Dinner Party

Last night Okk, Craig, Aaron, and our friend Brian came over for a little dinner party at my place!  Aaron played iron chef and whipped up 9 of his delicious pasta muffins!  They're seriously the greatest dinner party idea!  I, on the other hand was the appetizer and dessert chef!  I made yummy pesto and cheese french bread and these cinnamon rolls, FROM SCRATCH! The dough didn't rise like it should have, but the finger lickin' cinnamon and butter filling made up for it's denseness!   I'll definitely give them a try again one day.

(photos taken with my phone)

Craig brought Apples to Apples, so after dinner, we broke it out and played it twice!  We all love that game!  Okk had never played, but won by a landslide the first game!  Sometimes she would throw down cards she didn't even understand the meaning of and they would end up being the perfect play on words, or REALLY funny, which typically always got her card chosen as the winner! 

It was such a fun little party! :)
 Wish I could do it everyday... minus the washing the dishes by hand part!  Oh how I miss having a dishwasher (and a full size oven, 4 burners, and a microwave!)  I'm just saying!

Lunchtime!

I'll start by saying, I brought my iphone to lunch today to snap some pictures of what lunchtime is like around my school.  I picked it up and snapped a picture of my plate.  Okk laughed and said, "Chelsey!  That's not interesting.  Why are you taking that picture?!"  I'll let you decide if you think it's interesting or not!  I, for one, do! :)

So, there are 2 lunch shifts in my school's cafeteria.  The first is for 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders.  The second is for 4th, 5th and 6th graders.  I go to both, depending on the day!  Today was the 2nd lunch:

When we get to the cafeteria, we stand in this long line of students.

Sometimes we cut to the front of the line, because we're teachers and WE CAN!  

It's here that we're greeted by the cooks who dish up our food onto metal trays.  

It's always kimchi, a type of meat or fish, a vegetable, rice, and soup.... 

E.V.E.R.Y.D.A.Y.

Some kids like it while others don't!   Unfortunately they don't have a choice!  ...and every morsel should be eaten before they can get up from the table!

Here it is folks... today's lunch!  Eeekkk...  

Top left: Duk Bokgi (rice cakes, small bird eggs, and fried fish powder in red sauce) YUK!

Middle: Hard beans mixed with pecans in a brown sugary sauce.  Strange, but edible! 

Top right: It's where the kimchi goes.  The teachers have their own bowl of kimchi that tastes better than the students, and I hadn't dished up yet... hence the empty bowl.

Bottom left: Sticky white rice with yellow seeds.  Goes right to the thighs!  Ugh!

Bottom right: Soup with tiny mushrooms, green onions and garlic. Today's saving grace!

American teachers, be happy you're not a Korean teacher!  

Teachers here HAVE TO SIT AND EAT LUNCH WITH THEIR CLASSROOM STUDENTS!

  Heyran (front left) is one of the 5th grade teachers at my school.

When you're all finished, you bring your tray here where you dump any last pieces of food into this metal funnel. Then you stack your tray, throw your spoon in a bowl, and place your chopsticks in the buckets.

Then it's off to the barley water station where you fill up a metal cup with hot barely water, swish it around in your mouth to loosen the food stuck in your teeth, swallow and stack your cup in the bin.

...and that's how it's done over here at good ol'e Dae Gyo Elementary School!

Saturday Walk!

Not much is going on around here today! My internet is down at my house, so i'm stuck with my iphone's 3G network when it comes to connecting with the world! It was raining this morning, but the blue skies started to peer through around noon, so I took a long walk through the neighborhood! Here are some fun pictures I took with my iphone! :)

This was on top of the giant Lotte Department Store building near my apartment, on the 11th floor, looking North towards Nampodong!

At the Sky Park, on the roof of the Lotte building, young lovers come and hook padlocks onto the walls and throw the keys inside a glass heart shaped holder in the wall, never to be retreived again... signifying that they will be together forever!  I thought this one was fun!  It says, "Will you marry me?  Yes!"

Last but not least, I spotted this bundle of dried frogs for sale in the dried section of the Jagalchi Fish Market... poor little guys!

You can choose your name...

...at COSTCO!

I didn't have to work today because it was my school's birthday!  How awesome is that?  So, I headed over to the other side of town to pick up some stuff at COSTCO.  Last year, Aaron and I split the price of a membership, but only put his name and picture on the card.  So, when I went today and tried to use his card I got the big X, which means "not gonna happen"!  Since it was going to expire in a month anyway, I went ahead and applied for a new card.  

When I got to the name section, I wrote "Jill Osteen Anderson" (I added Aaron's last name, hoping that when we go next time, Aaron could get a free spouse card because our names are the same.)  Genius, right?!  Well, I got past the initial name check (or lack there of)... no problem!  Then when my card was printed, "Anderson" was completely omitted!   

Made me kinda wish I had written something crazy like Minney Mouse, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, or Marilyn Monroe! Good ole' Korean COSTCO!  Thanks for the laugh, and the fun name change!  I'll have to admit, I did get butterflies in my tummy when the lady called me over to give me my new card by yelling, "Jill Osteen"! 

Pasta Muffins!

Last night, Aaron came up with quite possibly the GREATEST invention of all time for our Sunday dinner together! ...Chicken pasta muffins! Well, not really muffins, but he baked them in silicone muffin cups! GENIUS, I tell ya!  GENIUS!

Inside is bow tie pasta, small slices of ham and chunks of chicken (seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt), mozarella cheese, jack cheese, 1 small dallop of cream cheese, green and red bell peppers (small slices), 1 onion, a little bit of garlic and some oil.

After everything was sauteed on the stove, he mixed it all together, and began the layering!  He put a little bit of the chicken pasta mixture in the muffin cups.  Then he put a layer of mozarella cheese and the dallop of cream cheese.

 

Then, he added some more of the pasta mix and covered the top with some jack cheese!

Then he baked it in the oven at about 400 degrees for 10-15 mins!

It was seriously the most incredibly creamy and delicious dinner I'd eaten in maybe years! Try it! You won't be sorry!

Thanks A!