…was absolutely wonderful!!!
I really was not looking forward to the holiday season being away from home…I thought I’d be sad…all of us teachers thought the same. But it turned out to be one of the best days in Korea so far. We were lucky and had the day off from work. We were actually supposed to work…a lot of teachers at other schools had to work, but we whined, begged, kicking and screaming NOT to work…and got the day off!!!
So the five of us, Stephanie, Leanne, Daniel, David and myself spent the day sightseeing around Seoul. We started off at a wonderful ‘tofu’ restaurant and then made our way over to Gyeongbokgung Palace.
We got there just in time to watch the changing of the guards…and Leanne realized that all of the guards were tall and all the same height…David mentioned that it is the same at the Arlington Cemetary. I thought that was an interesting bit of information.
As Stephanie always says…”GOD!!! Korean kids are so cute!!! I want to eat them all!!!”Then Carol says…”Yeah…and then they grow up and look like me! EWWW!!!! HA!”
Inside the walls of the Palace.
“La Mujares” Photo by David Alvarado.
So…David is the only one in the bunch that is not a teacher…he is a photographer for the US Army…and a fucking amazingly, brilliant, awesome photographer!!! Thanks to him…he got us all into the US Army base here in Seoul…and we had a fucking amazingly, brilliant, awesome American style Christmas dinner that night!!! All you can eat buffet!!! You have no idea how happy us teachers were to eat good ole American food!!!
I had ham, turkey, roast beef, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, beef casserole, cheese casserole, potato salad, cucumber salad, stuffing, veggies…THEN for dessert I had apple pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie, carrot cake and coffee mousse cake. Personally…I thought the carrot cake was the best!!! OH!!! I can’t believe I almost forgot!!! I also had kimchee too!!! HA! I wanted to eat more…but I had already unbuttoned the top button…the middle button…and aside from taking off my pants to make more room…I just couldn’t take another bite…then the guilt set in…GOD! I shouldn’t have had that last piece of cake!!! ; )
We all spent the subway ride home telling each other our new diets for the new year…Stephanie is giving up all sugars from her diet…Leanne and Daniel are going to the gym…and I am going to…hmm…never eat that much again!!!
Anyway…moving on in our day….
Notice the holes in the rice paper door? Back in the day…people would poke holes to get a peek of the newly weds…on their wedding night!!! Some of the doors had A LOT of holes!!! HA! : ) Guess…the more holes you had on your door…the better?
This little girl was absolutely adorable…she was hopping around like a bunny!!! Again…Stephanie, “Get in my belly!” 
So…Steph, David and I all took the same picture!!! David on his Nikon D200, Steph on her old, weird ass looking Canon, and me on my point and shoot. Stephanie is now yelling, “This is MY shot people!!!!” (It’s really hard to hang out with photographers sometimes…)
The palace feels like a never-ending maze…around each turn another beautiful building, wall or door. 
I wanted to take more pictures…but I had no more memory on my card…and was editing and deleting photos at this point to make room for more!!! I got to the point where I couldn’t part with anymore photos…so my visual diary ends here…
After the palace we walked over to the “Blue House” which is where the president resides…yes…I know…funny…
Then made our way over to the Army base for dinner…stuffed ourselves silly, went home…that was our day…
1 comment:
since no one came to our house for christmas, this year it was just gina, julia, mom, dad, & me/myself. (i minored in english and i still dont know this shit!! me so much sucks! haha!)
anyway, after i read the extensive list of foods you devoured this christmas, i thought i would tell you what we had back in jersey...
chap chae. (i sound dissatisfied but really it was great.) i love chap chae, it has a little of everything...and mom puts a massive amount of onions which is always good. when i cook stirfry at home, i always triple the amount of onions a recipe calls for. doubling it is NOT ENOUGH. people dont understand how important onions are. people also dont understand how much onions shrink when you cook them. they shrink ALOT and it also seems that much of them just disappear altogether. you could be stirrin' & fryin' this huge pan, with onions toppling over the sides, but wait a short while and you will look sadly down at your pan which seems to have only a few slices of onions left. where did all the onions go?! what the fuck?! its nature's cruel sick joke. its not fair. its just not fair, carol.
(i feel the same way about mushrooms, carol.)
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