicago. She's a great girl and I have spent some time this past week showing her around. It's strange being on the other side even though I remember being in her shoes only 5 months ago. Friday night we decided to take her out in Suji which ended up being quite a late but fun night, we headed home around 5am. Her apartment is two buildings down from mine so we walked home together. Chuck's building is between ours, the three of us even walked to school together last week! We are such a happy family on our block! 

Saturday Sarah and I decided to go see the Hobbit (which was excellent and you should go see it), so during the day Laura and I walked to Shinsegae (the big department store building that have the movie theatre on the 8th floor). Laura decided to join us for the movie, so we grabbed tickets early on in the day (which is necessary otherwise movies sell out). I then showed her that "mall" and Emart. I grabbed Starbucks (the amount of coffee I drink here compared to at home is insane) and ran into one of my student's moms who bought my two Starbucks cakes. It was super sweet of her and so unnecessary but that is the culture here. I feel way too spoiled as a teacher. We then grabbed lunch at a porridge place that Chris showed me a few weeks back. It's sooo good! And really more like thick wild rice soup. So good. 

The weather has been so crazy compared to Vancouver. I'm experiencing -10 and it snowed all Friday night and into late Saturday afternoon. While I don't like the snow, I will admit that it is pretty when it's falling down. But I still can't wait to get out of here and get to the 30 degree weather in the Philippines! 

Tonight, Sunday, I decided to have some friends over for some Christmas festivities. Yvonne sent me a link a few weeks ago describing how to survive a long distance Christmas and one of the things it said to do was invite your orphan friends over and be along together. So that is in fact what I did. Ben coined it LudaChristmas. I frantically cleaned my apartment (after playing guitar over Skype with my Dad - which was awesome. I regret not learning more about playing the guitar from him) and then relaxed before people started to head over. I had eight people in my small apartment but it was wonderful. Everyone brought over snacks and we ordered pizza. Ben made Gluhwein (a German drink) which we later referred to as hognog as Sarah told us a story about hognog, only to realize that it's actually called eggnog. She is from Africa. We forgive her ;) But the Gluhwein was so good! You boil water and suger, then add in cinnamon, then orange peels with cloves. This is all boiling and simmering etc. Then you add in a bottle of red wine. He made one batch and more was quickly made. We went through five bottles of red wine. So yummy and my apartment smelt so good and Christmasy. We also did a white elephant gift exchange - you had to bring something wrapped from your apartment that you no longer wanted. That was super fun to do. The gifts ranged from tupperware, a life jacket, a hello kitty stuffed animal, make up samples, 2 different books, a toy robot, a rice hat and uno cards. It's quite funny what you accumulate over here from different people. I started out with the Hello Kitty stuffy but it got stolen from me and I ended up with a book called "Why Men Love Bitches". Afterwards we played Risk. I absolutely enjoyed playing a board game! I miss playing board games so much! It was a wonderful night. While a group shot was not taken, Ben, Chris, Kyle, Chuck, Nate, Sarah and Laura all came over. Here are the few pictures that were snapped.

Some of the white elephant gifts under the tree.

Nate in his rice hat - though he later traded for the life jacket. 

Sarah and I 

Ben, Kyle, Laura, Sarah and Chris while we started our game of Risk. 

I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but I am teaching my class "Nothing for Christmas" for our Christmas song contest. So I will be hammering that out this week with them. 10 days until Christmas!! 

Miss and love you all <3