Christmas in Korea

Christmas...I waited a few days before doing a post about this. How does one describe spending a holiday (your favorite) away from all things familiar? I spent Christmas in a country that does little to celebrate the holiday. In fact Christmas Eve is a couple's day where little pairs of lovers stroll the streets holding hands leaning in close to whisper and to smile. Barf...

My Dad acts like a kid the day after Thanksgiving, which is when Christmas season officially starts. We load up in his truck and head to Lowe's and buy an outdoor Christmas decoration. My Dad doesn't need a reason to go to Lowe's. It's his happy place, but this day there is a special child like glean in his eye. What should we get, a reindeer? Carolers? Snoopy sleeping in his Christmasy decorated doghouse? All have been purchased in the past.

There is a sense of happiness in the house that is only accompanied by Christmas. My parents are on vacation which means they aren't stressed and can sleep late, cook breakfast, drink coffee sitting down, etc. Calendars are full of church activities, Christmas parties, shopping, gift wrapping, and grocery shopping. But we're a bit happier with this sort of busyness because it's Christmas. We only do this once a year.

Christmas morning is marked by my sister and I getting up early to open presents from "Santa", breathe in the heavenly sent of breakfast casserole and coffee, try to sneak sausage balls from the Christmas tin that they are hidden in, only to be caught by my Mother who throws things at us. When other families gather for Christmas I'm not sure what they do, but mine...for my family Christmas we make wrapping paper torpedoes and other weapons of mass destruction to launch at one another after the gifts have been opened. Adults leave the room and my 35 yr. old brother starts the battle. Cousins dive behind one another to take cover from the rain of wrapping paper bullets. We truly are a loving and selfish family. Our stomachs groan at us and we wonder how much more we can eat, saying, "no, I shouldn't", all the while grabbing another slice of red velvet cake. We put on all of our new Christmas clothing, watch whatever DVD we received from Santa, and all promptly fall asleep on the couch. Wrapping paper wars are tiresome after all.

So this year was different. You know, not much different. I met a friend for coffee on Christmas Eve. Her bus ran late and I sat in the coffee shop for an hour and a half. Alone. With couples everywhere. Staring at me. "Poor foreign girl. All alone on Christmas Eve." I willed them to stay and wait so that when my friend did arrive they would see that no, I wasn't a sad pathetic creature. I did have friends. But alas, when she arrived, few were left.

We had coffee, went shopping at the equivalent of the Korean Wal-Mart (what were we thinking!?), ate Burger King, headed to a Christmas party where about 20 foreigners gathered together and tried to push the thoughts of how they could be spending Christmas with families and friends that weren't virtual strangers. We smiled and laughed, had food that was strange to us, we even had a white elephant gift exchange (I received a can of beer and a bottle of wine). But in the back of everyone's mind we all wanted to slink off to a corner and have a wee cry. But we didn't. We chose this life. 

So yes, this year I might have slept on the floor, wrapped up in a sheet on Christmas Eve and woken up to fresh snow covering everything. I might have missed my family and wished that I could have opened presents with them and thrown my sister into the path of an oncoming wrapping paper torpedo, but I did get to spend Christmas with other people who felt the exact same way I did. I got to laugh with new friends, eat good food, play in the snow, and watch the Griswold's Christmas Vacation. If anything, I got to play in the snow. Never have I done that on Christmas. 

Christmas morning snow

Merry Christmas

Sometimes I miss college

My sister is stressed. Really stressed. It's her last semester of undergrad and it's finals time. We talked about it today on Skype (God bless the maker of Skype!). As she was talking, I got to thinking about my undergraduate experience and how I strangely missed it. So be forewarned, this post has nothing to do with Korea. Nothing. Go to the sidebar now and choose another blogger to hear more about Korea. No really. Ok, I told you so...

When my sister was bemoaning the fact that she had to sit in the middle of a row of books today because all the desks were taken in the library, I started remembering those days when I had my favorite nook among those stacks of books, all warm and safe, smells of books and paper wrapped around me like a scarf. The seventh floor of Jackson, where I could look out over the fountain, that I had once jumped in and made a fool of myself, and just get a glimpse of downtown Greensboro. If I happened upon someone in my seat, I would get angry. "How dare you sit there! That is mine! Have you even been inside the library before? I've never seen you. If I see you here again, in my seat, I will cut you." Good spots in the library are hard to find ok? We all go a little crazy during finals, which was the only time the library was the place to be and someone would be in my seat. I would trudge to the basement, the place that others hadn't quite discovered, and study, memorizing lines and lines of Modern British and European poetry, translating Middle English to Modern. One professor had the splendid idea that on his final he would include two line excerpts from five poems in which we had to name the poem, the author, and one fact about the author of each excerpt. We had anywhere between 30-45 poems to choose from. By the end of the night the librarian would find a huddled mass swaying back and forth on the floor, surrounded by Coke cans and Peanut Butter M&M packages, muttering lines from poems, mixing Eliot with Langston. Oh the horror of such a mistake.

My college experience can be summarized with 2am walks around campus with friends, meeting up at the tennis courts to chat and laugh, escaping to Tate St. Coffee, a coffee shop close to campus, to start writing (my new found love), bundling up and sledding in the snow with trays from the caf, long hours in McIver and the Hoorah( HHRH) buildings, friends made and lost, hearts hurt and equally mended, whispers of the life that we could lead once we graduated.

I wish I could back to that desk in the library sit down with younger Jennifer and say, "don't try to figure it out now. The only way you're going to really figure it out is by going out there and living. Trust me it will make life easier to not worry. Forget that guy's name, in four years you won't remember him anyway. For the love of all that is good and holy don't cut your hair like that again, no matter what your friends say. You know they are only being nice. By the way, you know how you've been wanting to go and live in Ireland or Seattle or somewhere? Yeah, you're not. You're going to live in Korea"

It's as if I lived as a different person, planning a different life, because where I am now is not at all where I expected to be. I mean not even close. So far off, I would that perhaps I am a different person, or maybe I was just working to become that person I am now.

In recent visits with friends to my alma mater, when we step onto college avenue we are five years younger. Hair isn't thinning or receding or graying (God, how do you stop the graying!?). Thoughts of bills, debt, kids, futures undecided and uncertain, all disappear. We grab sidewalk chalk and a beat up volleyball and play four-square (because we're cool and old school like that), and ignore the fact that there are a hundred other places we could have gone, but decided only college ave. had the square space and therefore we had to come to campus. There really was no other choice. Then when we're tired and it's close to 1am and the "I can't believe I stayed out this late"'s are said we step off campus and become adults again; each going to whatever house or apartment we pay the mortgage/ rent for. Kids entering the grown-up world. We adjust, we move with the shifts of change, and we always know that to look back every once and a while is ok.



But no really, how do you stop the graying hair? Anyone? Anyone...?