Korean Life January

So since Christmas life has been normal. Work work work and fun fun fun! So here I am with my friend Jaemin (we met at Club Italia) and we are wearing little aprons to cover our clothes while we ate DakGalbi! It is a chicken stir fry with cabbage, sweet potatoes, spicy sauce, and cheese. It is amazingly delicious, but a big mess. We put all of our coats and purses in giant plastic bags to protect them from the smell and the dirt on the ground.

Here is Laura (as always) and Jon!
Here is Stefano (Italian guy) and I making silly faces!
So, today is January 20th and for not particular reason one of my Kindergarten mom's gave me a gift. Sally is one of my favorite girls and her little brother (the cutest little boy ever) is starting the baby kindergarten in March. To prep the little kids they are coming to Kids Club in the afternoon for 80 minutes once a week. So, on Thursdays Kindergarten ends at 2:30 and Sally plays in the playroom until 4 when her Mother comes with her little brother for his class. Their mother waits in a room for a while and Sally does her homework and colors. So anyways, their Mother came and she brought these mysterious boxes for me and my co-teacher.
I opened it up and wow! Handmade all natural sugar facewash, lavender hand soaps (one shaped like flowers and the other hello kitty) and a wonderful all natural lip balm! The moms are too nice here and give gifts for no reason (especially big in this case).
It is 11:15 pm and I reallllllly need to shower before work tomorrow so I hope this blogging is enough.

MOM, sorry I am such a bad blogger, please forgive me! Enjoy my blog!

Love, Kelly

Italian Club Christmas!

So although I spent Christmas in the States (well 9pm on the 25th-new years) I was missing all of the Christmas cheer beforehand. Luckily, I go to Italian club every sunday in the bottom of a Christian school (it is a lot cooler than that sounds). I go every sunday to meet with Italian people, Koreans who speak Italians, and people who just like Italian food. We eat delicious food and talk and sometimes afterward we even go for drinks and dinner (much later haha). Well, anyways early in December I came to the club and found a blank Christmas tree and boxes of decorations and I got to decorate a tree!

Here is a picture of the Priest who is in charge of Club Italia! He was putting the decorated tree on a table to be more visible.

Here is me with my Aperitivo (pre dinner drink) in front of the beautiful tree and blow up Santa!
This is a picture of Stella (my Korean friend who speaks Italian) and Jacky (My German friend who speaks Italian)

I got a little frisky with the blow up Santa.
2 weeks later was Christmas dinner at Club Italia. It was an elaborate meal with too much food and too many people! This was my table. Most of them are Italian and we had a wonderful meal chattering and stuffing ourselves.
This was the room. Usually there are around 30 people on an average sunday for lunch, but Christmas dinner was on a Saturday evening and it was PACKED.
This is Vincenzo! The priest is in charge of the club, but Vincenzo is in charge of all of the food! Here he is at the bar! He has lived in Korea for 40 years teaching Italian at a University.
The Italian Embassy provided gifts for all of the Italian kids that RSVPed to come. They got awesome toys and 2 teenage girls got gift bags packed with The Faceshop merchandise! I wanted Santa to bring me something! : (
This was my Korea Christmas! Fun fact: Christmas is a couples holiday in Korea. Boys hate Christmas if they don't have girl friends. Christmas dates are like Valentine's day dates! I thought that was really funny, but I guess it just doesn't hold the same significance as their traditional holidays. Almost all Koreans are Christians (SO many Megachurchs!)

Well Christmas at home was fantastic! and I am back in Korea and life is good!

Peppero Day

Hello again! Yes it has been about 2.5 months….pretty bad blogging….and since I haven’t been blogging I haven’t really taken that many pictures. I am a bad bad bad blogger. So here is a wonderful picture of Laura (my coworker who lives below me) and I letting out some steam with some lovely facemasks. Kids often give gifts to the teachers and of course beauty supplies are high on the list.

So I am going to rewind back to November 11^th 2010! 11/11 is a very special day in Korea when the whole country celebrates the wonderous creation of Peppero. Peppero (Japanese people have Pocky). This is a wonderful mini sweet breadstick dipped in chocolate and packaged to eat!

So this day is celebrated mainly by couples (they get each other elaborate baskets and giant peppero) and by school children! I receive a tooooon of peppero!!! Here is a picture of my pepperro haul.

I actually got a lot more than is pictured but I gave it away during the day. My biggest peppero gift was from Daniel in my Kindergarten. I was incredibly surprised because he doesn’t usually bring me small gifts and his mother (although incredibly nice) doesn’t seem like the type to spend 20 dollars on a peppero gift basket! It was a wonderful surprise.

So that’s it for Peppero day!

Goodbye for the moment!