Christmas Cakes - A Korean Tradition

Unfortunately, Christmas is not widely celebrated in Korea. Decorations are scarce, and what little decorations there are are mostly limited to shopping malls. Pictures of Santa or nativity scenes are almost nonexistant. To make it worse, Christmas is widely regarded as a couples holiday, so it is yet another day were "solo" Korean girls mope about their lack of boyfriends.

There is one thing, however, that Koreans do to celebrate Christmas, and that is getting a Christmas cake. Almost every family gets one (and couples get their own, of course, which they then take to enjoy at a love motel, but that's a story for another day), and right up to the holidays, almost every coffee/dessert chain or independent store will advertise their selections of cakes. And in the true Asian fashion, the cakes are decorated very cute or prettily.

The best thing about these cakes, though, is that all the stores are competing to sell the millions of cakes that will be bought. Therefore, all the big chains like Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin Robbins, etc. will throw in free beanies with the cake. It's totally worth it because the cakes range from $15 - $25, and if you were to buy a beanie by itself off a street cart or in the store, they'd cost at least $10. Most beanies average around $18. So basically, you're getting a free cake if you just want the beanies. This may seem silly, but the beanies that come free with the cakes are super cute! I myself bought two cakes just because I wanted the beanies, lol.

Peppero Day: a.k.a. National Love for Pocky Day

While Canada and some other Western countries have designated Nov. 11th to be Rememberance Day, Nov. 11th takes on a completely different meaning in Korea. It's called Peppero Day, which pretty much translates to a national love for Pocky (the pretzel stick snacks that are usually dipped in chocolate) day. Basically, it's a giant marketing scheme for people to buy Pocky, and it's worked...

The premise of this day is based on nothing more the amusing fact that Nov. 11th is numerically written as 11/11, which looks like a bunch of sticks. And since Pocky also looks like a stick and serves as a nice chocolatey snack, it somehow turned into a Valentine's Day-esque buy-Pocky-for-others-day.

Of course, the Pocky people have prepared "special" Pocky packages to celebrate. Everywhere you go, you'll see boxes of giant Pocky the size of your arm, Pocky boxes wrapped in baskets with stuffed teddy bears inside, and individually wrapped Pocky sticks with hearts printed on them. It's everything would you expect from Valentine's except instead of all different kinds of chocolate, it's pretty much only Pocky.

It's pretty interesting seeing a sort of Valentine's in Feb., but hey, I'm not complaining... I got some nice goodies from my kids :D

Where did my Cali sunshine go???

After two months of being in Korea and loving it, I had my first breakdown earlier this week. How it happened: For the past two months, I've been a bit sleep deprived. Ever since I started taking my Korean language classes, I've been at school basically from 9 in the morning to 9 at night so that I don't get back to my apartment til 10:30. Needless to say being so busy during the week, I make sure I make the most out of my free time during the weekends. I've been running around anywhere and everywhere these past few weeks, so exhausting was sneaking up on me.

On top of that, the weather suddenly decided to drop 20 degrees overnight. It was mid-50s on day, and when I woke up the next, it was low-30s. And although I've been trying to prepare for the cold (spent a good chunk of my paycheck paying a whole new winter wardrobe), I have found that I'm not cut out for the cold. I'm the most bundled out of anyone on the streets, and yet I feel I'm still the coldest and I hate it.

As if being cold when going around outside and being sleep-deprived weren't enough, my apartment's heater has failed to work adaquately. So that night it dropped 20 degrees, even though I turned up heater up to its max, my apartment still felt like an ice box. I was so cold in my apartment that I couldn't get a wink of sleep.

The next day, I show up to work utterly miserable. Naturally, I tell my co-teacher there's something wrong with my heater, and we get the afternoon off from work to try and fix it. When we get to my apartment, my co-teacher explains that since I technically live in an Officetel and not a normal residential building, my heater is not going to be as warm. I don't know why, but this news and the thought of freezing in my apartment all winter long made me super upset. Consequently, I was a bit short with my co-teacher even though she was trying to help me as best she can translating for me to the maintanence guy.

Later on in the car on the way to our night classes (I take Korean and she takes graduate classes), my co-teacher confronts me on my attitude back at the apartment. She was completely right, but the next thing I know, I'm crying my eyes out and I can't stop. I don't know if it was the lack of sleep or the shock of being so cold for the first time in years, but for the first time, I realized just how much I missed LA and my nice warm, sunny weather that I couldn't help myself.

My co-teacher felt so bad. Poor thing. Even though I was completely wrong and out-of-line for being rude, she ended up apologizing to me for not considering my much the cold would affect me. She felt so bad that dropped by later that night after our classes to bring me a thick blanket from her house!

It's kinda sad I'm such a pansy to the cold. Both my co-teacher and I don't know how I'm going to survive the winter, but hopefully, I'll be able to toughen up a bit. We'll see...

Going to Hair Salons

Hair salons here are so much nicer and cheaper than in the US. Even if you go to a normal salon chain, the indoor decorations are lovely. The moment you step in, you're ushered onto nice, plush couches and greeted with biscuits and a choice of coffee or tea.

