I am doing my part to be a good houseguest by ridding Laura's freezer of as much excess baking as I can. Although there is talk of a carrot cake for New Years...it is so hard to turn down cream cheese frosting.

Got my new sunglasses yesterday and am quite taken with them. My old ones were really just (roughly 12 year old) normal frames with barely tinted lenses. These new ones are proper sunnies and the lenses are quite dark. Not full on black but a lot darker than what I had imagined. I got to try them out today as I wandered about completely unable to find the baker's section of the Bangsan market. I probably could have looked for a bit longer but I was losing feeling in my thighs. I wear knee-high socks but clearly that is not enough.

Tomorrow I have tentative plans to go to the ceramics village, but Laura has siren-songed the opinion that it would be a lot more fun to go in not-winter, and Paul casually let drop that there might be a fair bit of snow overnight and I am not entirely certain that I want to go on an hour bus ride into the countryside in fresh snow. So we shall see. I really have not done much on my holiday here, but honestly, Seoul is not exactly a touristy hotspot and it is so warm and cozy inside.

Nearly 1 am and I am still so full that it is almost impossible to believe I will ever be hungry again.

Merry Boozemas, everyone!

This afternoon Paul spent a good 30 minutes or so taking his alcohol out of the pantry and arranging it on the sideboard and taking pictures of the whole process. Dad says this is very Finnish. I confess that if I had the space and the money, I might have an impressive liquor collection, too, although I doubt I would feel the need for five kinds of bourbon.

We had a good Christmas Eve, filled with food and alcohol and some rather bizarre conversations. Two of their friends are staying over until Boxing Day and tomorrow more people will be coming for dinner. This will be Laura's first turkey dinner. I plan on contributing by hovering in the background, poking the turkey dubiously to see if it is defrosted, and emailing mom for emergency help.

I had big plans to actually do touristy things this trip, but I can feel my will dissolving in the face of their centrally heated apartment and all the books I need to read before I go. Two things I MUST do are go to the glasses shop to pick up my new sunglasses (it turns out that with my prescription I cannot actually get really dark lenses, but at least these ones will be significantly darker than the ones I have now) and go to Insadong to look at the necklace shop, but the two other things I had on my list are being relegated to "surely I will be back soon enough and I can do that when there is not a windchill of -20?"

I had a nap this afternoon which is why I am the last one standing on Christmas Eve. Naps are something I often think longingly of but rarely take unless I am sick, but today I was just unable to keep my eyes open past 4 pm. I blame the sugar high crash. However, I guess I could try going to sleep again now. Long, long gone are the days when I could not wait to wake up on Christmas morning. We will be lucky to be eating breakfast before 11, I think.

Merry Christmas Eve to most of you!

Look! Look what Kim got me for Christmas! This! And also this! I do not know that I will actually be able to make anything from either of these books, given the difficulty of obtaining a lot of the ingredients (plus my lack of artistic talent), but I plan on oohing and aahing over the pictures and hopefully I will get some ideas on how I can make simpler versions.

Today was not as productive as I had hoped it would be (when is it ever?) but I did do some more baking and clean up the living room, so yay. Tomorrow I have to go buy travel insurance (it looks like North Korea will not be attacking the South for their recent military drills, but still. Insurance is never a bad idea! Also, if the North does attack, Laura and I have planned to grab some bottles from the liquor closet and then go hide in the bigger closet with the freezer filled with Christmas baking.) and pack. The suitcase is still in the closet but I do have a pile of stuff I am planning to bring lumped on the floor. I did get my down jacket and since it was on sale for half price, I also ended up with some fleece and other warm goodies. Although it has thankfully warmed right up again so I haven't been able to try it out.

Man, I do not know how cold it was in here last night but tonight was 10 degrees up until a little while ago and I am positively cozy by comparison.

I'm all done for the year! Huzzah! Now I just have to clean and pack and maybe squeeze in some more baking. I have arbitrarily declared this present opening weekend but have also decided to prolong the experience. Today I opened the presents from Flash (highlights include action pencils and a beautifully hand-carved wooden box that smells like VIcks) and a package from my mom, which contained, among other things, rather a lot of chocolate. In bags. That she had opened. With the explanation in the Christmas card that if you open them, you can squish the air out and thus fit more in. And also eat some in the process. This explanation was followed by a smiley face.

I still have two more packages to open, which will hopefully last me the weekend.

