“What did you do for Chuseok?” “Errrrmmm…”

According to my students and co-teachers alike, this particular year is a pretty shitty one for national holidays as (apparently) the majority of them fall on a weekend meaning that we are not given the day off from school. My colleagues and I have gotten to a mutual stage of despair with our students at this point in the school year and have given up trying to appear professional in the face of such disappointments. I make it abundantly clear that I would offer up a digit or two to score a 7-class Thursday off and they reciprocate in kind by appearing to actively hate their entire school day. During the onslaught of Typhoon Sanba one of my fellow English teachers actually braved the apex of the storm on foot in order to get home an hour or so early. That’s proper dedication to slacking off, I felt like Employee of the Month sitting at my desk playing Spore and eating Doritos until it had passed.

The past few days (as some of you will know and some of you will not) we were given a Saturday-Wednesday weekend** in honour of Chuseok, which is basically Korean Thanksgiving. As an english person I’m not entirely certain of the importance of this holiday, but it certainly seemed a lot more grand than my Primary School’s annual Harvest Festival…difficult not to be though I suppose, when those meagre celebrations included naught but some tin can collecting and a rendition of a cauliflower-based hymn.

** ’We’ excludes my dear, poor friend Sean, who’s school decided it would be wise and not at all dickish to make him work Tuesday and Wednesday. Poor bugger.

On Friday I was surprised to receive a comically oversized ‘Roasted Seaweed Luxury Gift Set’ from my favourite co-teacher. I was also delighted, as roasted seaweed is absolutely funking delicious and I would (and now can) eat it all day when the mood takes me. I saw lots of similar gifts knocking about school that day so I assume that Chuseok is very much a food-based holiday…something I’d suspected during a recent Home Plus trip when I saw a veritable mountain of Spam Gift Sets. The students seemed more excited about receiving money than luxury processed meats but I decided against teaching them my song about cauliflower, regardless of how much it could have helped them find the true meaning of Chuseok. They already think I’m mental, best not to give them any more reason to.

If this doesn’t make you feel thankful I don’t know what will.

The best bit for me, even better than receiving a year’s supply of delectable salty snacks, was the long weekend and the opportunity to do bugger all for five days straight. I heard (read: saw on Facebook) that lots of my fellow EPIKers went on adventures to Seoul, Japan, Taiwan and many other awesome sounding places during the break, but I had vetoed this idea long ago when I launched into supreme money-hoarding mode. I decided that my personal perfect break would be to indulge my inner introvert and spend the majority of my time hanging out in and around my apartment, watching the films and TV shows I’d been downloading and ignoring, nurturing my fledgling ukulele skills, watching the NRL grand final, learning the most basic of layman’s skills on Photoshop and generally sitting in my rocking chair eating jelly until the cows came home.

On Friday night and Monday afternoon I ventured out and saw friends, which was probably a wise move as I realised that I’d managed to spend almost 48 hours in my tiny one-room apartment without actually going outside. Does that sound pathetic? If it does, I couldn’t care less. It was BRILLIANT.

Whenever I’m in situations where I have nothing planned for a few days  I always assume that I will be horribly bored within a few hours, but somehow this never actually happens. I put a lot of this down to my weirdly selective impulsiveness…give me an essay to write by next week and I will leave it until the eleventh hour, but remind me that I’ve always wanted to learn to make origami cranes and I won’t be able to go to sleep until I’ve succeeded**. Real work can wait, but inconsequential tasks cannot be delayed for a moment. I clearly haven’t grown out of this, as a much-needed Skype call with my dear friend Jim led me to spend the following 2 hours after hanging up learning to play Taylor Swift’s newest atrocity (‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’) with my aforementioned terrible ukulele skills. I’d have worried about myself if I weren’t having so much fun.

** Actual, real life example. I’d forgotten how to make them by the time I woke up.

Alas, now the dream is coming to an end and tomorrow I shall have to return to school. My co-teachers will each greet me with questions of how I spent a Thanksgiving without family to celebrate with (I have tried to explain that we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in England, with little success) and I shall look them in the eye and steadfastly lie about my glorious time off without any hint of guilt or regret. I’ll tell them that I spent every single day exploring the hidden delights of Busan, galavanting (more than twice) with my entourage and generally going outside and seeing sunlight more than I did.

I know it’s terrible to lie, but they just wouldn’t understand. They weren’t there man, they weren’t there.