Alone for the holidays... maybe not!

This is the first time I’ve ever been away from home for the holidays. Love ‘em or hate ‘em you do want to be around your family during the holidays. My trip began as Christmas season was in full swing which made it very weird saying goodbye. Most of my family gave me my gifts before I left and threw many goodbye dinners. It really was weird saying goodbye, but I did. Reminders were everywhere!

Christmas tree at Seoul City Hall

Funny enough reminders of Christmas were everywhere in Seoul. There were plenty of Christmas trees, some of which were quite spectacular. As well there were the traditional Christmas tunes playing in the shopping malls. The one that I really found cute was the k-pop version of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, made me chuckle but a little sad at the same time as it reminded me that I’m on my own. I was also in town for Santacon, which is a global gathering of people dressed up as santa. As I was coming home, Hongik University station was overrun with people dressed up as santa singing carols. What was great was that it was all foreigners and they invaded the bar area. It was quite the night lol! I managed to survive the holiday season in Seoul, but that was just the beginning, as they hadn’t even happened yet.

SataCon @ Hongik Univ. Station - Seoul                                 

One day surfing on facebook I somehow glanced at the people you may know... portion of the newsfeed and saw a name that I knew well many years ago. Funny enough... he was living in Sydney. Got in touch and found out he was going to be on his own for the holidays as well, so what better way to spend the holidays than together? Rob was nice enough to let me crash on his couch for both Christmas and NYE and every day in between, and a bit after. I got to have my first ever Filipino meal when a coworker of his graciously invited us both to spend Christmas Eve with their family. Christmas day I spent visiting the Opera House which gave me an amazing photo op as nobody was around, as well as stuffed my face with yakiniku, the Japanese BBQ. It was a lot of fun and definitely helped relieve some of those holiday blues being on the other side of the world. It was really odd Skyping with the family as I’m pretty much a day ahead, and the Christmas moment was done and it was Boxing day by the time we spoke.

Christmas with my mates in Sydney.

It’s definitely weird being surrounded by beaches and palm trees when you’re so used to snow and pine trees. I was a little shocked as well as the Christmas decorations weren’t as prevalent as they were in Seoul. In the end it just didn’t feel the same... but don’t get me wrong, it was still great to be on a beach on Boxing Day rather than freezing my butt off! I was very fortunate to be taken in by Rob and his friends at Christmas time. I had originally resigned myself to spending the day on Skype and watching Die Hard movies (truly a guy oriented Christmas movie series!) Sounds like fun doesn’t it... thankfully it didn’t come to that...