Christmas in Korea

There are Christians and Catholics along with Buddhists and several other religions here . So they celebrate the holiday and say "Merry Christmas" (which sounds exactly the same in English and "hangul" (korean language); they don't even add an extra vowel sound at the end. But when we took this photo, everyone said, "CEESE - A" ! There's a dancing santa outside one of the local pubs singing "jingle bells" and "yellow rose in Texas" (which is conveniently right outside Mike's apt. and he's FROM Texas!) Mike was Santa for our hogwon! He says I owe him a big one. He loved it though, knowing full-well the great impact he made on the adorable children at Little America. He came in during our Song and Story festival shouting "HO HO HO" and the kids were shocked b/c they expected one of us teachers to be santa. As soon as I came in that morning the kids asked, "Nicole teacher SANTA?" I replied, "Do I look like a BIG FAT MAN?" They said yes. Hmmm. Then they thought it would be Dan teacher. Dan, Greer, Taunia, and I were all in the room when Mike came in so the kids were amazed to see it was the REAL SANTA!!! He's loud and boisterous (perfect) but I heard him whisper something special to EACH kid, telling them about the elves up north & calling the girls princess. He took a couple hours out of his day to sweat in a big red suit up on stage and call each child up to receive their gift. Most kids gave him hugs, a few even gave him kisses on the cheek. He enjoyed the time as much as the kids b/c his hogwon (like most) wasn't doing anything special for the holidays. Little America always puts together elaborate celebrations. **************************************************** Our directors even held a teacher's party after the kiddies went home. There were lots of dead animals on the grill (ya know - cow, octupus...) and a SOJU tower. These boxes of the infamous Korean liquor were displayed on the buffet table. Greer and I were amused by the words on the box claiming soju to be "voted the best spirits in the world in 2001" Yeah. But it DOES raise our "spirits".