Here are some recent sets of photographs. They are the same as the sets I uploaded on Facebook so you may have seen them already.

20071231 Killer kimchi - Facebook
This month was pretty social due to leaving parties, Christmas etc. We spent time in bars and coffee shops.

20071226 Hi Seoul Lucevista - Facebook
On boxing day a few of us headed down to GwangHwaMun to check out the Hi Seoul light festival. It was nice seeing the man made river lit up with families walking below where we were standing. However, the lights were all kind of the same.

Christmas has always been a time where I get together with my family and actually spend some good time with them. This year, however, I didn’t get a holiday long enough to go home. Since I’ve been in Korea not once have I felt homesick but the thought of not seeing my family on Christmas was oddly unsettling.
Anyway I decided to call up some friends and plan something for Christmas day. Some of my friends suggested we cook up something traditional and have a few drinks at my place. So I got to work inviting people. I kind of over invited but people canceling at the last minute is a common thing with Koreans. Christmas eve ended up being a big night of heavy drinking for a lot Koreans - my friends and myself included. I awoke Christmas morning with messages from a few people saying they had hangovers and couldn’t attend. That made cooking easier! About five friends ended up stopping by. While they chatted we cooked up some mashed potatoes, veggies, beans and some chicken (since I don’t have an oven to cook a turkey). It came out pretty well and we ate it with a bottle of wine. Afterwards we chatted the night away while drinking. My Christmas wasn’t so lonely after all.

Recently election campaigns are in full swing here. Back in Wales the campaigns are just flyering of posters, cars driving around talking to people and visits to community halls to voice their opinions and plans in the hope to get elected. If you were a little ignorant you probably wouldn’t even notice it’s that time of year. In Korea however it’s a little more extreme. For the past few days I’ve been awoken by loud Korean pop music; walked through groups of people in some sort of brightly coloured outfit bowing in sync asking the passers by to vote for them; groups of dancers do a cheer and routine for their leader; vans with a huge screen attached and a stand for speeches drives around and stops wherever to try and get the support of the passers by; and old women stand in the middle of the road and bow to passing cars (well at least I saw that a few times). I don’t know but I guess this type of campaign is effective in Korea. It just seems a little superficial or desperate to hire dancers to entertain on the street in the hope of votes but as far as building up party awareness it seems to work pretty well. Honestly, I don’t know a lot about Korean politics so I don’t feel I should criticize what I see until I have a deeper understanding of what’s going on. I just felt the urge to share my observations.