Thanksgiving in September

Leave it to Korea to randomly have a "thanksgiving type holiday" in September lol. Of course I didn't hear any complaints from us ESL teachers here in Korea. It meant we got a 4 day weekend! Saturday to Tuesday!


So, as discussed with Jen & Lea (the awesome friends I made when I first got here at orientation), we decided to get together for our own version of Korea's Chuseok holiday. This plan first involved us meeting in Seoul to do some serious fall/winter clothing shopping. While it was tempting to buy the entire store of Forever 21, I limited myself to a few nice sweaters & long sleeve tops, along with some jewelry & a few cheap t-shirts. I was just excited to find stuff that fit me! I can find a few things in Daegu, a bigger city next to mine, but Seoul is the ultimate place to shop.


From Seoul we headed to Jen (my orientation roomie)'s place in Cheongju. We spent the first night just hangin' out since we were tired from our shopping extravaganza. The next day we ventured out to explore Jen's city. We ended up checking out a cat cafe, which I had never been to before. It was actually very nice & relaxing. Other than the cats trying to steal our food & drink our coffee, it was fun to hang out in there. I'm more of a dog person, but I'm not picky! I love being around animals in general! :) 

Orientation Roomies!!

 I'm not a crazy cat lady, I promise! :)

 Haha, love Jen's expression!

Lea, the Bird Whisperer

From there we just kinda shopped around & then went to the big grocery store to find ingredients for our "thanksgiving" dinner. Since I knew we were planning this I had my mother ship me over some canned green beans, cream of mushroom, and fried onions to make green bean casserole. Seeing as Korea doesn't have ovens, this was made in the microwave lol. 

Chicken Master Jen

Fruit Ninja

We ended up deciding on frying some chicken & making mashed potatoes. Our original plan was to buy a cake from the bakery for dessert since we couldn't bake one. But then we decided we had enough junk food for the weekend and ended up making a fruit salad in a mere attempt to eat healthier, haha! 

YUM!

Jen's bottle of wine made our meal classy...the paper cups, not so much! :)

After eating our gigantic meal, we watched Rent, which I had never seen. Hence the reason Jen & Lea insisted on watching it. We ended the night discussing the pros and cons to living abroad & life in general while I played DJ & selected music to match our conversations. Highly entertaining! Oh, and I can't forget...Jen & I discovered a nail polish called "Crack" lol. Basically it makes your nail polish look cracked on purpose...it's actually really neat (& ironically addictive)! Overall, I must say it was a nice relaxing girls weekend! 

Love these crazy girls!

 Happy Chuseok! <3 Jen, Lea, & Amanda

XOXO,

Amanda