Happy 30th Chris!

Can you believe this weirdo is 30?!  (We love you Chris!)

To celebrate Chris's big decade change over, Stella planned an over the top birthday party at the penthouse-party-room of Hotel Mu in Beomnaegol.  Yes, I said penthouse party room.  Koreans our age usually still live at home with their parents, or are married with little babies and aren't comfortable having a party at their own place... Hence the creation of the Korean style party room, a place to go and host a party!  Funny right?!  Nothing about this place was funny though.  It was legit!  It had a huge bedroom, a full kitchen, an internet area built around a lounge area, 2 very fancy bathrooms, 1 GIANT bathtub, 2 giant rain showers, a karaoke room, A POOL, a retractable roof, and a pricetag to match!  Amazing though, right!

The first toast of the night...

Love this guy!

and I REALLY love these girls...  (Jenna, Meagan, Me, Ashley, Stella, Grace, and Juhye!)

Me, Ash and Stella.

How awesome is this penthouse patio/pool area!  This was the room with the retractable roof!  

It was incredible!

Stella even had a custom cake made for Chris, with 31 stars (1 for every 30 years and 1 for good luck!)

I was equally as excited that it was time for cake! (wink wink)

The boys (Jeff, Adam, Aaron, Birthday Boy, ??? (sorry), ??? (sorry), and Jared)

and the lovely ladies!

Everyone else stayed the night at the party room, but Aaron and I had to leave around midnight to wake up at 5:00am for a sunrise photo shoot.  We had talked about leaving at 10pm, but just couldn't leave. Sometimes deciding to be with friends over sleep just becomes the only way to go!

Chris and Stella, You two completely outdid yourselves!  It was such a great night! :) 

Happy 30th Chris!  Hope it's the best decade yet!

Homemade Tagalongs!

It's been 4 years since I've indulged in one of my favorite girl scout cookies!  4 years people!!  While my favorite are Tagalongs, Aaron's are Thin Mints!  I found this recipe for Vegan Thin Mints and was determined to make them as a surprise for A last night.  Unfortunately, my trusty baking store in the foreign market doesn't carry peppermint extract like I hoped they would... And "No", lady at the store, "the mint liquor that you sell will not work as a substitute for peppermint extract!"  Nice try though!  I went home last night a little defeated and frustrated that every time I try to cook or bake something fun, there is at least one ingredient that can not be found in Korea!  I digress...

Aaron got home just as I was finishing dinner and asked why I had Zec (제크) Crackers (Korea's RITZ equivalent) on the table, since we never buy stuff like that.  I explained that I wanted to make him Thin Mints, but that I couldn't find the peppermint extract.  He immediately said, "Let's put peanut butter on these and dip them in the chocolate!"  YES!  YES!  YES!  If I can't make Thin Mints, I'll make Tagalongs!  

I love this man!

Let the tutorial commence...

INGREDIENTS:

- melting chocolate

- peanut butter

- RITZ (or Zek - 제크) crackers

TOTAL TIME:

Prep & Cooking time = 30 minutes or less

STEP 1:

Spread some creamy peanut butter on a cracker.

STEP 2:

Place a 2nd cracker on top of the peanut butter, like a sandwich.

STEP 3:

Put the "melting chocolate" into a small bowl, and drop it into a pot of water on low/medium heat. 

(Wait about 5-8 minutes for the chocolate to completely melt.) *My chocolate looks weird because I tried to melt it in the pot, before Aaron told me about doing it this way. Good thing I've got him around.

STEP 4:

Dip one side of the cracker sandwich into the chocolate...

...and lay it onto a sheet of wax paper.

STEP 5:

Set the 1/2 dipped cookies in a cool place and hang out for a little while, while the chocolate hardens.  I chose to hang with A and Mav.  Wouldn't you?!  :)  Since I don't have a big refrigerator to put my cookies in to set the chocolate, I put mine on the window sill, since it's 40% outside and the chocolate hardened right up in no time!  Clever, eh?!

