Makgeolli Madness

So blogger was being super stupid last night so I couldn't finish it till Monday at school. Wamp.

Anywho, it's been another week of ups and downs, mostly temperature wise. The school continues to be freezing in the hallways and hot in the classrooms, and the logic of "It's hot with the heater on, let's leave it on and open the windows" continues to astound me

sometimes I dress nice for school.
The socks make it, huh?

The weirdest m&m!

this thing labelled 'cheese cake' is deceptively
not the cheesecake I wanted.

Note: Cheese cake here is literally cheese flavored cake. Which I'm coming to find is OK. But still. It's not cheesecake. 

Christmas take out box! awww

I woke up to incredibly awesome news on Wednesday. And by incredibly awesome, I mean freaking dumb and frustrating.

the dreaded yellow light that means my
heat went out again

leaking boiler. Living in luxury over here

Thank heavens that I had already showered the night before, or I would have been hella pissed in the morning. This has happened a couple of times now, so by now I'm used to it and I don't panic. My landlady just comes in and fixes it. Whatever. I hope she replaces the boiler soon though, my handler is not happy with my heat continually going out. I'm not thrilled, but I have a lot of friends in the area, so it's not too bad. 

Can't win em all.

On Wednesday, one of the teachers was teaching everyone how to make soap and lip balm.  They invited me to come, and since I was ahead on my lessons, I decided to go. My handler said I have an "always try" attitude, so that was a nice compliment. Even though I didn't actually have to do much.

my finished soap

The instructions were all in Korean and so I kind of just followed along with the nice music teacher who asked me to come with her. Oh, and I stirred some stuff haha. 

it was fun!

I'm still working on my Korean, and in fact I just signed up to take the TOPIK exam next month. Just beginner level, but I'd like to prove to myself that I actually deserve to be called an intermediate student. 

1 month to study. Let's gooooo.

I hate directions in Korean. I hope nobody ever
asks me for them

I hope directions aren't on the test...

On Friday, we went to a free Makgeolli tasting event in Sinchon. Sarah, Cesca and I met up for dinner and then headed over to the event, where we could try many different types of factory made, home made and premium makgeolli, which is Korean rice wine.

If/when you smile, you're pretty.

kakao talk characters in the mall

We had a bit of time to kill before the event (because we didn't want to be first...), so we decided that ice cream was in order. We stopped in Baskin Robbins to get our fix. To our endless amusement, the ice cream labels never fail to disappoint. They're also a good way to practice reading Korean!

kyaaaaaaah this is still exciting

Is it lots of berries, or just suuuper strawberry flavored??

I want you to know that if you sound out the Korean,
it says "Snow Cheese Chocolate" 

This says something about Mom Alien?

After bibimbap for dinner and ice cream for dessert, it was makgeolli time!!

Christmas lights up in Sinchon!

the premium stuff. Yum.

They had a bunch of types to try

Cesca's blog has more pictures that she took, including some cute ones of us. Sarah, Cesca and I have similar hair, so people kept asking us if we were triplets, or if Sarah was our older sister (even though she's actually younger... her height must give her the older looking edge or something).

Sarah's, Cesca's and my spoils!! Sooo much makgeolli and
we didn't pay anything

Apparently people didn't drink enough, so we couldn't let it go to waste. We got some for our friends and co workers. They'll be excited!

After that excitement, we were unceremoniously creeped on on the train towards Cesca's apartment. I don't know what about our conversation says "Because I'm speaking English, you should totally take that as an invitation to interrupt our conversation and ask us intrusive questions," but it happens all the time. Because my Korean is getting better, I might have to start saying something. Or, as Cesca and I decided, on the subway at night, we might switch to Italian, since I can still speak some and Cesca still understands it.

I wish I didn't have to resort to speaking another language to avoid weird conversations... I don't know why people think their ability to speak minimal English or my ability to speak it is an invitation to just butt into a conversation. Wamp. At least I don't deal with it as often as my friends who ride the subway a lot more than I do. People on the buses tend to be less intrusive.

Because it's been a long week, Lauren, Janell, Sarah, Cesca and I decided a nice brunch was in order. 

We got French Toast, a waffle, and chocolate chip pancakes, with sides of bacon, sausage, eggs, and home fries. YUM. Everything was delicious.

life philosophy 

They gave these to us for free! Yay service!
Free stuff is called service in Korea

We got coffee and vented, while Cesca and I shared some infamous stories of us getting lost, locked out of the house or otherwise making our mom panic (like that time I was asleep behind the couch and mom couldn't fine me. Oops.) We shopped around a bit in the area and then called it a day.

I've been unusually exhausted lately, so we just went EMART to grab some groceries (this is always a semi dangerous and difficult expedition, but this time was mostly painless), and then headed home. We made a deeeeelicious dinner and watched a lot of bad reality tv. We even got some Korean study time in like the good little students that we still strive to be.

Master Chef cesca

making stuff to put in pasta sauce

finished sauce yuuuum

Another lazy day on Sunday resulted in more TV, more Korean studying, some cat naps and ddeokbokki, which, I'm proud to say, Cesca ordered herself! Wooohooo!!! 

It was the kind of relaxing weekend I needed, since winter camp prep and my TOPIK prep will eat up a lot of my time for the next month. oof. 

I returned home to find a package I'd ordered waiting for me. The mailman must think I'm a shopaholic (not totally untrue) because I order lots of cheap stuff from Gmarket all the time. Sometimes it's stuff I need (like new USB cords for my electronics), but most of the time it's shoes or clothes haha.

I really wanted this specific sweater last year, but by the time I had decided that I wanted it, sweater season was over and it was gone... So, after fruitless searching this year, as the style moved from hearts to stars, I almost gave up. Buuuut I happened to find one on gmarket (of course!) and ordered it. Normally this wouldn't be that exciting, but believe me, it totally is.

been looking all over for a sweater like this, finally found it
on Gmarket

Shocked to see the original price. I ordered it for like 22,000 won!
What a steal

This week, Korea's weather continues to be bipolar (last week I heard 'heavy snowfall' was expected, which amounted to approximately NO accumulation... these Korean winters...), today it's warm and rainy, tomorrow it's gonna drop 20 degrees. Wooohooo. 

At least my heat is fixed. Again. Hopefully it doesn't go out. Again. Keeping my fingers crossed! 

On to the last full week of my semester! Well, full week of classes. I have camp till mid January. Oh well. I have lots to look forward to, since we bought tickets to see The Nutcracker next Sunday aaaaand I just got tickets for Jekyll and Hyde!! I'm soooo excited!!

Happy Birthday Mamma! Hope you had a wonderful day making cookies!!! Love you!

To everyone else, stay warm, stay safe and have a great week! Fighting!

This week on my kpop playlist, I've been listening to A PINK's LUV, from their newest album. Normally kind of a bubblepop group, this song is still peppy but sad. 

And cause I'm super excited to see Jekyll & Hyde in Korean, here's a preview!

We're going to see this guy in January!

Here's the song, "This is the Moment" from the show. I'm so stoked. I love this musical so much. And maybe I'll understand more than 2% of it!