Christmas Eve in Seoul

A fellow teacher and I decided to head to Seoul to spend Christmas Eve. What a great decision that was! We started off at City Hall, where the city has installed a giant skating ring for the citizens and visitors of Seoul. A person can skate for an hour and rent skates all for 1 buck. Talk about amazing! The ring, however, wasn't the greatest quality. The skates slipped around pretty easily and hurt the side of my ankle; the ice was also pretty chopped up. It made skating a tad difficult, but I got the hang of it after a while. My fellow teacher can't really say the same thing, though. Before skating, we bought some reindeer antlers. So being white people, we stuck out like sore thumbs. It was a good thing, though. Everyone was cheering us on, waving at us, giving us high fives, and cheerfully yelling Merry Christmas. After our hour was up, we decided we had a very successful skating run considering we didn't fall down once.






After skating, we walked around downtown Seoul and looked at all of the Christmas displays. We came up on Lotte Department Store, where we found an awesome display. The trees were covered in lights with icicle lights. The building was covered with snowflakes, ornaments, and icicles. There was even an Alice in Wonderland display. The best part was the snow! They had many snow machines (that produced soapy snow) on top of the building so the snow fell down on the sidewalks and streets...so awesome! We then went inside to find the Krispy Kreme, where we were greeted with free original glaze doughnuts. Oh, so yummy!






We then headed over to the Cheonggyecheon Stream, where a crowd met us. There was a huge wall of lights around the stream that was synchronized to pumping Christmas music. There were also huge snowflakes that hung above the stream. Although there were fewer lights than I expected, it was still pretty amazing. It really felt like Christmas was upon us. Everyone was so cheery, the music was spirity, the weather was nippy, the lights were shiny. It was awesome!




My friend and I were actually struck by how people were more focused on Jesus. There were lots of crosses used as decorations around town (including atop the tree at city hall). The Christmas music was mostly all Christian Christmas music (some of it was even just Christian and not Christmas).

We were actually almost like celebrities. Everywhere we walked, people were waving at us, wishing us a merry Christmas, and even wanted to take pictures with us. I guess being white, wearing a big white cap, and wearing matching reindeer antlers probably helped some. They probably all thought we were a couple considering Christmas is usually spent with a boyfriend or girlfriend; we saw couples everywhere, especially couples with matching attire.

After that, I had to go home a little early to meet up with a friend that had ordered a Christmas gift for me. I also thought another friend would come over so I bought a cake at a bakery near my house; it even came with a nice elfish hat. Unfortunately, my other friend didn't come so I had a lot of cake left over. Actually, that is what most Koreans do to celebrate Christmas - they buy a Christmasy looking cake.

After finishing my gift wrapping, my magical Christmas Eve finally came to an end. It was time for Santa to arrive!

More pictures:

2008.12.24 Christmas Eve in Seoul

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