If someone would have told me I would be spending Thanksgiving this year surrounded by screaming Korean kids, a Chinese woman, Dora the Explorer, and some of the worst beer on Earth....I would have told that someone they were cookadodle-doo-crazy.
But alas, welcome to the unpredictability of my life. I was sad when I was walking to work on Thursday. I started to think about all my friends back home going to their families for dinner, and about my mom, dad, and brother looking so small at our big dining room table. Work was just like any other day for the most part. It was a friend's birthday, so we were celebrating her birthday more than Thanksgiving, and I was honestly thankful to be celebrating something, anything at all. To my surprise at the end of the day one of the grandmother's of a student sent our staff a "Thanksgiving dinner". Although the turkey was actually sliced deli meat turkey, it was a nice gesture. There was cheese cake, turkey, salami, salmon, pickles, cheese, bagels and cream cheese, and my favorite pumpkin pie. I joked with a co-worker that this was the best Jew Thanksgiving I'd ever had.
So it turned out to be a pretty good holiday away from home after all. And it did give me some time to remember what I'm thankful for.
I am thankful for:
1. Coffee (what? This is perfectly acceptable as the number one thing I'm thankful for.)
2. Having the means and the motivation to travel, and to keep traveling.
3. My mother. She makes most things I have had and will have in my life possible.
4. Christmas music.
5. Hot showers.
6. Hamburgers.
7. My best friend Samantha Sovde who has stuck through me during the worst of times, and the best of times.
8. The time I spent in Hawaii, Spain and Boston.
9. My dad and his gentle heart.
10. Books and the authors that keep writing them.
11. Pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie....pretty much any kind of pie.
12. The uncertain and unplanned future.
13. Skype
14. These blankets I have wrapped around me because I refuse to turn the heat on.
15. The strength to keep going, even though the destination is unclear.
And last but certainly not least, I'm thankful for Led Zeppelin who sing one of my top 10 favorite songs of all time appropriately titled, Thank You.
I've got Christmas fever. There is no way around it, I just do. I've been playing Nat King Cole's Christmas cd's on repeat for the last two weeks. And even youtubing Kenny G jazz Christmas. (Hey don't knock it 'til you hear it, Kenny G plays good music.)
Anyway, I love Christmas. I love it more than any other time of the year. I'm sure most people love Christmas. What's not to love? Snow, cookies, pies, turkey, candy, stuffing, chocolate peppermint deliciousness, egg nog, brandy, wine, fires, stockings, the fat man in a red coat...do I even need to go on? I am aware that more than half of my reasons are because of food, but Christmas does bring about some divine food. Food that I am dreaming about after being in the land of fried fish, white rice, and long slimy noodles all the time.
Sometimes I get seasonally depressed around Christmas. I think of all the other families out there, and how everyone and their mother's mother gets together for Christmas. There are traditional dinners, traditional gift giving, traditional Christmas light seeing, everything is traditional. I have a small family. The normal mom, dad, brother and myself kind of family. We make Christmas as special as we can, but I find myself missing and wishing for a big family, for cousins, nieces and nephews, grandpa's and grandma's, and aunt's and uncle's running around a house that can barely fit four. When you see Christmas in the movies or on tv, you see ten or twelve people gathered around a nice oak table, passing a huge turkey over their heads, conversation so loud they don't notice the dog under the table while grandpa slips him a slice of turkey.
When my brother and I were younger, we used to spend Christmas every year in Florida at my grandma's house. She has this amazing house that she designed herself, with a waterfall and coy pond inside, an outside patio to die for. All the family used to get together over there, and we would have our own traditional Christmas. It eventually got to be too expensive to go every year, things changed, and people changed. We began to have our own little Christmas's. We still manage to get together every year, we have only been apart one Christmas so far.
I started to think about how when you get older, the things that used to be such a big deal when we were younger, are not made into such a big deal anymore. Birthday's come and go, anniversaries aren't cherished anymore, and Christmas becomes more of a hassle than a celebration. However this year, as I sit in South Korea with unfamiliar traditions all around me, I long for those quieter Christmas's with my family. I smile at the thought of my mom tiptoeing out to fill the stockings, my dad taking extra special care to wrap a KBCO cd he gives us every year from our favorite radio station. I am excited to have the parade on tv in the back ground, as the cinnimon rolls rise in the oven. I think that even though at the end of the day, my mom so stressed out that my brother has nothing to eat and nobody is grateful for all the time and effort she's put into dinner, the small traditions have still been carried out. We'll go to an afternoon movie if we can agree on one, and we'll come home and gripe about all there is to clean up.
