Christmas in South Korea

After college I traveled to South Korea as an English teacher. I ended up spending three Christmases abroad. One of my favorite holiday memories was going out Christmas caroling. See, Christmas caroling for your neighbors is not something that you do over in Korea. But one holiday season, my foreign friends and I really wanted to show our Korean friends how special some Christmas traditions could be: we made cookies, listened to Christmas music, and made our favorite holiday food- burritos!

That night, as we sat down to eat our burritos, my ceiling started to leak water. Quickly, my friend MiJung called the building maintenance, and two plumbers immediately arrived at my door. When they arrived the first thing that they noticed was not my leaking ceiling but the delicious buffet of burritos on the table. So we invited them to join our dinner! After dinner, the plumbers worked on fixing my ceiling while my friends and I practiced our Christmas songs for caroling. After a short time, it was concluded that the leaking ceiling was actually a problem with the pipes in my upstairs neighbor’s apartment. After the plumbers went on their way, we decided that the upstairs neighbors would be the best place to start our Christmas caroling. We put on our warm clothes, filled a bowl with holiday candy (sent from my parents in the United States), and set out.

My friend MiJung knocked on the door and when it opened, everyone started singing “Deck the Halls”, but before we finished the first line of the song, the neighbors slammed the door in our faces! We didn’t expect that at all, but we didn’t give up.

Our next stop was the security guard on the first floor. Our group of carolers gathered outside the door and started singing. Even though the security guard could see us through the glass doors, he just sat and looked at us like we were crazy. So once again, my friend MiJung knocked on the door and motioned that we would like to share some Christmas candy with him. The security guard opened the door a little, reached his hand out and took the candy from my hands- all of the candy, including the bowl!

With no candy left, we decided to stand out on the sidewalk and sing Christmas carols. We were freezing cold, but still enjoyed the night. And at the end, maybe out of sympathy or just hoping that we would go home, the nearby convenient store brought out free coffee for all of us.

Some of the pictures I have from that night include a group shot under a leaking ceiling, a plumber downing our burritos, and a group of freezing cold carolers standing on the sidewalk. And every time I look, I start laughing. We had so much fun together! And that’s really what Christmas is all about. Christ's birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love to share with the people around us. For some people Christmas has turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. But it’s not about that. Christmas is about sharing the love.

Make Your Own Bouquets, Corsages, Boutonnieres, and Centerpieces

Make Your Own Bouquets, Corsages, Boutonnieres, and Centerpieces (Look at those FLOWERS.. and not my weird face- haha!)



Over this summer I had the chance to participate in some wedding preparations. In the attempt to save some money, two of my friends decided to make their own bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and centerpieces. It might be helpful to know that you DON'T have to be Martha Stewart (although we might want to be), to create a masterpiece and save some money. I am not a professional, but I am experienced!

Here are the directions along with some pictures.

1. Order flowers in bulk. This was done by going into Sam's club and placing an order in the floral department.

2. Flowers will be delivered the day that you specify. Usually, people order them to be delivered one day before the wedding. That means that the flowers will still look really fresh, but you're going to need to set aside a good 3-4 hours the day before the wedding.

3. When the flowers arrive, open the packages. (Side note: if you ordered Gerber daisies the floral shop might have netting on the petals to keep them closed. Don't take this off until a few hours before the wedding. There might also be plastic tubing on the stems. You never have to take this off so as to support the stems.) Cut the stems and lower leaves off and run the flowers under cool water. After running the stems under cool water place them in vases (the vases should include a kind of plant food/powder that was sent with the flowers as well water that is the same temperature as what you were running the stems under).

4. Leave the flowers in the vases in a cool room for one hour. We turned the air-conditioning on high in the bedroom. If they fit in the refrigerator, you can put them in there too.

5. After letting the flowers sit for one hour, you can now cut and arrange the flowers.

6. Select flowers for bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and centerpieces. If you're making centerpieces than those should go in a vase and back to the cool room/refrigerator. For bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres cut them slightly longer than you want them (since they will need to sit in a vase overnight).

7. Wrap the stems or arrangements with green floral tape. For wrist corsages a standard elastic florist wristlet is used for making wrist corsages. They can be found in most craft stores or a local florist shop.

8. After everything is cut, arranged, and wrapped, place back in a cool area.

9. On the next day (the day of the wedding), you will wrap the bouquets with ribbon (and cover the green floral tape). Start with a hot glue gun and hot glue the top of the ribbon to the very top of the bouquet stem, and then wrap the ribbon to the bottom of the stem. At the bottom, you may choose to glue or pin the ribbon (depending on how you want it to look). After this you're ready to walk down the aisle!