Merry Christmas!

Christmas in Korea is a bit different from that back home.  It's considered a "couples" holiday almost comparable to Valentine's Day.  You spend Christmas Eve with your sweetie, exchange gifts, and eat Christmas cake that can be purchased at your local Baskin Robbins, Paris Baguette, Dunkin' Donuts or local bakery.  So on Christmas Eve we just had a date night, went to a part of town with Christmas decorations, wandered the streets with hot coffee in hand, and enjoyed a "couples" Christmas.


But it's always during the holidays when I long for home and the family, food, snow, traditions, and quirks that go along with it the most.  We certainly did our best to make Korea feel like home this year.  Whether it was making homemade decorations, cookies, cinnamon rolls or getting together with friends---Christmas came to Korea.  And evidently, so did Santa, as in true Runestad Christmas tradition fashion, he forgot something in our window sill---his bottle of soju. 

We baked peanut butter reindeer cookies for
our colleagues.  

The white elephant gift I received after my
jar of dill pickles was stolen from me.  Found out later that night that
 I definitely wasn't used to eating
 these cheesy balls of MSG and fake flavor anymore. 

On Christmas day, Aaron and I helped put on a program at a local orphanage.
We were in charge of the snowflake making/decorating station.  This adorable little lady
wanted a snowflake beard...

and decided he should have one too.

Sharing his snowflake making skillz.

But the snowflake making didn't stop there.  We finished Christmas Day with
a gathering of friends and food and Aaron continued to perfect
his snowflake making skillz into the wee hours of the morning.

The holiday season also signals an end to the school year.  Although the official school year is over, we each have 3 weeks of English camp starting Monday that we'll be running at our schools.  It's a much more laid back and fun way to connect with our students and teach English.  Jake will be joining the second and third week of mine when he comes to visit.  I look forward to putting him to work (the theme of the second week is "English through Music" on purpose) as well as showing him around.  Let's hope Pyongyang doesn't do anything to hinder that...