As exchange students, we’re able to return home during the xmas holidays as the university gives us three whole months off and student finance offer us reinbursement for these flights . Then why is it that me and my two friends decided to stay in Seoul, rather than go home; eat some delicious Christmas dinner, see our family and friends and just generally get a bit of everything we’ve been missing while being away? The answer is, I don’t know and I couldn’t tell you. I mean I guess if I had to think about it, maybe going home would be to difficult; getting reacquainted with everything we’ve forgotten, get used to being surrounded by our loved ones just to return and restart the struggles we faced at the beginning of the exchange. Maybe that makes sense as a reason. Anyway, we decided to stay.
Together we moved out of our student accomodation and signed a contract with a Korean landlord so that we could move into a nice house not far from where we were accustomed to. That would have been fairly easy and stress-free if it hadn’t have been for the pipe explosion due to the -16 degree weather, which left us in a temporary house over the Christmas period. To be honest, this wasn’t even our biggest problem. I think I can speak for me and my house mates in saying that the largest issue we faced was how the hell we were going to cook our Christmas dinner. It should be known that Koreans aren’t the biggest oven consumers. In fact the majority of the food here is fried or boiled, and that meant that there would be no where to roast a big ol’ turkey or anything like that. And of course, due to the temporality of our home, we only had two electric cookers and for some reason (which I still can’t remember) we decided we would cook various different dishes AND host one of our other British friends. So that was like 5 different courses for four people, on two electric cookers and with about 30cmÂČ of fridge space (this is not a joke we practically had a mini fridge in our kitchen). I think the most bizarre part of all of this for me is that I DON’T EVEN LIKE CHRISTMAS. I ACTUALLY HATE IT. Anyway, it was a lot of work but it was quite fun and we played a bunch of games and tried to forget about the fact that none of us were at home. I promise though, it was less depressing than it sounds. Actually, New Year’s Eve was the real depressing holiday but it was fine after a few teary video calls with people from home and a lot of drinks.
In retrospect, I’m glad I decided to stay in Seoul. Though three months is a long time to not have classes and not go home, but I can’t imagine if I had packed up all my things and left only to come back and restart the whole ‘being abroad’ thing again. To be perfectly honest as well, even though we did have a small party and eat a lot of food, I’m so glad I didn’t have to go through all the usual xmas traditions. There was not a Christmas tree in sight and that made me very very happy.