I think about how to bring back the bang in Christmas this year, how to make it a big deal again. If I can get my brother and my mother to get along for more than a day, that would be a feat in itself. My brother will only spend one day with us, and drive back to his house late in the evening after dinner. But I'll wish that he will stay longer, that he may even decide to stay the night. I'll wish like I do every year, that we all just sit around the fire a little longer and talk. But the day will pass by like it usually does. I will be shortly packing to return to whatever country I'm in at the moment, my mom will return to her patients, my dad to the computer, and my brother to whatever job he does that makes a hell of lot more money than the rest of us. And then I'll be thinking about how to make Christmas better next year, how to keep the holiday spirit a littler longer, or how to make it mean more to us the next time.
However this year I am going to do just that. I will have Christmas music blasting 24 hours a day, and the oven baking something delicious every morning. I will be over-cheered, over-cooked, and over-Christmas by the time the new year rolls around. I'll take the time to set out my mom's holly china, and add pumpkin spice to everything. This year I'll be sure to let my family know how much I have appreciated their support in this last year, and how thankful I am to have them in my life. I will forgive them for things I have been holding on to, and make sure they know I love them.
After all, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year right?
11:20 is a time I look forward to with bated breath every single day. 11:20 will make or break the rest of my day. 11:20 can be the best part of the day, or the worst part of the day. The rest of the day depends on 11:20. I depend on 11:20.
11:20 is lunchtime.
During the morning hours as I teach, I look up at the clock endlessly watching time move by ever so slowly. I am always starving, and I am always praying for a good lunch. We have to eat with the kids, which are rather annoying, but most of the time I don't even care because I'm too consumed with the goodness (or repulsed) by the food that I'm hoovering into my mouth.
Lunchtime used to be even more of a gamble, before I figured out there was a lunchtime menu. One of my kiddos is from Denmark, so they always send an English copy to my class for her. (Why would they send an English menu for a girl from Denmark you ask? I asked the same thing, and was met with blank stares and confused grins.) I started to make a copy for myself, so that I could find out what the second half of the day would entail. If lunch is good, I'm happy and the rest of the day goes smoothly. If lunch is bad, I curse Korea in my head and make my kids lives miserable. Yep, that's how much I love food. That's how much I look forward to eating. That's how I make it through the days with the little Korean terrors.
However, the menu ended up being quite the guessing game, and rarely correct. Just the other day the lunch menu read:
-RICE-KIMCHI-MEAT PANCAKE-FRUIT
Now I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm kind of keen on my pancakes being meatless. And the FRUIT they so falsely advertise is usually a small slice of apple, or a third of a banana. Hardly a servings worth. I have to bank on the good days of lunch because when it's bad, it's so, so bad.
Sometimes lunch is amazing. They serve us pork with steamed veggies and potatoes, plus rice of course. A few weeks ago they served this pumpkin dish that was absolutely divine. Spaghetti and meatball day is always a good day. Sometimes they make potato and corn purees, which remind me of my host mom's cooking in Spain, and she made amazing purees.
But alas, there are too many days that go wrong because of lunch. There are too many horrid looks exchanged with my co-worker. Today I had a particularly horrifying experience that brought me again back to my days in Spain. The menu said FRUIT, like most days. I was hoping for a banana or some tomatoes. But what was actually there, to my disbelief, was a wonderful fruit salad COVERED in mayonnaise. I couldn't even hold in my shock. I turned to a friend and said, "why on Earth would they ruin such a perfectly good fruit salad by putting mayo on it?!”
