Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 163 of the Q-Lips English podcast.
Happy New Year.
Happy 2026.
Guys, it is an honor and a privilege to be your English teacher here for another year.
So thank you for clicking play and joining me for today's bonus episode.
If you're new to the series, let me quickly explain what it's all about.
My name's Andrew.
I will be your study buddy here.
And what I do in our bonus episode series is I tell you some stories from my everyday life.
I'm a Canadian who lives abroad in Seoul, South Korea.
And I hope by listening to my daily stories you will be able to improve your English fluency, to understand more English, to be a clearer and more confident communicator, to grow your vocabulary all of these things.
So if those are some of the things that you would like to achieve with your English, then I'm here to help you.
And I really do think that you will enjoy this series.
Now for today's story.
I'm going to tell you about how I've been spending the holidays here in Seoul.
I'm going to tell you about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
But before we get started with my story, I have a huge announcement for you.
That's right.
It is the Q-Lip sale.
Each and every year we have a New Year sale just to welcome the new year and start things off on the right foot.
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So this sale is available to absolutely anyone.
It doesn't matter if you are a new member or a member who wants to renew their membership, or maybe you're in like the middle of your membership period and you'd like to extend for an extra year at the sale price, no problem.
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To become a member and get the sale price, you don't need a coupon code or anything.
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The discount is automatically applied.
And guys, I really do think that this is a tremendous value.
With the discount applied, the yearly membership works out to around $6.58 per month.
I did the math.
I calculated it.
So that's a really incredible value, considering all the awesome tools that you get as a.
To tell you the truth, there are so many things you get as a Q-Lips member that sometimes I have a hard time remembering them all.
So I wrote them down on my phone.
Let me just read them here to you.
As a Q-Lips member, you will get ad-free audio.
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Sometimes we have like special bonus episodes or special extended episodes for members and all of these things.
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So I think it's really a tremendous value.
I challenge you, in fact, to try and find more bang for your buck, a different way to study and learn English that is A as effective and B as cost-efficient, as We know that you guys work hard for your money and I work hard for my money as well.
And we just want to make sure that it is affordable for everyone around the world to study English with us.
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Visit our website QLipscom right now and you can sign up and study with me and study with our team and study with our community in 2026.
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Hope to have you join us as a Q-Lips member in 2026.
Okay, and with that announcement out of the way, why don't we jump into my story for today.
So I'm going to tell you about how I've been spending the holidays here.
And in Seoul, it's been pretty wintry.
It's been cold and it's really weird.
It's like yo-yo winter.
It'll be super cold for a bit and then it will warm up for a bit and then super cold and warm up.
And as I'm recording this right now, it's a little bit chilly outside.
However, there's been no snow.
So we didn't have a white Christmas in Seoul, unfortunately, but it doesn't matter.
We still had a great Christmas with some wonderful sunny weather, in fact.
So let's start with Christmas Eve.
And my wife did all the planning for Christmas Eve, which was awesome.
I love when that happens and I can just follow her around and she takes responsibility for everything.
So let's see.
The first thing that we did was we went to an area of the city called Puamdong, which is a real hidden gem in Seoul.
And I don't even really want to promote it too much because it's like this hidden cool spot.
And a lot of areas in Seoul these days are like really popular tourist destinations.
And when you visit them, they're just not the same as they used to be like five or 10 years ago.
And they're changing and evolving.
And that's great.
And lots of visitors are there and new people are coming and hanging out with them.
But at the same time, they're losing a little bit of their charm, I would say.
However, Buamdong is like this hidden gem in Seoul that really feels almost like a city within the city.
It has a totally different kind of quaint feeling.
I would say it's almost like as as close to as a European village as you could get in Seoul.
At least that's sort of how I would describe it.
And one of the reasons why it's isolated and feels quite different from other parts of the city, I believe, is because there's no subway access.
So if you want to go there, you have to drive your car or take a taxi or get on the bus or walk or ride your bike.
It's actually a place where I've ridden my bicycle through many times when riding in the mountains.
However yeah, Buamdong is this hidden gem, this little neighborhood that's just lovely here in Seoul.
So, first of all, we went to that neighborhood and we went to a cafe that my wife wanted to visit, which was just this really lovely cafe.
And it had a great view of So we could sit at the window.
We sat at the bar.
