this month has been a little crazy. although, i'm really not sure why. haha. it's starting to get pretty cold here. apparently, koreans don't turn the heat on in buildings until january. i'm not really sure why they do this. not only is there no heat, they like to leave the windows open... they are big into freezing cold air circulation? thankfully, january is right around the corner.
robert, kevin, jen, and i went for gim dalk on christmas eve. it's this spicy dish with chicken, vegetables, and noodles. after gim dalk, we went to play the claw machine. there are claw machines all over the place in korea. it's nearly impossible to win anything out of them but so much fun. anyways, we've been trying to win a big lighter out of these machines for quite some time. as we were passing a machine, i noticed a lighter hanging precariously near the edge. of course, we stopped to play. machine shaking, shouting, and $6.00 later: the lighter was won. needless to say, this was the best part of christmas eve.
this is my tiny christmas tree and presents. unfortunately, the voltage was too high for the tiny tree and the lights burned out while i opened presents. it was pretty while it lasted. :)
i opened all of my christmas presents at 12:00 am. it was the best time for me to be able to call my mom... and i got to my open my presents without having to go to sleep. hahah. they sent 'the giving tree' (my favorite book of all time), 'where the sidewalk ends', and 'where the wild things are'. i'm hoping to use these books for some of my classes. oh, i love books. i was really excited for 'the grateful dead' book they sent. oh, man. love those guys. (my parents and the grateful dead) haha.this weekend, jen and i went to gyeongju for christmas. i wanted to go somewhere but i've been wanting to save some money for trips in nicer weather. thanks to the public transportation, our tickets were less than $8.00, together. woohoo! i guess gyeongju is called 'the museum without walls'. i would say that this is a pretty accurate description. there were amazing things all over the place.
*TO. (time out.) it should be noted that jen and i were ready to go, when i noticed my apartment key had disappeared. we started looking in the usual places, figuring the situation would be resolved easily. wrong. we tore the apartment completely apart during the great search. i called my boss. my boss told me that the landlord did not have a spare key. what. so, we continued tearing the apartment apart. i had a slight tantrum. i finally said that we should just leave and that the locksmith could come deal with it. as i was putting on my gloves, jen said, "did you just pick the key up?" i looked down in my hand... and there was the key. it's a christmas miracle. i have no idea where that key was or how it got in my hand but it mysteriously did and we finally left for gyeongju.*
so, back to the amazing things. because of the key fiasco, we didn't get to gyeongju until quite late. we found our hostel, put our stuff down, and went to find some food. the owner showed us a traditional korean restaurant, so we decided to try that. oh. my. god. it was so nice. we were served a little bit of everything. the food was delicious and the people were very nice. the restaurant was inside of a traditional korean house, so our table was in one the smaller house buildings. it was really nice to be away from all of the neon lights and street noises for a little while.
i will continue this post later when i can look at my maps. i need to look up place names and words of things. lol. it's a little difficult to remember korean. haha.
i hope everyone is having a happy winter and getting ready for the new year!
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