Most days I look down to realize that everything on my plate is either yellow or white. I realize that I am eating an insane amount of carbs, and that I would sell a kid on the black market for some meat. I'm not trying to sound ungrateful; I realize these ladies work hard to feed the entire school. And their jobs consist of cooking and cleaning up for a bunch of brats, and ungrateful foreigners like me. But I can't help but wish that a little more nutrition went into these lunches, for the kids really, not for ol' picky me. Koreans will go to great lengths to tell you how nutritious their foods are. But I'm sorry, between meat pancakes, mayonnaise fruit salads, and white rice.....what I'm seeing is a lot of clogged arteries, cottage cheese asses, and carb overload. Put some damn color in the lunches!
I suppose I should be more thankful that I get a lunch at all. I picture my mother standing over her desk gnawing on a power bar. Or my father sucking on peppermint and butterscotch candies all day long. Or even my brother who rotates between the same three restaurants every single week on his lunch breaks.
If there is one thing that lunchtime has taught me in Korea, it's to mind my p's and q's like the polite young lady I am. I've realized that I have incredible will power to force myself to eat something without gagging. I also remember to always smile at the lunch ladies, and say thank you when I'm bringing in my tray. Even if I'm thinking, 'thank you for the mystery meat pancake, the fruit salad with the side of lard, and also thank you for the hour I'll be spending on the treadmill later'.
I've never felt more like my mother than I did last night. I curled up in bed anticipating my next chapter in my recent book, and to my left on the night stand sat a perfectly poured glass of red wine. Now it's no secret that red wine and my mother are quite fond of one another, but it shocked me to my wits end as I took my first gulp of it. You see my mother does this thing when she drinks things, especially with wine. She takes a sip (extra-ordinarily loud mind you), and then she holds the liquid there for a good minute before she swallows it (again, extra-ordinarily loud). It drives me insane. I mean really, what do I care how long she holds her wine in her mouth? I have no idea, it just drives me nuts.
So I'm sitting there, about to indulge in a creepy book about a woman in a mental hospital (go figure eh?), and I realize that I've been holding the wine in my mouth for over a minute! I almost spit it out at the recognition of it, but my mother also told me never to waste wine. I swallowed it of course, savored it if you will. But the feeling was so bizarre and creepy, I sat there, back straight, for a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to defy all other inherit characteristics of becoming my mother. Nobody, and I don't care how wonderful a woman your mother is, nobody wants to become their mother. Bottom line.
Anywho, this brings me to my next random there is no point to this post, thought. This week is Halloween, and Friday we have some big event at school to put on for the kids. I absolutely love Halloween, but I hate dressing up. I like the pumpkins, the carving of the pumpkins, the scary stories and movies, the grave-yards, the haunted houses, the candy of course, I love it all. But I hate, hate, hate the amount of pressure there is to dress up and find a costume. We have to dress up at school "for the kids", which I'm reminded of daily. However, my kids are whimps. They're scared of Corduroy for pete's sake! I read them one of my all time favorite books as a child, Corduroy, and then had to spend the next week telling them that stuffed animals don't really come to life at night. Sweet Jesus that was a mistake.
I never realized how stressful Halloween was until I had to come up with costumes on my own. No wonder parents always hate Halloween. Lets face it, how many times has your mother thrown a sheet over you, wrapped an elastic around your neck and said, "Boo! You're a ghost." It's insanity. I ended up buying a kids pirate costume today, and hoping I can mangle it to fit me somehow without looking slutty.
I shouldn't complain really. I'm sure it'll be all fun and games when it's all said and done and Friday actually rolls around. The kids will be absurdly adorable in their costumes, and we'll play pin the tail on the black cat a million times. And maybe, just maybe, the mothers will send their kids to school with tons of candy for the teachers and I can self induce myself into a candy coma. Don't worry. I'll post pictures.
...it would be to every Saturday morning for the past 25 years. Saturday mornings are why life is worth living. There is that moment when your eyes flicker open for a second on Saturday morning, and you realize you have absolutely nothing to do that day. And it feels perfect. You close your eyes again, thinking about going back to sleep for the rest of the day. Heck, you might not even get out of bed until Sunday night. You're wrapped in a decadent cocoon of covers, snuggled so warmly around yourself. Everything is right in the world. There are no alarms going off, no thoughts of the shower or the dilemma of what to wear to work.
