12 pubs of Christmas...

Last year I would say that the "12 pubs of Christmas" was legend...wait for it.....dary. But this year it was a little different. Not saying that it was bad at all. We had a great time, but this year it was not with my EPIK intake crowd and it was a bit more mellow for Ben and I. I did like the fact that at each pub a photo was taken and also a part of the 12 Days of Christmas song was sung according to the pub number. It really was a nice time!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!- photo session...

Merry Christmas!
So our friend Abbi wanted a picture of some of our friends together, so she organized a Christmas photo shoot. This photography place was located in Bandwaldong station, but I had never seen it before. (Not the most familiar with that station since I am a bus person, not a subway person....)
She had gone in and asked prices and such, and we thought it was a good deal so we went ahead with it. We were in the photo studio for maybe 10 minutes or so, and afterwards got to review our pictures and pick out the ones that we liked.
It was then that we realized that the prices they had quoted Abbi days earlier had quite a few stipulations on them. For instance... every single one of us HAD to buy the same pictures, and we HAD to buy the set of them. Each picture was 8,000. Unfortunately we all spent a bit more than we were planning and expecting!
Now, I know that a business has to make money, but the photo print outs that we got were actually smaller than a 4x6 photo. I have worked at one of those cheap photo studio places, so I know how much printing actually cost. In the end, our group spent over $150 for our photos that took 10 minutes... Gotta love it! It was an experience at least and I got to use my overprices "hand stitched" ugly Christmas sweater! :) Here are the results:

The following are candid pictures that another photographer took of us during our photo shoot. They are kind of funny...

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving...

This year, Ben and I had 3 Thanksgiving meals, and two of them were at our house! The first one was on Thursday night and we had Bill & Erin come over. The evening was very chill and we ate and watched TV and talked...

On Saturday, we went to MJ's house, which is always a bit of a hual. MJ lives about as far south of us as possible, so we usually end up taking a taxi when we have food that needs to be warm when we get there. We went last year to MJ's and this year it was a similar crowd of people with just a few changes!For this meal, Ben and I took a massive supply of mashed potatoes, kalico beans (one of Ben's family's recipes), and creamed corn. YUM!

MJ has a special talent in the kitchen so we knew this was going to be a good feast! Like last year we ordered the turkey and people split the cost of it.
The people that bake the turkeys for us seem to make a large profit. We saw turkey's at Costco this year, but the problem is is that no foreigner has an oven big enough to even put the smallest bird. They definitely take advantage of us...

On Sunday we had another Thanksgiving with a different crowd of people at our house. Last year Matt & Maria hosted, but with out large apartment, this year we were asked. I enjoy hosting (even though it is a lot of work for me) and am glad that we got a larger apartment! So far we have no regrets with out place.
Sunday was also full of food, as we ordered another turkey delivery and everyone made sides to go with it. For this day Ben and I made another mountain of mashed potatoes, kalico beans, green bean casserole, and deviled eggs. I've hooked my man on these deviled eggs, which was always my goal...
Ben and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fit 14 people in our place and be able to set up our table. We ended up abodoning that dream and having people eating on their laps. No one complained and everyone fit in the same room which was very exciting!
For desert we enjoyed pumpkin pie, milk tart (with a great turkey design on it), and some nutella cream cheese bars. So much food was consumed over the 4 days, and we really were so blessed to be surrounded by such great friends!

Multi-Bangin'... (Stef's birthday)

For Stef's birthday we got to go to a multi-bang! I was very excited that this is what she wanted to do because -go to a multi-bang- has been on my bucket list my whole time in Korea, and I still hadn't gone! 
Let me just begin by telling you that "bang" in Korean means "room". So when we go to a Noraebang, we are going to a "singing room", and when we go to a DVD bang we are going to a DVD room. A multi-bang, is a room that you can do all things! It is equipped with singing, gaming, and all sorts. 
While we were there, our group took up 3 rooms, and everyone was doing an assortment of different things. The room I was in started off with some Mario Kart and ended with a long session of Just Dance. Another room I know did a lot of singing as well! 
I made Stefanie an oreo cheesecake for her birthday too! It was yummy!
This multi-bang provided weird wigs and hats to wear while having fun. The best part about Korea, is that you can take your own food and drinks into most places and this was no exception. So while the drinks flowed, the singing got louder... 
And maybe the dancing got better in our room! Who knows?

