Christmas Cookies in Korea^^

That's right folks, after a botched attempt at making sugar cookies, I think I finally figure it out. Round 1 occurred on Sunday when I made dough. I got a recipe off of a lovely website and then proceeded to attempt to make the batter. Here's where the problems started. Sticks of magarine back home have handy-dandy measures on them. They don't here...so I just guessed (yeah, bad idea). They also don't have powdered sugar here. So, I bought what looked like powdered sugar (the Korean translation was "new sugar"). Yeah...probably not powdered sugar. Luckily, I bought vanilla when I was home in the summer (they also don't sell that here). I didn't know what 1 teaspoon was in metric units though, so I guessed (horribly wrong I might add). Needless to say, round 1 left me with unedible dough. Round 2: I went to E-Mart (a huge store...kinda like a super Walmart) went to the organic section and found real powdered sugar (expensive yes, but it said "powdered sugar" in English!). Then tonight I converted the recipe into Metric units. For your information, 1 cup of margarine is 225 grams. And 1 teaspoon is 5 ml. I made the dough and tasted it before refrigerating it! Surprisingly enough, it tasted normal!!!! WOOHOO!!! After letting my dough sit in the fridge for an hour, I warmed up the toaster oven (since I don't have a regular oven, this is all I was left with). I have no idea what temperature my toaster oven cooks at, but my cookies are fully baked in 5 minutes (instead of the 8-10 that the recipe calls for). I just learned though, my toaster oven needs to cool off after like 3 batches of cookies. So, it's going to be a long, slow process, but I might eventually have Christmas cookies!! (Thanks for sending me cookie cutters last year Mom!!!) Tomorrow night I'm going to see "The Nutcracker" in ballet form with some friends here, it should be good! Then Saturday morning (Christmas Eve) I'm going to attemp to frost my cookies before the party crews arrive. I'm hosting a dinner for 10 people. Making steaks on my gas range should be interesting! At least we'll have lots of fixings to go with them, plus my Wine-Mushroom steak sauce (which I will be making)

~Merry Christmas~

Update

Wow...my last update was at the end of September. Sorry everyone. Things here have been fairly normal. The last 2 weeks of school have either been preparation for finals or finals. That has meant very little work for me (4 classes each week...4 in a week!!!! BORING). Though, I haven't been doing a good job at updates, I guess it's because not much is new. Every week is pretty much the same. On Mondays I teach 3 classes (sometimes) and then head to Suwon (a city 30 minutes away by subway) to study Korean with my friend Meghan. On Tuesdays I teach another 3 classes (sometimes) and then head to Pyeongtaek (about 40 minutes south) for Taekwondo with Jaclyn (also a Wausau native). Wednesdays are 4 class days and normally the only day that I actually go home after school...my relaxation day! Thursdays are also 4 class days and Taekwondo days. Fridays...4 classes...then normally off to dinner somewhere with friends. My weekends have been low-key lately, just chilling with people or spent at home.

A couple of weekends ago was "Women's Weekend" were 3 of my friends and I headed to Gangnam (in Seoul) to spend a weekend with just the girls. We met on Saturday at the Aveda Hair Salon to get haircuts (well...I got my hair cut and dyed and a manicure to go along with it!!!). After haircuts we found a cheap hotel then headed off to dinner. We ate at TGI Fridays. Then we went to see Elton John's version of the opera "Aida" in Korean. It was very well done, though we didn't understand much of it - all-in-all a very enjoyable weekend.

Thanksgiving wasn't very eventful here. The weekend after I went to a Thanksgiving dinner with my friend Jenny at her church. I had turkey, stuffing...the whole meal! It was great! Then I went to Suwon to celebrate Thanksgiving again with my friends Andy, Jaclyn, Meghan, and Peter. It actually snowed quite a bit this day! The first real amount of snow I've seen in Korea!! We had a snowball fight at like 11:00 outside Andy's apartment.

Well...I think that's all the exciting news. Coming up is "The Nutcracker" ballet in Seoul for Christmas and Christmas Eve dinner at my apartment...I'll try to keep you guys updated more. Hopefully sometime soon I'll also be posting links to my photo websites!

Anyeong!