I lay awake for awhile in bed on Saturday mornings; just staring about and wondering how much effort I'm really going to put in to making something out of the day. Most of the time I think about what to eat for breakfast, and whether or not I should make coffee or go out and treat myself to a latte. The feeling of a Saturday morning is pure happiness. And the only thing that actually gets me out of bed, is an urgency to pee (although I've highly considered wetting the bed on numerous occasions just so I don't have to move), and my growling stomach. But again, sleep trumps hunger, and I would choose sleep any day over food.
This morning when my alarm went off I cursed the bloody thing twice, and pressed snooze a few more times. Monday mornings suck more than....well more than anything as far as I'm concerned. Monday's make me want to weep. If you know me, you know mornings (especially Monday mornings) are my nemesis. The only thing that would make a Monday morning worse, is if I were at home and my mom was singing me her "Time to get up in the Morning" song.
Thank God tomorrow's Tuesday.
(p.s- Mom, on rare occasions I actually do miss when you sing that song, but not on Mondays. Sorry.)
I also searched for a good song about the hatred of Monday Mornings, but I could only find Fleetwood Mac's worth posting. Even though they don't seem to share the notion that Monday's are evil, but they still rock.
Koreans are very nonsensical. I too, am very nonsensical, but in a way that makes sense. To me. Don't judge, just laugh.
1- I sometimes feel like I'm living in an episode of Mad Men. (Best show ever by the way.) Except a more modern, incredibly crude, Korean kinda version. The business men drink an inordinate amount of alcohol all day everyday, and well into the evening. It's not unusual to be walking down the street to see a business man passed out on the sidewalk, still in his shiny business suit, looking all business like. (Minus the pile of puke beside him, and the drool coming from his half opened mouth.)
2- Koreans are insane about recycling. I'm talkin' separate bins, separate boxes, color coded, every last bit can be saved, kind of recycling. But yet they insist on packaging things in a way that makes their recycling obsession almost double the work and effort it has to be. If I buy a box of crackers in the states, it's only a matter of tearing the box open and maybe tearing the inside plastic bag open before I'm wrist deep enjoying my Wheat Thins. However here, it takes several more steps before I actually get to eat the crackers. First you have to open the box. Second you see that there are actually four tiny little bags of crackers inside the box. Then you go to open the individual bag of crackers, only to find a little plastic cup you have to pull out to get to the crackers. By then I'm so fed up, it's almost comical that there are only three tiny, limp, crackers sitting atop their plastic bed waiting for me to eat them.
3- Okay, I have to touch on what the women wear again. Some of the women dress so exquisite that I instantly turn into a Mexican construction worker, bring two fingers to my mouth, and let a whistle rip. But some of the women, my oh my, I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on in their little, overly worked minds. It seems anything goes. Matching is a term used quite loosely here. Stripes go with polka dots, checks go with Mickey Mouse, socks go with sandels. I saw a woman the other day wearing a fur coat on her top half, and the shortest jean shorts known to man. I wanted to scream at her, "which is it lady?! WINTER OR SUMMER?!"
4- Red lights are optional. In fact, traffic lights in general serve no actual purpose in Korea. I'll be waiting patiently for the little green man to give me the a-okay to cross the street, only to look over and see an ajuma and her visor pulled so far down her face she can hardly see, speeding down the street directly at me. I try to scream, "Ma'am! You're running a red light!" But she doesn't care, only speeds right past me 20 mph too fast, swerving to miss the other adjuma who has run the red light on the other side.
5- The kids I have in my class, are for the most part adorable. And with the absurd obsession with name brands here, the mothers send their kids to school dressed head to toe in brands like Burberry, Prada, Coach, Dolce and Cabana. Some of the outfits these kids wear to school, cost more than I make in a matter of three months. Trust me, I've googled it. It makes me want to scream because you know what we do in PRESCHOOL? We paint. And we run around outside in the playground. And we glue. And we eat red colored kimchi flavored everything. How do I say, "I'm sorry, but your child's $500 shirt that they wore to school today is completely ruined do to the massive amount of paint and gluing we did today", in Korean again?
I think this is sufficient enough for a second-parter in the nonsensical Koreans list. I should really write some of these down, because more often in not during the day I'm frantically looking around looking for another foreigner so that we can share a, "wtf?" moment. But for now I have lesson planning to do for the week ahead. :)