There was this bar by the window, this huge open window where you could look out into the neighborhood of Phu Am Dong.
And there were lots of really cool houses to look at and just a nice view of a kind of bougie Seoul neighborhood.
To be honest,
Buamdong is maybe more of an upper class neighborhood.
There are a lot of really fancy big houses there.
And so it was cool to sit in this cafe because you could look out over some of these fancy big houses.
And yeah, I really like looking at the different architecture and different styles of houses in the city.
So that was a great view for me.
And this cafe was cool because they played Brazilian music, Brazilian jazz and samba.
They had a great stereo and they were playing vinyl records.
So that was right down my alley.
I was down with the soundtrack and the food was good as well.
We ordered kimbap and a sandwich and French onion soup plus two Americanos.
So a pretty eclectic menu.
The kimbap.
Again, like I said, Buamdong is more of an upscale, a little bit slightly upper class neighborhood compared to some other areas of the city.
And the price at this cafe reflected that because this kimbap was definitely bougie kimbap.
It was like double the price of regular kimbap.
And for those of you who are not familiar with kimbap, this Korean food, it is just this, really staple of the Korean diet, a really kind of common Korean style fast food.
Perhaps it looks visually a little bit like a sushi roll, but it tastes quite different than sushi.
And there are tons of different varieties, but usually there's vegetable and maybe a pickle, some kind of pickled vegetable, and some meat sometimes some kind of meat and then there's rice and it's wrapped with a dried seaweed called gim, and then there is some sesame oil that's placed on the outside.
So Super delicious kind of Korean fast food.
Maybe I could call it Korean fast food.
Korean listeners, let me know if you agree with that.
However, usually a roll of kimbap is, I don't know, maybe around 5,000 won or a few US dollars.
However, this was over double that price.
So it was expensive, bougie kimbap, but the presentation was lovely and it was super, super delicious.
Some of the most... delicious gimbap I've had in a long time.
I wouldn't really say it was traditional gimbap, but yeah, it was awesome.
So we enjoyed the gimbap and the soup and the coffee and the nice view and the nice music in this cafe.
And it was just a really cozy, warm kind of place to hang out and spend Christmas Eve.
So that was our first stop.
And then after that we walked from Puhamdong down to another one of our favorite areas of Seoul, which is called Seochon, or in English I guess that would be the West Village.
So the West Village area of Seoul.
And one of my favorite bakeries in the city, I'm going to give them a shout out.
It's called Scoff Bakery.
One of my favorite bakeries in the city is there.
And we went to go to Scoff to get some bread for Christmas morning.
I can't remember all of the different kinds of goodies we got at the bakery, but we definitely bought scones, because the scones there are amazing and we like to eat those for our breakfast.
So we got scones.
Some scones.
Ah, my wife got a pecan pie, a slice of pecan pie.
And I got a gingerbread cookie and maybe some, ah, a mince tart, mince tart.
Like, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the owner of Scoff Bakery is actually from the UK.
So at Christmas time and the holidays he has very authentic UK style desserts and breads and cookies.
And so we had this mince tart, which was delicious.
And yeah, it was very good.
So we picked up some bread from Scoff at the bakery.
And then right very close to the bakery, there's an arcade.
And I always, every time we're in West Village, I love to go to the arcade.
They used to have, I'm so sad, they used to have Tetris and Street Fighter.
And now both of those games have disappeared.
And it's so sad to see the disappearance of old style video arcade games because they're so fun to play, especially Tetris.
My wife and I loved to sit in that little arcade and play Tetris together.
But the Tetris game is gone now.
And so we were sad when we visited the arcade and we looked around.
We're like, ah, what can we even play?
There's like Bobble Bobble and some different fighting game.
I can't remember which one, but not like a street fighter.
Someone that's not as fun.
However, there was a really old style whack-a-mole game.
You guys know whack-a-mole?
It's that like mechanical game, where you have to hold a kind of mallet or a hammer and these little wooden groundhogs or moles.
They pop up from the game and they only pop up for a second and you have to try and bop them on the head as fast as you can.
And if you can do it quickly and bop all of the different moles as they pop up, well then you can get more points.
And so I think you get to play for a minute or 90 seconds and you have to see how many moles you can successfully whack and bop with the hammer in that short time.
And so...