Ben and Gianni competing...

Officially 1 year... :)

I guess I should go on record by saying that the last year of my life has been my happiest one to date. While I tried to embrace my single years and enjoy doing things, I was always missing a little something... A random decision to teach a year in Korea, and that resulted in me meeting my man at our EPIK orientation. I'm so grateful that I did.
Ben offers so much to my life. He is so darn calm and mellow and therefore mellows me out... He has just the right amount of goof, and young-ness to keep me young at heart. (Hence, the rubberband guns, whistles and practice swords in our house.) He calls me out when I am being crazy and unfair. He "goes with the flow" to the point that we end up doing random unplanned things that are great memories. He makes me feel special and loved, and really that is all that a girl can ask for! :)
Now, we really didn't have anything too crazy planned for our "official" anniversary. We were maaaaybe going to go to Duryu park and potentially go up the tower....maybe. After some very busy weekends prior to this weekend, we both just really wanted to stay home and do NOTHING!
This actually resulted in us HAVING to figure out how to order delivery McDonalds....
Now in America, I am not the biggest McDonald's fan, but in Korea- things are just different. Sometimes you need that taste of home... Also, I find it absolutely hilarious that you CAN order delivery McDonalds so I had put it on my bucket list. I am in the mode of trying to cross things off my bucket list, so we thought this was the perfect time!
Ben discovered that McDonalds has a website that we can order on, and thus meaning we don't have to give our address over the phone! Score! We ordered our food, and then 15 minutes later we got a phone call that it was here! While it wasn't as hot as when you eat in the store, the satisfaction that we got from our first delivery order was immense!

Another thing we did this weekend was eat Russian pancakes. I had been wanting to introduce this family tradition/recipe to Ben for some time now, and this was the perfect time! I love these things, and remember being so happy when my dad would make them for us! Here's the recipe:

Russian pancake:
2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 cups milk
pinch of salt

Chocolate sauce:
2 heaping Tbsp. cocoa
1/2 c. sugar
2 c. heavy cream

I taught Ben the "proper" way of eating them, and then he also had his own version....like I said- kid at heart! :)

I have accumulated a great stash of cake mixes since coming to Korea, so I thought that we should have one for our anniversary. It was too much for us to eat so we invited some friends to join us and then afterward went to the disc golf park. 
Ben's friend from Wisconsin (who lives in Gimcheon), Alex and his girlfriend Clarissa joined us, as well as our friends Matt and Maria. Discing was a good time, even though we somehow managed to loose a disc in the least dense tree grove we could have.... After it got dark we went with Alex and Clarissa to try out the new burger joint in town- Boogie Burger. It was actually the best we have had in Daegu.
Hopefully we can have a day like this many more times while we are in Korea! Overall it was a great weekend for Ben and I, not just together, but also great we got to spend some of it with friends. 
I look forward to many more anniversaries this this special guy!

Oh, I almost forgot....
After we ate burgers we went shopping for our anniversary gift! We previously decided that we weren't going to do individual gifts but instead we would buy a nice couple outfit. We were originally going to try to find a track suit (like Adidas or something), but they were sooooo EXPENSIVE!
We settled on a pancoat sweatshirt, which was still really expensive, but wearing it is like wearing a cloud... It is so comfortable AND it has POCKETS!

Halloween Slime...

Who doesn't want to make some slime for Halloween?

 For my Halloween after school lesson I decided to do something that was a bit.... "messy"....

I showed the kids how to make the slime, and then just let them go! They had so much fun. After they made it they even had 10 minutes to just play with it! It was messy but worth it for the smiles on their faces! 

Amazingly I was able to figure out all of the ingredients in Korean, and was able to round them up. That was a bit miraculous!

Ingredients:

white glue
warm water
water color paint
borax
cup and spoons