I'll Be Home for Christmas.... Sometime

Living in Korea, I have realized there is one major downside. What do you think? Being away for the holidays. I'm going on 2 years of being away from home, which isn't a problem for me. I've gotten used to it. My college was a few hours away, I studied abroad in Japan, and I temporarily lived down south. That's no biggie. I'm pretty lucky as far as being away from home is concerned. I get to talk to my family on skype quite a bit, especially my dad. 

When the holidays roll around, I find myself homesick. Any other time, I’m surprisingly not. I've become really comfortable living in Korea. To me, this is home. Sure, there are obviously things I miss back home that I can’t get here. For example, I miss Primanti Bros., Sarris Candies (let’s face it, chocolate just isn’t the same here), and I even miss driving a car sometimes. I don’t even know if I even remember how to drive at this point. When I come home, pedestrians beware! I’m might forget that you can’t drive on sidewalks in America. 

Holidays like Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas are such a big deal in America. The most noticeable difference is Christmas time. We have our own Thanksgiving here in September, which is a big holiday to celebrate. But Christmas time just feels empty. You can hear Christmas music in the stores and occasionally you find a mini tree here and there. But there’s no spirit in the holiday season. It’s almost as if they know it’s a big deal in other places so they jump on the Christmas bandwagon, but so many people don’t really celebrate it. So if you take away the music and the trees, it’s just another normal day. You won’t see Santa anywhere or stockings hanging.

As my brother said, it’s become normal for one of us to miss a holiday or 2. But missing every holiday for 2 years is down right weird. I miss the food. This Thanksgiving, trying to find pumpkin pie, let alone turkey was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. My Thanksgiving was spent eating Korean food that I eat on a daily basis. It didn’t feel like a holiday. 

Hopefully this Christmas, there’ll be a little more cheer! Stay tuned to find out...

Peace & Love,
Elissa Rae

Tuna & "Elissaisms"

Everyone has their blonde moments and I'm no exception. My family doesn't even refer to my "moments" as blonde anymore. Calling my "moments" blonde just didn't cut it apparently, so they made up a new name for them. They're called "elissaisms". I'm guessing the reason for a name of it's own is mostly due to my cooking skills. Let's take a look... 

First, let's look back to college. It all happened in the apartment building where I lived. One Saturday afternoon I decided to cook myself some chicken fajitas and ended up with the entire building evacuated and a visit from the fire department. Let's just say people where not happy and obviously I played dumb as to who set off the alarm. 

Then there's the infamous "tuna melt" situation. When I was in high school, I was trying to be a good sister and attempted to make my first ever tuna melt for my brother, who was home on break. Being that I never cooked before, it was destined for disaster. And let me tell you, I took disaster to the next level. I handed the tuna melt to my brother, who then looked at me awkwardly and said, "what happened?".  In the moment, it came out wrong, but I responded with "I was waiting for the tuna to melt" which was not at all what I meant. I realized immediately that I would never live it down and I was right. To this day, I am constantly reminded of my cooking skills, especially when it comes to tuna melts.

Now for the most recent incident. This story also involved tuna. This past Sunday I was hungry and thought tuna sounded good and it was quick. I had some difficulties opening the can and when I finally opened it, the lid cut my hand pretty bad. I figured I would put a bandaid on it and in a few days it would be alright. Well the next day, my finger was still bleeding. A package of bandaids and 24 hours later, I decided to go to the hospital since the bleeding wouldn't stop. Oh, and did I mention, it was Halloween... So the doctor came over and checked out my hand, and after making things 10 times worse, he motioned for me to move to a table with needles sitting out. As many of you know, although I have tattoos, I don't do well with shots. So naturally, I panicked and tried to runaway. The doctor grabbed my hand and was nice enough to reassure me the it would be very painful. Thank you for the comforting words! I would rather someone lie to me and tell me how everything will be okay. But this wasn't the case and it did hurt, a lot! So I turned to my friend to help me get through it while the doc. so kindly gave me that painful shot and then stitched my finger up, but when I looked over she looked like saw a ghost. Here, there was a guy who was just walked in that cut off 2 of his fingers. After my finger was stitched up, we headed over to another bed and waited. The nurse gave me a shot to see if I was allergic to the medicine. While we waited, not only was there a man with fingers missing, but there was also a baby who was crying and couldn't stop asking to leave that had to get a shot in his behind. I think we all thought we were going to pass out at any moment. Luckily, I wasn't allergic and we got out of there as fast as we could. Happy Halloween everyone!

Lesson learned. Be careful when opening tuna cans. Hopefully no more incidents anytime soon. Stay tuned for more tuna-less stories...

Peace & Love,
Elissa Rae

Gaga Goes Trick-or-Treating

Hope everyone had a good Halloween & got lots of treats. Can you guess what we are?? 

Stay tuned...

Peace & Love,

Elissa Rae