Special Day

"Today is special day. Today is eat-red-bean-soup day."

This is what I heard when I arrived at school this morning, courtesy of one of our co-teachers. It turns out that red bean soup is made once a year; on winter solstice. It is a reddish brown colour, and is quite thick. It also has rice "balls" in it. There are apparently two ways to make these rice balls - you can buy powdered rice at the store, add water, and shape marble-sized balls from the mixture, or you can cook a certain variety of rice, dry it, put it in the blender, add water, and then shape the marble-sized balls. It's quite work intensive, and the result is... well, sticky.

Now that I've filled up on a lunch of red bean soup with rice balls, fried chicken, kimchi and a mandarin orange, I have an entire afternoon to spend as I please. I'm thinking about working on my taekwondo poomsae (form patterns), since I was taught a new one last night in class. I may actually have a lot of time to work on my poomsae, since our last English Town class of the year will be on the 26th. I'm very excited! After that we have a week and a half to prepare for our English camps, two and a half weeks of camps, and then we'll be off to Bangkok. Should be great!

I'm curious to know what everyone is up to for Christmas and New Year's - please leave a comment or send me an e-mail if you get the chance!