First Snow!

A little late for Christmas, but today we got our first real snow in Jinyeong! I'm sure most of you back home do not understand my excitement and are thinking you have plenty more where that came from. But so far this has been a snow-less winter for us, which we haven't been complaining about, but the site of our first snow was quite fun this morning! Views out our kitchen window, looking south:

Sweeping, dusting, washing, and rearranging

To cap off our holiday weekend on Sunday, we stayed home and cleaned the apartment. After we moved the bed aside to collect the infinite amount of dust-bunnies hiding underneath, we decided to rearrange our bedroom, and we're liking the new layout!

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! It was a little tough not being home with family for Christmas, but being able to talk to our parents on Skype made it feel a lot less lonely. Christmas morning Amanda and I slept in quite late, which felt wonderful :) After we rolled out of bed Amanda prepared some spectacular french toast for breakfast, which was absolutely delicious. After we enjoyed breakfast and cleaned up a bit, we talked to our parents a bit more on Skype and then laid in bed and watched A Christmas Story; it just isn't Christmas unless you watch it at least once! It hardly felt like we were in Korea the whole day, and watching the movie reminded us both of all the traditions we enjoy back home. After our lazy afternoon we began preparing our Christmas dinner of baked chicken with homemade orange sauce, mash potatoes, deviled eggs, and perhaps a beer or two. Prior to beginning the meal preparations we made some appetizers of baked water-chestnuts soaked in soy sauce wrapped in bacon, mmm yum yum. We spent less than a couple hours preparing our feast, and it all turned out wonderful! The chicken baked better than I could have predicted in the toaster oven, the mash potatoes were exquisite, and the deviled eggs were the icing on the cake. It was a meal fit for kings, or at least one king and one queen. One of the best Christmases I've had, and certainly the most memorable first Christmas Amanda and I spent together.

 Cooking breakfast

 Wanting to eat breakfast... One of Amanda's more lovely faces.

 Baking the water-chestnuts wrapped in bacon.

 Rubbing the chicken with a garlic butter mixture before baking.

 Only one cutting casualty the whole weekend, not bad. (Stupid potatoes...)

 Our Christmas feast.

 Baked chicken.

 Mash potatoes.

 Orange sauce.

 Deviled eggs.

 Licking our plates clean.

 Wrapping the evening up with a little wine, beer and Sequence.

Christmas Eve

Well a few days ago Amanda and I celebrated the birth of Christ on Christmas Eve by spending the day enjoying a little holiday cheer. We baked some homemade chocolate chip cookies to give to our friends along with a bottle of wine. I was quite impressed with our ability to actually produce a homemade cookie given all the ingredients were in Korean, prepared the dough in a frying pan, and baked them in a toaster oven. But somehow, we came out with a cookie. They weren't as sweet as we expected, which was explained by our discovery the following day: we used 1/2 the sugar we were suppose to. After we surprised our director and our friend Kang with our gifts, we stopped home for an evening nap before heading to dinner with Glen and Luke. We devoured some delicious "won-kal-be" (that's what it sounds like) at a nearby restaurant. After we returned home our friend Kang stopped by and brought us a Christmas cake and card. The cake was splendid and even came with some Christmas decorations. We enjoyed the cake while playing a game of Sequence in the kitchen, with the only lighting being our Christmas tree. At about 11:00 we decided to open the gifts we had wrapped for each other earlier in the day. Amanda of course found some extremely adorable wrapping paper at a store, but I did not. I resorted to wrapping her gifts in reused shopping bags with plastic bags as tissue paper, and some black t-shirts of mine and also my blanket. A little elbow grease and some packaging tape later all the gifts were all set. So, we took turns opening the gifts. Neither of us knew what the other had gotten, except for the gift that Santa brought each of us (which we think he bought at Home Plus last weekend while we were shopping). So after all the fun opening, Amanda received a nice stainless steel thermos, some American face-wash, a large wood cutting board, a nightstand, and an external hard drive (from Santa). I received a very handsome Mickey Mouse pencil case that had directions inside to art stores near the hotel we'll being stay at in Seoul next weekend so that I can pick out some nice sketching utensils. I also received a gift card to our favorite local coffee shop: Cafe Bene, and some brown Hush Puppy shoes (from Santa). It was a wonderful evening spent together, with cake, games, Christmas music, and surprises :)

 The cookies didn't flatten-out like we thought they would either...

 Lighting the candles on the cake Kang gave us.

 Merry Christmas!

 Our Christmas setting.

 Amanda opening her new large wood cutting board.

 Opening her face wash.

 Opening the "wrapping paper" on the gift Santa brought her.

 The 320gb external hard drive she bought for herself, I mean Santa.

 A spiffy new thermos.

 Unwrapping the largest gift...

 A nightstand!

 Posing with her new loot :)

I turned on Christmas

It's officially Christmas in our Apartment. Well, as Christmasy as it's going to get. Last weekend at Home Plus we bought a small "Christmas Tree" that came with ribbon and lights. So, upon winding the lights around the tree, I plugged them in and essentially turned on Christmas for us. While it's quite small, it does bring some much needed holiday cheer to our place.

I CAN cook

Well, sort of... This post is a bit late, but I am still quite proud of the meal I prepared last week sometime, so I figured better late than never. I made a a breaded chicken stir-fry, thing. It was good! I cut up the chicken breasts, wet them in egg-white, then rolled them in flour and fried them in oil. While that was happening, I cut up some fresh vegies: green onion, zucchini, tomato, garlic, red pepper, yellow pepper and onion. Once the chicken was nearly finished I threw the vegies in and fried those with the chicken. And VIOLA! Below is my delicious creation:

This deserves it's own post

Holy crap! Is what I said after performing an internet speed test at work today. When I arrived there was an internet serviceman behind our reception desk fiddling with things. I asked Glen what he was doing and she said he was installing WiFi. Knowing that we already had wireless capabilities I wasn't really sure what she meant. Much later, I again asked what the serviceman had been doing. She said doing something with the internet. What exactly? Faster internet. Then I understood... So being the inquisitive person that I am, I immediately wanted to perform aforementioned test. And holy crap here are the results!

Time to buy groceries

Here's a peak at what grocery shopping is like in Korea, or rather, what we bring home after grocery shopping. We went out tonight to replenish our refrigerator and tried a new store we hadn't been to yet. It turned out to be really nice; the selection was good, it was clean, the music wasn't horribly irritating and the people working were really friendly and generous. When we were eyeing-up some bread the baker offered us some fresh bread samples that were really good. And then we turned around and saw the meat that we were looking for and asked for some. The butcher loaded up a bag and we said, that's good. Then he went and grabbed another huge scoop, doubling the amount of meat, and we said no no! But he just smiled and said service :) while only charging us for the first scoop. I think we'll go back!

Dumplings, Hite beer, Budweiser!, wine, orange juice, milk, syrup, 4 cans cider (pop), cheesy bread, 1200g meat, chicken breasts, garlic cloves, squash, soup, mushrooms, red pepper, yellow pepper, tomatoes, onions, rice cake chip things, & spaghetti sauce

 Amanda preparing to eat our delicious dinner of rice with freshly cut vegetables fried with meat

 One of our most successful and delicious meals so far :)

 The receipt. They are typically quite useless for us, only coming in Korean. Our total was 48,410 won: $42.64 USD, not bad!