Christmas Day

          Well, we had a bit of a white Christmas, after all. But let me start from the beginning. 

 Christmas morning, Jon and I exchanged presents. He got me mittens on a string (sooo convenient :) ), a travel coffee mug (I've really been needing one) from Starbucks that says Korea on it and has pictures of Korean stuff, and gift certificates to Kyobo bookstore, a chain we have in Jeonju and that there is a huge branch of in Seoul. Actually, the gift certificates were homemade, with the Kyobo logo on nice little envelopes with cash inside. See, I had told Jon that that was what I wanted, but when he tried to get them, he found out that Kyobo doesn't have gift certificates. So, I figured I wasn't getting that. So I was nicely surprised to get one anyway. :) 

        I had gotten Jon a digital camera, which he loved. I figured that, since we were in Korea and are going to Thailand, he really needed a camera. And he's definitely already used it plenty. 

After presents, I made french toast, and then Skyped my dad and sisters. It was Christmas Eve there, and Anna and Erin were quite hyper.  

After talking for a while, Jon and I headed out to the Hanok Village, the traditional area of the city. It was a beautiful morning, and after just a few minutes, it started to snow big, fat flakes. We walked around a while, and visited a calligraphy museum and the cultural center. We also found a HUGE, awesome swing. Of course, we swung on it. It was quite fun.

Then we figured we were cold enough, and headed to a traditional tea house to warm up with a cup of tea. It was a really cute place...we sat in a smaller building off the main tea house, with only two tables. It was made in the traditional Korean style-- wooden with white plaster walls and the paper windows and doors. And heated floors, which I loooove. The tea was good too--loose-leaf tea that was dried just outside. 

After tea, we stopped by Isaac Toast for a quick snack. Isaac Toast is a chain of tiny storefront food places that makes sandwiches on toast, such as egg and cheese; egg, cheese and ham; hamburgers; etc. It's quite yummy, and pretty cheap. Jon and I both had hamburgers, then headed off in a taxi to Spa La Qua, our favorite spa-type place. 

Spa La Qua was nice, and relaxing, but more crowded than usual, so we only stayed about 3 hours. Then we came home and got ready for dinner. We had reservations for 8 pm at an Italian Restaurant. This one is a real italian restaurant, as opposed to the Korean-style ones that don't quite taste right, because it has a real Italian chef. Who happens to be one of our friends. Dinner was amazing. We got bread, salad and an amazing pumpkin soup, then our entrees. I got Gorgonzola pasta....mmmmmm, it was delicious. I miss cheese. :) So that was nice. Jon got gnocci in tomato sauce, which was quite good also. We had a bottle of white wine with dinner, then I had tiramisu for dessert, and Jon had cheesecake. And it was real cheesecake! That's in short supply around here...usually 'cheesecake' tastes like bland spongecake. 

After dinner, I Skyped my mom and sisters. That was nice, although I was surprised to find that they hadn't started opening presents yet...it was 9am there, and I can remember not too long ago when we were almost done with presents by then. But they opened the presents I had sent them while they were talking to me, which was cool. 

All in all, it was quite a nice Christmas, relaxing and fun. And it snowed!!! Though it still didn't really feeeeel like Christmas.