Sometimes life can be such a beach

Yikes this is a very delayed post.

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all and an early Merry Christmas! I hope your Thanksgivings were great and filled with lots and lots of Turkey. Our Thanksgiving consisted of fried chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, spaghetti, garlic bread, curry pork, and a cake that said congratulations on it. I guess we were congratulating all us Americans for having a feast in a foreign land ... a little different than the 1621 feast but what can you do. It was a fun night filled with food and booze so that's always a plus. Lauren and I also decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in true American spirit and spend the rest of the weekend doing very little. We managed to find a Christmas tree and an assortment of holiday decorations to hang up in her apartment. We are the only two apartments in our building (and possible all of Korea) that have Christmas decorations on our door.

After our weekend haitus we decided we should do a little traveling the following weekend. Instead of making a plan, we thought we (Lauren, Will, and I) would jump on a train and head towards the coast. The trains in Korea have kareoke booths in them and good ol' Will managed to talk the chick into letting us take the booth for half the price. Nothing beats singing Bohemian Rhapsody while speeding along at 60 mph. We arrived at our destination safetly and luckily all singed out so we snagged a quaint little love motel to spend the night in.

The next morning we awoke and decided to head towards the main attraction of the city ... a cruise ship on top of the cliff which has been turned into a hotel. After a quick detour on the beach we arrived and got a room that was far nicer then the love motels I have grown so accustomed to. Once we got settled I decided I'd take Lauren to a nice lunch for her birthday week so we headed up to the hotel restaurant. Luckily Will decided to stumble in later and not only pay for both our meals and buy an expensive bottle of wine. Not only that but he insisted on teaching me high class table manners ... this coming from the guy that had been drinking hennesey since noon. After a nice lunch we retired to the room so we could get ready for the evening. Will "fell asleep" and when he woke up I decided it would be fun to try to convince him it was midnight (it was 6 p.m.). We strung him along on that lie for quite a while until we decided we would head down to the city. Being on a cliff, we didn't have a way to get down so we decided to ask a nice young Korean couple to give us a ride down. They obliged so we took them out for dinner and drinks after. Their English was pretty shotty but everybody here understands the language of SoJu and shot glasses so we all got along. We retired to the room for an early sleep so we could wake up and watch the sunrise over the ocean.

7 a.m. came all too quick but the sight was amazing and well worth rubbing the sleep outta my eyes. After checking out of the hotel we spent the rest of the day on the beach collecting sea shells and sea glass ... I will never grow up. Unfortunately, I didn't have a bucket or a shovel so no sandcastles were built but you still gotta love being on a beach in December wearing full winter attire. We hopped on the train and took home a collection of shells and memories that will be with us forever (ha, I'm pretty sure the shells will only be around for another week).

This weekend we have mid-training but my school decided that I can't go because "I've had enough training" which translates to "we don't want to give you Thursday and Friday off". Instead of getting a vacation in Seoul I get to continue teaching ... or have my kids watch movies the next two days because I'm not suppose to be here anyways and think I'm getting jipped big time.

I hope all is well with you all in America and I hope more importantly that my kids enjoy watching Christmas movies for the next two days ... maybe I do need more training ...