Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This is ridiculously late, but here's a Christmas/New Year's post.  We went to the Nutcracker Christmas Eve.  It was surprisingly good.  They didn't have an orchestra, which was strange, but the dancing was very good.

Emily thought this was funny.  I haven't cropped it yet.

Emily in front of the Christmas Tree

 For New Year's Eve, we just had some friends over at our place.  We decided to dress up for the hell of it haha.

Me, Em, Yoonie, Sally, Jung-yoon

Seoul Lantern Festival

Every year Seoul holds a lantern festival on the Cheonggyecheon in late Autumn.  We went on a Friday night, and the line was like a Disney line except a lot more efficient.  We got in after about a half hour and got to test out our new tripod.  It worked pretty well, and we ended up with some very nice pictures.

Look at all those people...

Emily with her students' favorite cartoon character Pororo

Marriage ceremony

This is where you enter the Cheongyecheon, but you can't take a picture until you're on your way out

Election!

I try not to get into political debate on the internet, because let's face it, it just causes a lot of resentment and no one ever gets anywhere.  I'm just going to post a few things I've observed on Facebook.

So, in all races: presidential, senate, and congressional - $6 billion was spent (http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/07/politics/5-things-election-night/index.html).  As of November 5th, Obama's supporters had spent approximately $931 million and Romney's supporters had spent approximately $1 billion.  What did we get out of it?  We got an even more divided and hate-filled country that I'm not sure I want to return to.

This link will show you why:
http://jezebel.com/5958490/twitter-racists-react-to-that-nigger-getting-reelected

Barack Obama is our president once again, and people are going to have to live with that.  George W. Bush beat Al Gore by a narrow margin in 2000, and Democrats were told to suck it up and live with the result, because the people had spoken.  It's 2012, and the people have spoken.  What scares me almost as much as the blatant racism from teenagers witnessed above, is the way that some religious people have used the vail of being a Godly person to criticize others for their political views.  Voting for Obama was not voting for the devil, and voting for Romney was not voting for "God's candidate."  They were both men the last time I checked, and I don't think God was running for president of the United States this year.  If I'm wrong, please let me know.  For them, please read this article:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/11/07/politics-and-our-eschatology/

If you are Christian, your political affiliation does not change your responsibilities to God or to each other.  Voting for Obama does NOT make you less Christian.  I am sorry, but the greatest responsibility you have as a Christian is to believe in Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.  So please, stop using religion to criticize those who don't have the same political ideas you do.  It just gives people even more of a reason to dislike organized religion.

Night at the Palace

Once or twice a year, the Seoul city government decides to open two of the palaces for extended hours at night.  We made a last-second decision to make the trip to 창경궁 (Chang-Kyeong Palace) to check it out.  We didn't have a tripod with us, and the lighting was tough to deal with in some places, so not all the pictures turned out well.

You can see how crowded it was from these pictures.  Funny enough, it's not the most crowded I've ever seen the palaces.  During the summer months, with all the tourists coming in from China and Japan (mostly), there isn't room to move in some parts.

Us at the end of the night. :)

태풍 (Typhoon)

We've been hearing all week about how a huge typhoon (the biggest in over a decade apparently) was supposed to rip through Seoul.  Needless to say, this didn't happen.  Instead of landing with a roar, it kind of landed with a whistle.  We got some high winds that knocked over a few signs, and a billboard or two, but nothing too serious.  It was more serious out on the coast.  There were some deaths, as well as a lot of damage.

All in all, it was nothing compared to the snow storm two years ago (most snow in 100 years) or the flooding that happened last year (the waterlevel in the Han River rose so high that it was within meters of touching the bottom of the bridge).  Last year the flooding got so bad that I was stuck on a bus for 45 minutes, and in that 45 minutes the water went from being at the top of the wheel wells of cars to completely covering them.  That was storm!

Just the Two of Us

As most people already know, we celebrated our first year as a married couple on Monday!  It's been a great first year.  We have travelled all around the world, settled back into Korea, and I've started my master's degree.  We had dinner at the same restaurant we went to the night I proposed and then followed up with cupcakes at Good Ovening, which we also went to the night I proposed.

It was our paper anniversary, I guess the cupcake wrappers count.  Right?

The happy couple.

Chinatown

Emily and I decided to take a day trip to Incheon's Chinatown.  This isn't like Chinatown in New York.  There are pretty much zero Chinese people there these days, but it was historically the place where Chinese immigrants would settle.  South Korea's main port was (and still is) Incheon, so they would live there and work on the docks.  It's also the birthplace of what all Korean people consider the quintessential Chinese dish: jajangmyeon (noodles in a black bean sauce).

The entrance to Chinatown.  I think every single Chinatown I've been to has had one.  New York's is on the bridge, Boston's is right there the second you get in.

This is the entrance to a very nice park.

This sculpture is supposed to represent US-Korean co-operation...

it kind of looks like a big piece of poop.

That is General Douglas MacArthur.

At my insistence we had to seek out the giant statue of General MacArthur.  He was the mastermind behind the Incheon amphibious landing after all.  That's about the only good thing he did during the Korean War, but that's a lot of history stuff that would just bore everyone.