Happy holidays from Korea! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year!Sorry for the long gap between posts, but as many of you know, my family was visiting for the holidays.
Christmas in Korea is nowhere near as overblown as Christmas in the states, although nearly all of my students acknowledged that they celebrate the holiday in one way or another (meaning almost all of them receive presents). Some places go all-out with their decorations, but in general, decorations are kept to a minimum. Therefore it was rather hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year.
The forced secularism found in America was also nowhere to be seen. I was allowed to wish all my students a Merry Christmas as they left my classroom on Christmas Eve at 10 pm (no holiday spirit from the employer, clearly...). In fact, the Christmas tree located in City Hall Plaza had a cross on top instead of a star. There aren't many places in America where I would expect to see that.
New Year's Eve is another holiday that is underplayed here in Korea, passed over in favor of Lunar New Year. Again I worked until 10 pm on New Year's Eve, making it difficult to fully appreciate the day. The Seoul equivalent of Times Square is a place called Bosingak in the center of the city. Instead of a ball drop, there is an enormous bell which is rung 33 times at midnight. This tradition originates from the former purpose of the bell, to announce the opening and closing of the Seoul gates. The bell was rung 33 times at dawn to signify the opening of the gates. The bell is enormous and currently 16 people are selected to ring it. These people are chosen by a survey and are mostly regular (more or less) citizens. This year, the people ringing the bell included the mayor and 4 other city officials, the coach of the national soccer team, a formerly homeless essayist, and a university student who participated in a study aid program for elementary schoolers.My New Year's Resolution: more consistent posting! Hope to hear from all of you this year!
Yay new post. I've been anxiously awaiting!
ReplyDeleteHearts,
Your Secret Admirer (AKA your other sister-brown)
You were the best tour guide ever Jess and we had a great time there. I'm still thinking about the things we saw and did together and always will. Hope the snow blast this week didn't mess you up too much. Love you!
ReplyDeleteJanuary 14th today... time for a new post!
ReplyDeleteLove you Jelcaps