Christmas in Korea

I really enjoyed receiving Christmas cards more than ever this year, thank you again to all who sent one to me way over here in Korea! I love how many of you noted that Christmas would be different this year and of course it was. I do feel lucky that I was able to scoop up a bunch of free Christmas decorations and a Christmas tree back in September to make things a bit more festive.

Although we had a Christmas festival at school for our kindergarten students, it was no where near the scale our Halloween festival was, but still nice.  On Christmas Eve, we did a bunch of Christmas colouring, and "Santa" (the gym teacher's friend) came to LCI. Throughout the month each parent dropped off a wrapped gift from "Santa", so on Christmas eve, the students received that gift. 

And here is a clip of a few of the classes singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town in Korean:

In the afternoon, we had our Christmas song contest. I taught my students "Nothing for Christmas" and my class tied for second place! (Although I still feel they did a much better job in the Halloween song contest!) Check out Facebook for the video as it's too big to upload on here!

We also did special Christmas activities in my afternoon kindergarten class. Chuck dressed up as Santa for them and gave out gifts which they were very excited about! Here are some funny shots:

Chan - one of the cutest little boys

Jayden - Not sure if this is legit or just bad photo timing but hilarious

Peter - being his unique self (he likes to call himself Peter Parker and today he told me that he's Optimus Prime). He's incredibly smart. 

We also had our staff Christmas party the Friday before Christmas. We went to a new nearby Chinese food place (which was mediocre, even the owner of our school, while eating, said "This isn't very good" in Korean). We were also supposed to have a private room, but it ended up being the back tables in the restaurant. Either way we enjoyed ourselves. We did a secret santa as well and that was the night we exchanged gifts. You were given 1-3 guesses to pick who your secret santa was (depending on how many people had already opened their gifts) and if you got it wrong you had to sing a song. Let's just say that most of us had to sing, myself included. I sang, which a lot of animation, "Part of Your World" from the Little Mermaid (typical) and while we left the restaurant my boss came up to me saying "Wow you are like an actress!" and my supervisor compared me to Cosette (for those who know of Les Miserables). The Korean and foreign staff parted ways after dinner, we all went out for drinks and danced the night away. 

Of course, after work on Christmas Eve, Chuck, Nate, Sarah, Chris and I all left straight for the airport to catch our flight to the Philippines. Stay tuned for posts about our trip!