Christmas Pictures...for New Year's Eve

I mentioned last post that I'd be preparing a Thanksgiving meal for us on Christmas Eve. I wanted everything to be fancy, so I decorated the table.

I didn't have a white tablecloth, so I used a polyester sheet (I have a thing for using bedding on the table) which I'd rejected for use as bedding because it was slippery and annoying. I couldn't find candleholders at the PX, so I used a bundle of white Christmas lights in the center of the table for soft lighting. I didn't have any cloth napkins, so I just used paper ones, and tied them with ribbons cut from a gift bag.

My sister back in the U.S. insisted that we have mashed potatoes, so I made some.

There was one last dried-out poinsettia for sale at the Commissary. I brought it home. No one should be alone on Christmas Eve!

Before bed, we left cookies and milk for Santa, and mini M&Ms for the elves.

When we woke up, we found that the elves had eaten the candy. Santa had left giant cookie crumbs on the floor on his way out the door.

 

As for us, we had pancakes after the gifts. RAINBOW PANCAKES. (And bacon and eggs.) Joe mixed mini M&Ms into the pancake batter, and I watched without saying anything even though I knew the colors would get all runny, and it turned out to be the most beautiful culinary no-no I have ever seen.

I spent most of the day playing with my new camera. We had grilled cheese for dinner. I know that sounds lame, but it's not the typical Kraft-Single-between-two-slices recipe; it's my mom's gooey cheesy fried-y delicious recipe we first tasted around Christmas last year, at her house, when I asked what was for dinner and she was like "grilled cheese" and I was thinking "Really? You couldn't have made something delicious?" before I knew what it was and now we've probably eaten it about 18 times this year.

Despite the 7,052 miles between us and our families, our Christmas was relaxing and comfy and Christmasey and almost perfect.

Christmas Piles: A Tradition

It's the day after Christmas. Joe's at work, the dishes are washed, and I didn't bother to wake up until 1:00 PM. The apartment's quiet, except for the washing machine and the Christmas music. I can hold on to the holiday for a few more days.

Most of my gifts are still under the tree where I arranged them yesterday afternoon. It's not that I'm not interested in them. I just want them to stay there, new. Every year I look forward to arranging my gifts after I open them all. When we three kids were growing up, Santa would leave our presents set up in semi-circles, or piles, for each kid to find on Christmas morning. Our piles grew throughout the day; Santa's gifts would be the base of the pile, then we'd unwrap and add gifts from our parents, then we'd get even more gifts from our extended family.

My pile from Santa, 1997

1997

My pile from Santa, 2000

All three piles (with my brother's in the middle and mine on the left and my sister's on the right,) 2000

2006, at my parents' house

2008, in the trailer

2009, Fredericksburg VA

2010, in Georgia when Joe was in AIT

The last three pictures are my and Joe's piles combined.

Looking through these pictures makes me think of all the things we've collected together, and everything we have to look forward to seeing again once we unpack the storage unit back home. Including our couch. Sometimes I forget we have things like that - a TV and a couch and a car. Just like real grownups!

2011, South Korea

That's my pile this year (though it's missing the gifts we opened before Christmas.) I'm super happy about my new camera. I'm also thrilled with my new backpack. You wouldn't think that'd be something to get excited over, but it really is since I never leave the house without a backpack now that we don't have a car to store everything in. I'm also excited about the Korean book I picked out...and the jewelry I didn't pick out. (I just love it when Joe buys jewelry for me.) Also not pictured is stuff that didn't get here in time for Christmas: The Twilight Zone boxed series, and a League of Legends shirt. And the newest Stephen King book. I get the latest SK book for Christmas every year, 'cause good book + Christmas candy is another one of my favorite traditions. When I found myself bookless on Christmas Eve, I went to the PX and picked one up.

So there you have it. Christmas pile arranging, a delightful tradition.

Merry Christmas! Eve!

Hello! It's Christmas Eve day here, and I'm getting ready for a very busy day! But first, some holiday wishes for my family:

P.S.:

And here's the picture I made for you guys!

Okay, time to get baking.

Merry, merry Christmas!

This Week in Pictures

 

I hung stockings, and

wrapped presents, and

made it smell like Christmas in here, and

the Christmas tree fell over, and

I found more ornaments on another Army post, and

I made a centerpiece thing for the coffee table, and

spent two hours assembling our early Christmas presents, COMPUTER CHAIRS!, which roll and are padded and are SO MUCH BETTER for 10-hour-video-game days than the kitchen chairs we were using, and

tore two nails pretty badly cooking and doing dishes,

decided to get my nails done for the second time in my entire life (the first time was for my first wedding.) It hurt, still hurts the day after, and I could've gone on two Burger King dates with Joe for the price of one temporary fix of my fingernails. And Burger King would probably have involved less bleeding. And

we heard Korean karaoke versions of Christmas songs at a restaurant we'd never been to and definitely won't be returning to until well after Christmas.

