Christmas was a wonderful success in Dongtan! Christmas Eve we got done with work around 8:30 and went to our favorite Korean BBQ restaurant and got some great food as always. On the way home we picked up our Christmas cake bear and some booze for our night of Christmas movies.
We watched Christmas Vacation to start the night, classic Grizwalds! We then watched Vegas Vacation, I know not a Christmas movie, but Chels had not seen it before. At midnight we each opened one gift. I got Chels some dishes she had been asking for and she got me some really great sweaters from Suwon station.
The next day we got up and Chels made a great breakfast. We opened the rest of our presents. Chels got some Russian Caviar face lotion, sounds weird I know, from Skin Food which she really liked. And then Chels threw out a big surprise and out of no where pulled out some Christmas stockings filled with all kinds of goodies.
We then went out for some light shopping, and stopped by Holly’s Coffee and made some calls to our family and friends and wished them all a Merry Christmas! It was great to hear all their voices.
Chels ended up getting a new coat which was really cheap but good quality and then we picked up some Christmas presents for our security guard and our co-worker Isaac. I had made friends with the security guard the other week while taking some recycling down to the basement and he helped me sort through it all and we talked about his son and my job and other random things. Really great guy.
Here’s where we were surprised, we stopped by our security guard’s office to drop off his present, these delicious walnut pastries from a tiny shop up the street, and he had something for us in return! It was a drawing he had been working on as he was bored with working on Christmas day. We were completely surprised and very grateful. We now have it hanging over our stove.
Around 3:30 our co-worker Isaac showed up to drive us to the Suwon Catholic church for Christmas mass. We gave him some of the walnut pastries as well and we were on our way. On the way Isaac showed us where the Dongtan Catholic church was, their mass was early that morning though.
The mass was nice, I understood as much as I usually do at church, and usually they aren’t in Korean…Wish we had taken some pictures of the cathedral, it was quite nice. After church we flagged down a taxi and headed back to Dongtan. Our cab driver however didn’t know his way around Dongtan and we ended up getting dropped off at Central Park was a good six blocks from where we wanted to be, at the Ramada.
Along the way though we did happen by the nicely pictured blue Christmas tree in Central Park, which was nice and eventually we made it to the Ramada no worse for wear…except for Chelsea’s feet which were killing her as she was wearing heels…oops…
Once at the Ramada we went to the Italian restaurant located on the second floor. By no means was it authentic cuisine, but it was good. The strangest part was that we were served warm water, we eventually got them to bring us cold water, but it was very strange and something we had not come across yet.
The meal was excellent and topped off with a small cake slice. We then trekked the last three blocks home and called it a night after some more Christmas cake. For our first Christmas as a married couple in a foreign land thousands of miles away from our family and friends…I think we did pretty good!
Now were looking forward to next weekend which believe it or not is a three day weekend! We plan on heading up to Seoul with our friends Bryan and Selina and meeting up with Selina’s brother and tearing the town apart. Should be a lot of fun, only four work days this week to get through.
Almost forgot, on Monday after work our school is having a Christmas party for all the teachers. From what we hear it should be a lot of fun. I’m really excited as this will really be the first time we are out with a big group of our teachers to have some fun. We’ll be sure to try to get lots of photos.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Everyone!
