Sunday, February 17, 2013

Over the past hundred days. . .or so. . .but not since my last blog. . .^^


    So, a little more, now, than 100 days ago I left Korea not knowing for sure what was going to happen next.  I did know that, as the luckiest girl in the whole entire world, I was leaving Ulsan to go on the trip of a lifetime to South Africa.  I promise I will blog about that soon, hopefully later this week, however, even though it's been a while since I got back I still haven't been able to get through the thousands of pictures that I took there.  ^^


    After saying goodbye for what I thought was maybe the last time to my lovely South African friends
I got on a plane and flew (for like half of my life) to my Grandma's house and stayed there for almost a month.  And let me just say, staying with her all that time was incredibly precious.  I could never possibly explain how much I enjoyed talking to her all morning while drinking coffee and just hanging out with her, she's absolutely amazing and I hope I get the chance to spend time with her like that again next time I'm home.  Seeing the rest of my family was fantastic, I hadn't seen them in forever, and it was really nice to hang out with them.

   After that I went home and spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family (all of these stops I feel like I should blog thoroughly. . .maybe I will) which was, of course, fantastic.  Then I decided crazily enough that it was time to go back to Korea, back to my old job and crazy students, so here I am back. . .and here's a bit of what has happened so far.

   I spent New Years with my family and got on a plane the next day headed for Seoul.  I had SO much stuff!  And Seoul is quite a ways from Ulsan but fortunately Julie decided to take a bit of vacation so that we could hang out in Seoul together for a few days before she helped me lug all of my stuff home.

    Julie booked a hotel ahead of time, the lovely Lotte Hotel in Seoul, which was just about the nicest place I'd ever seen and quite a way to come back into the country.  ^^  Everything was still decorated with Christmas lights, millions of them it seemed, and the whole city was actually quite lovely.


In front of a giant Christmas tree. . .we watched someone slip and fall on the ice from here. ..
We wandered around the shopping district around our hotel for a while and found one of the mega department stores that have a ridiculous selection of food shops and restaurants on the basement floor and we got some delicious food.  ^^


LOTS OF SUSHI
We got a lot more actually than what is in the video. . .and it's cool because the color plate tells you how much the sushi is ^^  I always wanted to try one of these and it was pretty awesome.


Sushi
 Then, after a couple of days of wandering around Seoul, we headed back to Ulsan to see if things were okay, things like do I have an apartment, little details like that.  But then it was time for more food. . .and a night out in the old town ^^  And guess what, almost the whole old gang was back (or has come back since ^^)
Gal Mae Gi with Julie and Albert

yay!
And here's a video explaining. . .hmm.

And because all we seem to do is eat. ..here's the three of us making chocolate chip cookies.

Now, chocolate chip cookie MAKING is a really big deal because in order to MAKE cookies you have to HAVE an oven, which NO ONE has.  But, Lindie did.  And Lindie left it at my apartment when she left because I was going to try to sell it, but that didn't happen, so I left it in my old apartment and asked the girl who was moving in to look after it or me until I got back.  Somehow or another the thing vanished and no one was quite sure who had it and the packages upon packages of cookie mixes were sitting idle and weeping softly.  Amazingly we managed to hut the thing down!  YAY!  And we rejoiced.  YAY!  And we made cookies immediately, oatmeal, chocolate chip, cranberry cookies of our very own in our very own oven with our very own Betty Crocker mix,  YAY!


Mixing the magic ingredients.

Doesn't it look amazing???



If you listen carefully, you can hear it say "home baking, sponge cake, banana cake, choco chip cookie. . ." etc.  It's adorable.

We ate them as fast as they came out of the oven.
Then Julie and I began our love affair with our new slow cooker:
Does't it look delicious?

It really was.

Then, for no reason at all, here is a video of poor Annie, an (as of last week) Masters graduate of Aerospace Engineering, being bullied by two American girls.  So cute.







Then we went to Gwangu to hang out with Annie and her cousin and little nieces.  They were adorable ^^  But Albert has all the good pictures so I'll blog about it soon.  But, in the meantime here's a video or two about some of the things we found there and then picture (a picture contest!) Tell me what the heck you think they are trying to do.  ^^












Bonus pictures:  ^^