Waegwan

The area where we live is called Waegwan. Town? County? No idea.

The section of Waegwan I see on my walks to Camp Carroll was, I guess, developed because of the Army base. Shops and restaurants along the route have English signage. For part of the way, the sidewalk runs right next to the Camp's cinderblock & barbed-wire fence. This section of the wall along the sidewalk has been painted with swans and Asian-looking plants and leaves.

Down at the very end of the wall in this picture, before the gate with the red cross on it, you can see a blue trashbag leaning against the wall. It's full of leaves. The sidewalks are kept swept of leaves and debris by the people who own the shops along the sidewalks; take a five-minute stroll, and you're almost guaranteed to see a Korean bent over a broom with a handle half the length of the ones we're used to, sweeping the sidewalk and picking up garbage.

In this more recent picture, there's white fabric on the ground that has the texture of cotton batting, and the stones for the sidewalk are stacked in a pile. They've been working on some system of pipes for the past few months, section by section, and every week a new area of the road or sidewalk is torn up. The white fabricky stuff goes down to cover the dirt. They put the sidewalk back when they're done.

Here's a picture of some souvenir shops, a shoe shop, and a bar. At Silk Road (the one with the orange sign,) you can buy huge mediocre oil paintings of Korean landscapes for only 35,000 won (about $35.)

The second two pictures are of the same area. I don't know where either of those roads go.

The woman in the doorway of Oasis Club is just hanging out, sorting dried peppers. I had forgotten about this picture when I took the following one.

Here, it's late afternoon. She's just hanging out again, cutting vegetables into a pot. In the window of the shop next to her, the one with MONEY EXCHANGE, there are blue and yellow number signs advertising the exchange rate for the day.

Walking everywhere isn't nearly as fun now that it's always freezing outside, but at least it's never boring.

BEYOND THE GAME!

Four days before the event's starting date, we found out that the World Cyber Games with League of Legends tournaments would be held two hours away from us. High-profile teams were going to be there, like CLG and Dignitas. (This is the LoL equivalent of, like, major football games and stuff, I guess, but I don't really know 'cause I don't watch football. But you can go to these events and they're broadcast live and we always watch them and talk about them and sometimes yell at the screen.) Joe was scheduled to work all four days of the WCG, but I pretty much begged him to ask for some time off so we could go. It would be in the same country as us! Two hours away! We've spent hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on this game in the past two years! How could we miss it?

The time off was granted, two backpacks were packed, and we got on a train at 6:55 AM on Thursday.

Two hours later, we were in Busan. It was cold. I bought some hot tea to carry around to keep me warm. As soon as we got out of the taxi at the convention center, I saw a WCG poster in a bus-stop shelter. My excitement level increased exponentially. Joe's holding my tea so I can take this picture.

The Bexco Convention Center had another LoL poster on it and I got even more excited.

We went inside and bought tickets in the lobby. Then, from inside the WCG room, I heard the voice of the announcer who begins every game of LoL say "Welcome...to Summoner's Rift!" with the normal in-game LoL music in the background, and my head exploded. I grabbed Joe's hand and dragged him over there. They were just running a test game on the secondary stage, but I didn't care, because I was really in a world where LoL was on the big screen.

I calmed down a little and got my picture taken with some cardboard LoL guys.

THEN, I saw Dignitas just walking around and reacted (but quietly) the same way a normal person would react when seeing a small group of legitimately famous people, even though they were just LoL famous. Household names in the LoL world whose strategies I'd watched, people I saw on the internet ALL THE TIME, whose broadcasted games have thousands of viewers, were TEN FEET AWAY FROM ME IN REAL LIFE. I don't know much about them; I couldn't even recognize any of them without their screen names (except qtpie, who's kind of easy to recognize.) I'm not, like, obsessed or anything. It's just THEY'RE FAMOUS.

When I was done hyperventilating, we went and sat down at the main stage, since the commencement ceremony would be starting soon.

huehuehuehuehue!

The giant really really loud speakers were blasting the WCG theme song, the nerdiest pop/rock song ever, "Beyond the Game." It sounds like the Pokemon song and Bon Jovi. I felt like I was in an alternate dimension built by nerds. It was absolutely amazing. (With me, pop songs always elicit exactly the response they're going for. Yeah, maybe the song is kinda stupid - Joe certainly thought so, and rolled his eyes each of the 100 times they played it while we were there - but I didn't care. I was in the moment.) During the ceremony, WCG's Korean "cheerleaders" danced to the song. We were supposed to be dancing, too, or at least standing up, but most people weren't.

