Christmas Day in Seoul

Christmas, historically, hasn't been any kind of big holiday here until just in the last half-century, with the rise of capitalism and christianity. Among the church-going population it is a family holiday, but among the secular it has yet to take on a family-oriented form. Instead, it is considered a romantic or fun day to spend with friends and/or significant others. There are still presents, but there is no established food tradition to be found. I spend the afternoon at a large palace downtown with my girlfriend, and had a fun dinner with the usual suspects later on. For more detailed photos of the palace, you can look at Jordan's site (http://destinationseoulkorea.blogspot.com/), as he posted a lot more pictures from a trip last week and I don't want to be redundant about it.

I was told that my '85 birthday signified me for the year of the ox. I went to wikipedia today to find out what that's supposed to mean, and stumbled across some additional information: Since my birthday is in early january, before the Chinese new year, my animal is from the year previous by western terms. I'm actually from the year of the rat, which, if you care google it, is a considerably less flattering animal than the ox when it comes to personality traits. Here is me next to the ox. Oh well.

And it's interesting, as I was reading the ox description, I really thought it sounded like me, and it sounds much like what my close friends and family say in their more complimentary moods. And the rat description (on wikipedia) sounded a whole lot like what people who don't like me say about me.

Most horoscopes of all kinds, if well-written, will give you the impression that you're what the heavens had in mind when they organized the stars and planets billions of years ago.



Christmas dinner, Korean style. These are the fixings: lettuce, black bean paste, raw garlic, raw green hot pepper, sliced potato, salted dried seaweed, and kimchi.

And the main course, some duck and sweet potato cooked at the table. This is common in Korea. Most restaurants in fact have barbecues built into the tables. This restaurant does too, but duck is too fatty for the bbq and it is instead cooked on cast iron with a drip tray. Delicious.

Jordan and I, and the girlfriends, and Ty. Jordan's girlfriend is a nursing student, and a very sweet girl.
Below you can see Sean, his girlfriend Cia, and Ty's friend Julie. Julie is visiting from LA just to get a glimpse of Seoul and hang out with TY. They're old friends. It was a great day and a great dinner all in all. I miss my family and friends back home, but this as fun a time as I could hoped to have on Christmas without them. One person, arguably, did drink a little too much though, for a school night anyway...


I won't say who.

Comments

Anonymous said…
That's one strange looking cake.
12:00 AM
Max said…
The cake is just the small red part, sitting on the big styrofoam box. It's a pretty normal ice cream cake with icing ribbons and cherry glaze. It's supposed to look like a present box.
6:52 AM
Anonymous said…
You remind me so much of your Grandfather in some of these pictures.
10:24 AM
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