We decided, okay, let's play whack-a-mole.
We haven't, I mean, I haven't played this game since I was a child.
So it was really fun to see it there.
And my wife and I are both really competitive people.
So just before I was about to put the coin in the game to start, she was like, let's make a bet.
Who can win?
I think she...
She must have felt very confident because she was wanting to make a bet right before we even started and before she even saw my skills.
And so, yeah, my wife's a competitive person.
I'm a competitive person.
So I said, OK, it's on.
What do you want to bet?
And her first suggestion was like some money.
I think she said, like, let's bet five dollars or some some equivalent of that in Korean money.
And I said, no way, I've got a way better bet idea.
And that is walking the dog tomorrow morning.
Christmas Day.
It's like a holiday.
It's a lovely day to just get some extra sleep.
And I think we are both sort of looking forward to maybe sleeping in a little bit longer than usual.
However, because we have our dog, Owa, who's actually just sleeping here beside me.
She's great at sleeping.
She can sleep in every day.
However, we can't.
We have to get up and walk her every morning.
And my wife and I usually take turns and I end up usually doing most of the morning walking, which is why I challenged her to walk the dog on Christmas morning, because I thought if I win and then she has to walk the dog on Christmas morning, then I can sleep in.
And so...
That's the bet that we went for.
Walking the dog on Christmas morning.
The loser has to get up early to take the dog out and the winner can just sleep in.
Okay, so high stakes.
It was on.
And so I played the whack-a-mole game first.
I was up first and I felt like I played really well.
I didn't miss any moles.
They were popping up and I was whacking them.
However, it's like really difficult.
You have to move quickly and go fast.
And I was pooped by the end of the minute or 90 seconds, whatever it was.
It was exhausting and it took a lot of my energy up.
So I did pretty well.
I felt like I really nailed a lot of them.
And then it was my wife's turn.
And I don't know if my wife had a special strategy before we even started, like if she had strategy prepared going into the game.
Or if she was just trying to improve upon my style because she had a slight advantage, right?
She got to see how long the game lasted for, how I played, what my score was.
So she was going in with a slight advantage, I would say.
And she took this really unique style where she almost did like a double hit.
Every time the mole popped up, she tried to hit it twice, right?
So, you know, I played the drums and it almost reminded me of when I'm practicing the drums.
Sometimes you want to do this double roll.
We call it like a two stroke roll, where you hit the drum head two times with just one movement of your arm or of your hand.
And so she was doing this kind of two-stroke whack-a-mole, like she would hit it once but let the hammer bounce in her hand so she would get two hits.
So when I saw her doing this, I was like, wow, that's a crazy strategy.
I'm dead meat.
There's no way that I'm going to win this game.
I'm toast.
However, maybe that slowed her down.
I don't know.
It was super, super close as the time was counting down, like a few seconds remains.
I could see my score and she was getting very, very close to my score.
And when she was almost at my score, then the game finished.
And I guess she was a little bit too slow with those double hits.
Just a little bit too slow because I ended up winning.
So that was awesome.
I won the whack-a-mole game.
I was in a great mood, having a lovely Christmas Eve at the arcade, at the bakery, at the cafe.
And then after that, it was time for dinner.
Originally, my wife and I wanted to go to this French-Canadian restaurant that serves almost like a Canadian style, I would say Christmas Eve dinner.
And so we thought that would be nice, for me at least, to have some traditional Western holiday fare at Christmas.
However, when we called to make a reservation...
They were sold out.
There were no seats available.
And so we went back and forth.
Oh, do you want to try this restaurant for Christmas Eve?
This restaurant, this restaurant, and every restaurant that we tried to make a reservation at...
It was impossible.
They were all sold out.
All of the spaces were filled and there were just no places for us to go for our Christmas Eve dinner.
And my wife called around and called around.
And then finally, we settled on an Italian restaurant in this other area of Seoul called Daehangno.
And this area of the city... is a place, I guess, where students hang out.
There are quite a few universities around that area.
And in fact, the name even has the word university in it.
Daehangno means like university street.
So I was a little bit concerned.
Not concerned, but I was like hmm, I bet this restaurant that we're going to go to It's going to just have like university couples.
And here in Korea Christmas is rather a romantic day especially, I think, for younger people who are maybe just dating and are not married yet.