There was also a sword dance thing. Swords are usually boring, but it was part of the Nerds in Korea thing and I savored it. Short clip:

Near the end of the commencement ceremony, they announced the games which were part of WCG, playing very short clips on the screen for each one. People cheered for their games. When the Korean announcer-lady said "League of Legend!" (without the 's' at the end) and part of the Season One trailer came on, I threw my hands up and screamed "WOOOOO!" like I was about to go down a hill on a roller coaster. Then "Beyond the Game" started playing again and there was a POP which scared me so much that I hid my face in Joe's shoulder, but it was just silver streamers being shot out of the ceiling. (We brought some home.)

First big-screen LoL, then really loud nerd music, then swords, now streamers being shot out of the ceiling. I was FLIPPING. OUT.

After the ceremony, tournaments for other games started. There wasn't anything LoL-related going on until later, so we left to look for lunch. There was a Mr. Pizza, so we went there for our first Korean pizza. The toppings included German sausage, honey mustard, green peppers, onions...and bits of cabbage.

After lunch, we explored a department store called Shinsegae. They were having a HAPPY SALE. Everything was very expensive.

Then it was LOL TIME!

This was Germany vs. Vietnam on the second stage. The quality was terrible. The blow-by-blow commentary was in Korean. I don't even remember who won. The teams weren't familiar to me.

We started to realize that this was a much smaller event than what we'd expected. WCG was advertised as "The world's largest computer & video game festival." I'm pretty sure it wasn't. There were very few Americans, not really very many Koreans, and all the commentary was in Korean. None of the LoL games started on time. There weren't even any people dressed up as LoL champions. Maybe we just missed the crowds and cosplays because we were only there for the first two days instead of for the main events.

Next game was Dignitas (the USA team) vs. Spain. We assumed Dignitas would win, since we'd never heard of Spain's team, and they did. It was on the main stage, with MUCH better quality.

When the LoL events were over, it was dinnertime. There was a Korean buffet upstairs. It was fancy. We ate there. They had things like sea urchin roe, and duck breast, and squid (I just couldn't try it,) barbecued eel (which I tried,) pine mushroom porridge, pumpkin porridge, a hibachi bar, a sushi bar, and some weird fruits I'd never even seen. I asked our waitress how to eat them, and she had to get her manager to speak English to me.

A mangosteen and a.....pink thing

After that, we went to the hotel, which was not fancy but was clean and didn't cost nearly as much as the alternatives. Whenever you sat down on the toilet seat, water started running in the bowl. And the shower got its water from the sink.

Once the sun came up, we had a beautiful view of a not-so-beautiful harbor.

We ate at Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast (but didn't try any of the red bean paste donuts.) It was cold outside. I got more tea. We took a taxi back to the convention center. It wasn't LoL time yet, so we explored the department stores again.

The first store we went into had just opened for the day. We were the first people to go inside. All the employees, all dressed in business suits and ties, were all standing next to their cash registers, and each employee bowed to us as we walked by. Sometimes we were getting bowed at by people on each side of the aisle at the same time. It was surreal. We were giggling and looking at each other and had no idea how to react.

We also saw a coffee shop with a weird name, and a Korean Twilight movie poster.

Then we went back to the convention center and watched LoL games, first Malaysia vs. Korea, then CLG (representing Canada) vs. Italy. Of course we expected CLG to win, since we'd never heard of Italy's team, and they did.

I got my picture taken with the stage.

And then I got my picture taken with DIGNITAS!

Well, not all of them. But I was still really happy. I'd also talked to Reginald for like 5 seconds the day before, and HotshotGG and the rest of CLG for like 3 seconds when they came off the stage and I was like, "Hey, that was cool" after the game. The whole time we were at the convention, I kept seeing all these "famous" people walking around and it was SUPER FUN.

in the practice area

With the train ride and exploring Busan and being in nerd heaven, this was probably the coolest vacation me and Joe have ever had.

I was pretty bummed to be home on Saturday, since the convention was still going on, but so happy to have had the experience. I listened to "Beyond the Game" like 12 times while I was doing chores. I bought a lot of tea when I went grocery shopping. I hung the WCG programs and tickets on the wall by our computers, and hung my mangled admission bracelet from the first day and Joe's from the second day on my computer monitor.

And the streamers went on the Christmas tree.