Day 61: Holiday Fever

So I may not get much in the way of vacation here in Korea (only 2 weeks off for my whole year here!) but I think I make up for it with days off because of holidays! Korea has *a lot* of national holidays, and I get every one off (and yet still get paid for it - yah!!!) I've had two long weekends so far since I've arrived, and have a whole other line-up of holidays quickly approaching! For example, I have tomorrow off because it's Election Day! Kinda strange to have a day off mid-week, but hey it breaks up the week and I do love my time-off so I'm not going to complain!

It's really cool being able to experience holidays that I'm not familiar with, while holidays that I'm used to celebrating go completely unnoticed here. St. Patrick's Day and Easter were non-events here (surprising with the latter considering the amount of Christians there are in Korea,) yet Arbor Day (Tree Day) and Election Day (where no one actually votes, it's an internal government thing) warrant days off from work! Next month is full of holidays that are new to me and I'm quite excited about it. Children's Day, Teacher's Day, and Buddha's Birthday all take place in May, and we get days off for all of them! Right on!!! Buddhist holidays here are the legal ones, not the Christian ones, but that's because Korea was traditionally a Buddhist country for centuries. The government holidays have yet to reflect the change in the spiritual beliefs of Koreans, but they're tradition now so I don't think the Buddhist holidays are going anywhere.

Either way, having random days off here and there sounds great to me! I'm not gonna complain! Bring on the holidays!!! :-)