I think often on Christmas Eve, they like to go out and have a date together.
It's like this romantic time to spend with your significant other or your partner.
And so yeah, we got to the restaurant and we walked in and exactly what I predicted in my mind we were the oldest couple.
In fact, like sitting right beside us, it was really cute.
There were this like younger couple on a date and the guy was in his military uniform, because military service in Korea is mandatory for all guys.
So they have to do a year and a half or two years of mandatory military service.
And so often you'll see some younger guys, usually they go when they're in their early 20s, right?
Like 21, 22 is the most common time to serve, I believe.
And so sometimes, when they're on leave or they're on break, you'll see them walking around in their military outfit.
And the couple that was sitting beside us.
The guy was wearing his military camouflage fatigues and he was with his girlfriend.
And I thought oh, how excited must he be to get leave on Christmas Eve to go to Seoul and to meet his girlfriend for a romantic dinner date.
So nice.
And of course, I was very excited for my romantic dinner date with my wife as well.
So we had Italian food.
The menu item that I wanted to order was actually sold out.
It wasn't even available.
So...
That was a little bit disappointing, but the other food options were very nice and we had a lovely Italian dinner and that pretty much wrapped up Christmas Eve.
And then fast forward to the next day, Christmas morning.
Let me just tell you about it briefly here.
I slept in a little bit.
My wife got up to walk the dog.
But pretty much by the time she got back home from the dog walk, I was making coffee and getting ready.
And we just had like a nice, relaxed Christmas morning.
Just the two of us.
Really sunny, beautiful weather.
A little chilly. but no snow, unfortunately.
So we just enjoyed some coffee and those delicious scones that we got from the bakery, put on some Christmas music and we did our gift exchange.
Actually, my wife and I promised each other... that we wouldn't spend too much money on each other.
But we both didn't hold our end of the bargain.
And my wife ended up buying me a pair of running shoes.
And I ended up getting her some sunglasses and a lamb's wool hat, like a winter toque or beanie.
In Canada, we say toque in the rest of the English world.
I think beanie is more common of a word to use.
So this lovely made in Scotland beanie, at least I thought it was lovely.
And I think it looks really good on her as well.
So yeah, we didn't hold up our original plan of just buying each other little tiny gifts for Christmas.
We both broke the rules and spoiled each other a little bit.
But yeah, I was super stoked to get a brand new pair of running shoes, some Adidas shoes.
And after the Christmas morning and the activities, the gift giving and the lounging and the hanging out and the breakfast eating.
After all of that calmed down, then I had to get out there and try out my new shoes, especially because the weather was so nice.
So I got on my runners and I went out for lunch.
Yeah, a little run.
I don't know how far I went.
Not too far.
Maybe just like five, six kilometers and came back home.
And I thought originally for Christmas Day, I just wanted to stay home and relax.
But the weather was so nice that I told my wife, we got to go back out.
So yeah.
We went out on Christmas Day back again to a different cafe for some coffee.
And then we went to a restaurant again for dinner.
And we just ate Korean food, a food called gamjatang, which is like the stew with vegetables and pork.
And it's really delicious.
So We had gamjatang for dinner.
And yeah, not very traditional Western Christmas dinner, but a delicious dinner nonetheless.
And that pretty much wrapped up my Christmas Eve and Christmas.
So it was an awesome couple of days.
Nice to relax.
Nice to get out there, enjoy some awesome foods.
And of course, awesome company with my wife as well.
Guys, thank you for making it all the way to the end of my story here.
If you did something special for Christmas.
If you celebrate Christmas, let me know what you got up to.
You can share your story with me and the rest of our community on our Discord server.
It's free for everyone to join and the link to do that is in the description for this video.
So guys have a great week up ahead.
We'll be back soon with another brand new Q-Lips episode very soon.
In fact, Indiana and I just finished recording an episode all about our goals and plans and resolutions for 2026.
And we'll be releasing that episode very soon.
Plus we have our speaking classes as well.
If you want to see the schedule here for January, it's now online and available for you.
You can just follow the link that we'll put in the description for this episode to check and see what time the classes start for you in your time zone.
And of course, please don't forget about the New Year's sale.
This is your best opportunity to become a Q-Lips member for a great affordable price.
Okay, guys, thank you and take care.
We'll talk to you next time.
Bye-bye.
