A Festivus For The Rest Of Us

We had to do something to celebrate Christmas, so off to Seoul we went. Our plan for Saturday was to do something new, preferably Korean, definitely indoors. We headed to the National Centre for Korean Traditional Performing Arts for a show. Every Saturday they have performance of Korean music and dance and it was absolutely beautiful. Later that night we met up with Stephanie and Malachy for a Christmas Eve dinner at Taj, a fantastic Indian restaurant (real Indian, not a single bit of kimchi to be seen!) and then headed to church. Myeongdong Catholic Cathedral was built in 1898 and is the only pure Gothic-style building in Korea and is meant to have just stunning interior. At least that's what we heard. The church is famous for midnight mass and we were really looking forward to seeing it, we just didn't account for the other million or so people that had the same plan as us. We got to the church around 11:15 and there was a line around the block to get in. We were there just a smidge too late and were hearded into the hall where we got to view the mass on a giant screen. It was in Korean but we still were able to participate by singing a few songs and receiving communion. It wasn't quite the grand Christmas mass we were expecting, but it was still nice.That is pretty much where the festivities stopped. Darin got his horrible cold back and it came full force out of nowhere. Christmas morning we went to a cafe thinking a little caffeine might help and we could carry on with our plans of going to Lotte World and surrounding ourselves with Christmas trees and lights but no such luck. This is how Darin looked the entire hour and a half we were there and pretty much for the rest of the day.The grand finale to the day was getting some Chinese take-out in Seoul and heading home early to get my sick husband all nestled and snug in his bed. It really didn't feel like Christmas at all but we are lucky and get to do it up right in January with all our family and friends, and we are so looking forward to it.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!