Today I forgot to put rice in the cooker before I left for work or take anything out of the freezer, but it all worked out in the end because one of the girls turned up with KFC. KFC is, of course, the official Christmas food of Japan. Why? I do not know. I have not had KFC for many, many years, but it turns out it is still finger lickin' good, or at least it is if you have not eaten for several hours. Om nom nom.

I feel like it is not unreasonable to expect that wearing three pairs of socks should keep my toes, if not toasty, at least not actively like ice cubes attached to my feet.

Winter has hit. And how. The high (the HIGH!) indoors today was 10. Feel free to ask me how I feel about that, but be prepared to listen to a lot of swearing.

On the plus side, this weather will make it a lot easier to motivate me to go buy the new winter coat I need for Seoul. I've been putting it off because it pained me to spend that much money on cold weather clothing when I was still wearing the same jacket I was in October, but now? Now I plan on getting one of everything they have in both down and fleece.

You know what I love? Toffee. It's delicious and, almost more importantly, easy to make and a cinch to clean up after. (Clearly I have yet to live through my own personal horror story of burnt toffee.) So much nicer than cookies, which take me the better part of the day. Toffee for everyone this Christmas!

We have started the Christmas parties at work already, so today was a whirlwind of presents and glitter and persuading Ewan to wear adorable hats. Tomorrow I have older kids and smaller classes, so it will be less whirlwindy, alas. Four more days of work and a week and a half to the commencement of Boozemas!

I have managed to still have baking stuff to do this week. One thing of toffee was obviously not enough for all the gifts, and while the buckeyes I made a few weeks ago were plentiful, the fact that they were so tasty frozen has meant that their number has diminished somewhat. Oops.

I am almost all caught up on my Christmas mailing, too. There is still a package for mom and dad to be sent out due to a miscalculation of how much packing tape I had left, and there are one or two gifts where I have thrown my hands in the air and gone "oh, screw it, I'll get you something pretty in Korea and wait until the new year", and Christmas postcards still need to be done, but most of it is gone. Today I sent a letter off to Scotland that caused some confusion at first, as they apparently thought "Scotland" and "Sweden" were the same thing, but after I said, as politely as I could, "Um, the UK. Duh.", things got sorted out.

And now I have to go to sleep. Tomorrow morning is the baby class and I need to be rested up for all the cuteness.

Today there will just be baby pictures in lieu of writing.

If I forget about things like ice caps and long term global consequences, I have to admit that I'm enjoying this whole global warming thing at the moment. It's December and I haven't had to dig out any winter gear yet. No coats, no mittens, no hats, nothing. Yesterday was 20 degrees! Twenty! Of course, sometime between leaving my apartment in weather-appropriate clothing and getting to work the temperature dropped like a stone, clouds rolled in, and an icy cold wind started blowing raindrops everywhere, but it was nice while it lasted. Today is back to sunny and would be toasty warm if it weren't for that wind.

Nights and mornings are decidedly chilly, but at least it has yet to go under 12 degrees. Although even that was not so much fun this morning, as it was time for my annual "get up at 7 am on a Saturday" ritual to go to the kindy's winter concert. I rode my bike like a madwoman to the bus stop, spent half an hour on the bus, then spent what felt like 30 seconds singing with the kids. That's still 30 seconds too much for my taste, but I sort of feel like I should get something more out of it. Being greeted by the adoration and hugs of dozens of tiny adorable children does sort of make up for a lot of things, though.

I didn't stick around afterwards. I would like to see my students perform, but after we do the first song in English, it goes by age and they start with the babies. I did not feel like hanging around for three hours, frankly. Also I had to come back here and go to the police station, as my phone made a leap for freedom on the bike ride. I remember hitting a bump and hearing something go "clunk", but I didn't actually see my phone leave the bag so I assumed I had hit a rock or something. Then when I couldn't find my phone in my bag I assumed I had left it at home. But no! Somebody found it and brought it to the police, where they called the last number dialed which turned out (luckily for me) to be Masami, who is also the one person who knew where I was right then. So after I got off the stage with the kids and went back to the teacher's lounge, I was greeted with a message that my phone was waiting for me at a nearby koban. There was a bit of paperwork involved in getting it back, which makes me fervently hope I never have to deal with an actual crime. Probably getting mugged would require a whole book. They gave me the name and number of the person who found it, but I'm putting off the thank you call until I get to Tomoko's later today so she can help me. My phone Japanese is purest crap.

We are going to see Harry Potter tomorrow! I think Andy has already seen it at least twice, which proves that I am not a True Fan, but that's ok with me.