STEP 6:

Then, re-dip the cookies, covering the opposite side with chocolate.  Place them back onto the wax paper and wait for them to harden.

... Wala, you've got homemade Osteen style Tagalongs!  How easy is that?!

Oh, and for the record, they were scrumptious!
*** UPDATE: I made these same cookies a couple days later, but omitted one of the crackers, and WOW!  They were even better and had the same texture as Tagalongs!  You'd be the life of the party if you brought these cookies along!  :)

Yeongdo, after dark!

There's something magical, or maybe just mysterious, about my neighborhood, after dark!  I grabbed my camera and took a couple shots around my apartment a couple nights ago.  

Welcome to my neighborhood.

We don't have drive-through restaurants here. Instead, we have walk-up mom and pop Korean style joints!

There's a noraebang (karaoke place) on EVERY street near my apartment.  

On my tiny street alone, there are 4!

How'd you like to live down that alleyway!?

This is the main street that I walk up and down every time I take a bus or the subway somewhere!

I even have a beautiful view of Yeongdo Bridge and Busan Tower from my neighborhood.  This isn't the greatest picture, but I wanted to include it because I think it's a beautiful sight!

There are some scandalous areas on the island, and I happen to live right smack dab in the middle of one of them!  You've heard me talk about the "prossy (prostitute) van" that comes and drops off women to serve drinks strip at the karaoke bars across and next to my apartment every night.  With that said, it's not uncommon to see posters like these taped up on the walls. 

I love that there are ALWAYS people out and about in Korea!

This is one of the 4 Noreabang's / massage parlors on my street.

Old Korean women roll these gigantic seafood carts down the street and set up their restaurant along the harbor as soon as the sun goes down!  I'm ashamed to say that this area is less than a minute walk from our apartment and we've never eaten at one!  I'm gonna make it a point to eat here before we leave!  

... and this is the street I walk down, everyday, to get to work in the morning!

That's it for the night time tour of my neighborhood!  Hope you enjoyed it!

Carving oranges for Halloween!!

There are a lot of things you have to give up when you live outside of the US!  For me, carving pumpkins at Halloween is one of those things!  There just simply ARE NOT pumpkin patches, or pumpkin carts at every intersection!  In fact, I've only ever seen big American style orange pumpkins in Korea ONCE, and that was 3 years ago!  Sooo... This year, I decided I was going to put my resourceful cap on and carve something - the closest thing I could think of was an orange!  Turns out, it was actually really simple to do, much cheaper, and just as much fun! 

Step 1:

Find an orange that can sit up on it's own and cut the top off, just like you would a pumpkin.

Step 2:

Take a spoon and dig between the orange's peel and the orange inside.  This is actually easier than you'd think.  It separates pretty easily and then you can scoop the orange out!  When you're finished, run your orange peel under the kitchen faucet to get all the sticky juice out! 

Step 3:

Carve your orange peel with a regular kitchen knife.  The sharper the better.  Then, throw a candle in, light it up, and enjoy your mini jack-orange-o'lantern!

Grading Papers - Korean style!

I got to my desk this morning and was promptly told that my 3rd and 4th period classes were cancelled. Then, my 2nd period class never showed up! AWESOME! Just when I thought I was free and clear to have the whole day to play around, I was handed a GIANT pile of tests to grade!  7 classes worth to be exact, with between 30-40 questions each.  That's 245 questions to check if you do the math! This wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the fact that Korean's don't just check the wrong answers, they circle the right answers too!  (Grading tests this way literally takes about 10 times longer!) Oh, and it has to be done with a red crayon,  Nothing else will do!

After grading for a couple hours, I said to one of my co-workers, "In America, we only check the wrong answers.  Circling all the right answers like this is taking me forever!"  Her response was, "Oh, I never thought about that.  It does save time, doesn't it?"  How has that never crossed anyone's mind around here?!  Seriously!

Ah, Korea!