Another Thanksgiving Abroad

Since the beginning of orientation I knew that with whatever friends I made I wanted to host thanksgiving. I’ve had it three out of the last four years and really enjoy bringing people together from different countries and celebrating a holiday which for some is the first time.  This dream however, almost remained just that when I found out a couple of weeks ago I had to move apartments, I didn’t know what I’d be moving into and if I could still host it. If you’ve been following along you’d know that my new apartment is exactly the same as my old one, so Thanksgiving was back on. The only caveat was we had to celebrate it on the Saturday after because Thursday was impossible, we all had school and all live in different cities.

Trying to make traditional Thanksgiving food is quite difficult in Koreaa, finding the proper ingredients in the the stores was impossible.* Koreans eat completely different than we do, so their stores carry completely different items.  My go to is a broccoli casserole, each year my friends who try it for the first time beg me to make it again.  This is true, I’m not just trying to brag about my broccoli casserole.  Ask Jose.  So this year I had to make it, but I had to buy all the ingredients online; 2 bags of broccoli, a block of sharp cheddar cheese, cooking cream and a bag of string beans because I wanted to also do string beans and bacon. It cost me about $42 and was delivered within two days in styrofoam coolers. The biggest problem was that glass baking dishes don’t exist here, Koreans don’t bake and if you wanted to buy them online they are extremely expensive, around $60-80.  I had the idea that I could bake the casserole in an all metal pot, but as Thanksgiving drew near I was worried about how it would come out.  About two days before, I realized I could make it in the biggest (extremely small by normal standards) aluminum bread pan (about the third the size of a normal bread pan). In the end they worked perfectly. I also wanted to bake a turkey, but you can’t find Turkeys in Korea. They don’t exist. I’ve yet to talk to a Korean that has tried it.

After having relocated into a new same apartment and obtaining the necessary ingredients, I was fully ready and excited for Thanksgiving. The last thing I wanted to do was give my neighbors a warning. I asked Su Hee (my coordinator) how I to say, “I’m your neighbor, I’m having friends over tomorrow/today (gave myself two options in case they didn’t answer) to celebrate Thanksgiving (she changed it to my birthday because she said they wouldn’t understand why we were celebrating Thanksgiving since the Korean one was was at beginning of October) I just want to apologize in advanced for the noise, thank you for understanding.” With all that on a piece of paper I went to the neighbor on my right first. I rang the door bell (which turns on the video feed inside the apartment so you can see who’s at the door), she answered, hello “an-yeong-ha-se-o,” I answered back “an-yeong-ha-se-o” waiting for her to open the door so I could read the rest. She didn’t, I rang again and she answered the same, I again answered waiting for her to open the door. Couldn’t she see I’m not Korean. I rang a third time feeling slightly stupid and helpless holding a bag of tangerines in my hand as a gift, but this time she didn’t answer. I stuttered some words hoping she would hear English and understand I was trying to say something and come to the door. I waited for what felt like 5 minutes when it was probably only one and walked away wondering if my Afro and facial hair scared her.

Dejected I went over to the neighbors on my left and tried, no answer. No light was on so they weren’t home. When I got back to my apartment I heard their kids running to their door, I decided to wait 20 minutes so they could settle down and tried again. Again from inside my neighbor’s a voice yelled “an-yeong-ha-se-o,” I answered back, there was a pause where she was waiting for me to say why I was ringing the door, of course I couldn’t, I had a script to stick to. She opened the door and upon seeing me closed it so only her eye was sticking out with the intent of shutting it, but I started my speech. My voice was shaky and I mispronounced almost everything. She didn’t understand so I showed her the script, covering the “today” part. She said something about having kids, I gave her the tangerines and there was nothing else I could say so I thanked her and walked away. Ten minutes later I heard a knock on my door. It was her holding one of her kids with the other next to her, she brought me 2 persimmons, a thing of yogurt and a little juice drink. I thanked her and that was the last I saw of her. The next day (Saturday(our Thanksgiving day)) before going on a run I put the bag of tangerines with the script in front of the neighbor who refused to come to the door. When I came back it was gone, so I can only assume she got the message. I’m not sure it worked though because around 9 o’clock that night one of my neighbors knocked on my door. I didn’t answer because I wouldn’t have been able to understand them and they wouldn’t have understood me. But, from that point onward we did make it a point to keep our voices down and not yell.  It’s far different from Spain where you wouldn’t hear anything from your neighbors unless you were being loud after 12.**

Overall Thanksgiving was a huge success, all my friends who could make it made it, we had delicious food, we saw the green fields earlier that day (something I had been wanting to do since the leaves started changing) and we got drunk.

*Had I lived in a bigger city it probably would have been possible to get most of this stuff

**This isn’t exactly true because on a Saturday where I was celebrating my friends birthday in my apartment one of my neighbors, which had to have been from across the street (since I had none next to me) called the cops on me around 22:30. Since it was before 24:00 they were unable to do anything.