Also, the hairdressers are all super skilled. Apparently, they have to first apprentice for a year or so, during which they can only wash and blow dry hair, before they can even their own scissors. That shows dedication! My hairdresser was lightning fast and super pro. It was cool cuz at one point, I had the apprentice blow-drying my hair on one side and the hairdresser speeding away on the other.

You'd think with that kind of service and niceness, it'd cost an arm and a leg, but actually, my haircut turned out to only be 12,000 won ($10). Thank you co-teacher for referral! (If you go with a regular, you automatically get 30% off).

A word of caution though: if you don't want a fobby Korean or Japanese haircut, make sure you bring your own picture. It took 30 minutes and my Korean co-teacher's constant translations for me to get the style I wanted without a picture.

Owned by the Korean ATM

So after finally getting paid, my coteacher was nice enough to go to my bank with me to show me how to pay my bills with the ATM machine. (Korea is super nice in that everyone pays all their bills through the ATM. Takes like a sec and bam, instant payment.) Well, the process turns out to be super easy. This ATM, however, is a special ATM that's different from the normal cash withdrawal ATMS and is only available in Korean.

I basically memorized which buttons and in what order to push, so no problem. But my sweet coteacher, worrying that I would be confused next time, actually introduced me to one the Korean staff at the bank. (There's staff that stands around these ATMs to help old people work the machines, lol.) So the person she picked doesn't speak English, but she told him my situation and asked him to remember what I looked like so next time I come in, he'll know what to do, LOL. (My coteacher's uber cute, and she constantly worries whether I can handle living in Korea)

Here comes the really funny/sad part of my ramble. After we paid my bills, we were heading back to the school. I mentioned how I was suprised my phone bill actually ended up to be less than what I remember her telling me at the store. I thought that I had just lucked out in that the phone company made a mistake. She asked to see my bill, and it turned out it was less because the bill wasn't mine!!!

It was addressed to me, but it was a bill for the previous tenant. So I actually ended up paying someone else's bill! Then my coteacher, bless her heart, asks me in all sincerity why I didn't read it and just paid it. Cuz the entire bill was in Korean and I couldn't understand it, lol!!!

I felt SO silly! In the end, everything turned out to be okay because my coteacher called the phone company and got them to reimburse me. But for someone who's been so independent the past few years, I kinda feel like I've gone back to being like a child. So utterly dependedent on my coteacher for so many different aspects of my day-to-day life...

A Stove Story

So after two weeks of eating out and not cooking, I decide it's time to break in my kitchen. (Just miss eating my own food) But being the complete nub that I am, it actually took me a whole 30 minutes to turn on my stove!! It was kinda ridiculous. Here's what happened....

I was all ready to cook and everything. So I turned the knob but all that happened was the clicking sound of the lighter lighting the stove. There was no fire :( Now back home in GA, our stove is old and the stove's lighter doesn't work, which means you have to get your own lighter to ignite the gas. So, (being the clever person that I am) I reason that this stove is the same.

I go to buy a lighter, but I still don't really know how to ask for things in Korean very well. I looked up "lighter" in my handy-dandy dictionary, and show up at the store to ask if they sell it. Of course, they don't understand me. I tried saying it several times and even showed them the dictionary entry, but still no. Finally, I was just so at a loss that I just blurted out "lighter". And they understood me!! They were like, "Oh! Light-ta!"

So after 15 minutes, I finally buy my lighter and go back to my apartment. I try my stove again, this time with the lighter, and still it doesn't work. At this point, I have no idea why the stove isn't lighting. I'm starting be afraid that it's broken.

I go down to search for my building maintanence guy to ask for help. When I find him, I try to tell him that my stove doesn't work. Again, I looked up "stove" in my dictionary before finding him. He doesn't understand. Again, I show him the dicitonary entry, and that doesn't help either. Finally, I'm not really sure how, but somehow, the term "gas range" came up. I can't believe it. He didn't understand "stove", but he knew "gas range".

So he gets his tools and we go to my stove. The first thing he does is turns this little knob somewhere along the pipes on the wall, and he lights the stove. OMG!!! Apparently everyone, even other teachers in my program, knows you have turn on the gas. No one told me!! And so, the mechanic spends the next five minutes explaining to me how to light the stove, all the while thinking I"m an idiot. : /

Moral of the story: if you're ever in Korea, and your stove doesn't work, make sure you turn on your gas switch!

Life without an Identity Sucks :(

I finally understand the trouble international students at SC (and elsewhere) must go through to get a US social security number, to set up US accounts, etc., and I have to say, props to them. I never realized how much hassle it was until now.

So in Korea, if you're a foreigner, everything revolves around an Alien Registration Card (ARC). You need it to open Korean bank accounts, to set up internet, to register for a phone, etc. It takes about two weeks for them to process your paperwork and give you an ARC, so until that time, you basically can't do anything important.

I applied for an ARC as soon as I had the chance, but I'm still waiting for it. Until I get it, I can't get the money that my school owes me, and I can't get a cell phone number even though I got a cell phone from a friend last week. Luckily, my co-teacher was nice enough to set up internet under her ID, so I'm not completely stuck in the dark ages. But currently, my Korean cell phone is just sitting on my nightstand mocking me. :(