Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hello Friends across the Globe!

Sorry for the lack of updating, but as winter has started to approach our gallivanting around the city has petered out a bit so the update would mostly consist of what we ate for dinner. So, seeing as it's been awhile, I've prepared our menu from the past week for you all to read. (kidding!)

Well in our domestic life we've bought a sofa and chairs from the local thrift shop. (Of course it's my new favorite place to shop-for those of you that might not know I LOVE thrift stores and cheap things. Cheap in monetary value not necessarily in quality or appearance). It's nice to have furniture in our little living room. It makes it real cozy. We were very proud of ourselves for buying the sofa because we had to communicate "delivery" to the cashier. We were a little skeptical we had done it right until the delivery men knocked on our door. And, because it's rude to wear shoes in the house in Korea even your furniture delivery men will take their shoes off before coming it. They kick them off WHILE carrying your things. This is the second time I'd seen that. First time was the fridge and then with the furniture. I was very impressed with the skills and had a little chuckle thinking about American Delivery men taking off their shoes before coming in. I don't think Timberlands kick on and off as easily.

We recently had our thanksgiving dinner. We all had to work on thanksgiving day so we planned it for Saturday. But on thanksgiving both jamie and i brought Pie's to school (we bought them at Costco). Our teachers are so easy to please. In Jamie's school they wrote a little note and put it next to the pie saying "brought by James Lyon." He brought apple. And in my school i brought Pumpkin and while Koerans eat pumpkin they do not eat pumpkin pie. My co-teacher ate three pieces before 11:30! They loved it and we didn't even have to bake! For our actual dinner we made it a quasi potluck with our expat friends. We had stuffing and cranberry sauce (sent from the US by our friend Chrissy's grandmother), green bean casserole (with homemade french fried onions because we couldn't find the cans), mashed potatoes, carrots, salad, candied yams (half being Yams from a can-again chrissy grandmother- and the other half being sweet potatoes from the store. Marshmallows from Costco), and apple and pumpkin pie with ice cream for dessert. We had to go and buy a toaster oven the day before to be able to bake the carrots and the yams. Very important but it also meant we got to warm our pie and eat it a la mode.

OK. enough about food. The semester is slowly coming to an end. We only have about a week left of classes when you take into account all the exams and reviews they are going to have. It's exciting to come to the end of the semester. We're trying to plan a trip to Thailand for February. We'll keep you posted on that news.

OK. well,i hope you enjoyed our time together and now the moment you'll all been waiting for:

Exciting things about Korea:

Parking.
In korea people often put their car in Neutral so that you can push it if it parks in your way. I didn't believe this until the other day. i was out with my coteachers and we parked in this tiny garage. This car had parked in front of us, essentially blocking us in, but not so my friends! We just pushed it out of the way. Crazy.


Thanksgiving.
In Korea some people think of Thanksgiving as a Christian holiday.

Hospitals.
When you get checked into a hospital, you're allowed to leave and roam outside. There are many clinics in our area so daily we see people wandering around in the hospital pajamas (shirt and pants-not the open in the back gown). Anyway, it must make extended hospital stays a bit more tolerable.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Wedding Day!

Hello friends across the globe!

This entry is actually about an event we went to quite some time ago but never got a chance to talk about. A wedding! One of Jamie's co-workers got married about a month ago and she invited us to her wedding. (it turns out that it's customary to invite EVERYONE you work with but as we were curious and had gotten the invite we went-so much for stressing over the guest list)

Anyway, I'd like to start by saying that, like weddings in the states, weddings in Korea are varied and different. However, the way this wedding was held is a common way to get married in Korea. The ceremony, of course, varies across couples.

OK! So. the wedding. right. The wedding was in a wedding hall. These huge buildings and corporations created to house all your wedding needs. We arrived and checked in at the brides reception desk where we signed the guest book and dropped off our gift. The hall is beautiful, by the way and there were many families milling around and sitting about. Near the reception desk there seemed to be the mothers and fathers of the bride and groom posing for pictures. The bride was sitting in a seperate room posing for photographs and greeting her guests. She was sitting on a little stage with her dress fluffed out around her and with lace and pretty things all hanging behind her. It reminded me of getting your picture taken with a princess at disney world. Anyway, it was real cute. Her fiance is a great photographer so they also had this running slide show of all the pictures of the two of them together.

Anyway, after this we went into the wedding room. It looked like a beautiful function room. it had an aisle running down the center and tables on either side. there were gorgeous white flowers, candles, fake trees. it was lovely. We watched the ceremony, but it was so informal. people were talking the whole time, getting up, moving about, changing seats. It was fascinating. Anyway, i'll detail more about their specific ceremony later. But from what i gather you pick a person close to you to officiate the ceremony. I'm not 100% clear but i don't think it needs to be a specific person or title who does it. I remember mr lee (remember him, from a few entries back) saying that he has officiated some of his students weddings. ANYWAY. So after the ceremony, in that same room they took all the family photos. At the end, they asked anyone who wanted a picture with the bride and groom to come up for a group photo. It was so cute! there were about 150 people all crowed around them for the photo. Anyway, after all that it was time to eat.

The dining room was downstairs in the same building. They had two massive rooms that each held about 200 people for guests. We were not in the same room as the bride and groom but they had a huge screen the projected them for us to see. They did much of the same customs I'm used to: cake cutting, toasting (although the best man toast was during the ceremony), walking around from table to table to say hello. Anyway, most interesting thing was that if you had come for the wedding and couldn't find room upstairs, you could have sat in the dining hall, eaten dinner and watched the whole ceremony on the big screen. In fact, many people did that and by the time the bride and groom made it downstairs, they had already left to go home! Anyway, as soon as we finished eating we left-no dancing or anything. the whole event was very short. (food was delicious!)

Oh, and through the whole thing there were the women in blue suits and white gloves moving and positioning all the wedding participants. Each person seemed to have one. My favorite was when they brought the bride and groom to each table and told everyone to clap for them. In all actuality, it seemed very smart. so much happend that day, it's nice to have someone to tell you where you stand and who to wave at. Also, through the whole thing, ceremony to reception there were points where it would seem they would just stop and pose for photos. The photographs will be amazing but the photographers made it hard to watch the proceedings.

OK. so now the specifics of their wedding that were really adorable or interesting. the only people that walked down the aisle at the beginning were the parents and the bride and groom. Bride walked down with her father. Mothers walked down together. I'm not certain when the grooms father got down there, but the parents had their own special seats on the specific sides and bride and groom when to each said and said something (didn't' understand) and gave gifts. My favorite thing was when all the groomsmen walked down the aisle, gave a red rose to the groom and then hugged the bride. Then afterward the groom gave her the roses. It was real cute. Oh. and they had live singers and music. It was real sweet.


Ok. that's enough for their wedding. let me know if you want more details. We forgot the camera so we have no pictures, sorry.


Exciting things about Korea (we'll stick with a theme today):

Korean women don't change their names when they get married.

Koreans often live at home with their parents until they get married. (While this is changing slightly, we haven't met any single koreans who do not still live with their parents. GREAT way to save money.)

The wedding hall website: http://seoulweddingcenter.com/
It's all in korean but it scrolls through the pictures when you open the site.