HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEARRR!!!

Let me just say how much I love Lunar New Year already. Why? Because I got presents! One girl, Stacy, brought me these cookies from Vietnam. They were weird looking cookies and I knew I probably wouldn't like them so I opened them in class and gave cookies to the students who got right answers. I tried one, and it was mehhh. I'm glad I shared them because they would have gone to waste. I was also given a giant bottle of drip Dutch coffee. It came in a super cute bottle and I'm excited to try it. I have to look up how to drink Dutch coffee though because they say you have to add water. However, on one of my exploring days in Busan, we stopped at a coffee tent in the market and the men running the tent spoke some English. He gave me a sample of Dutch coffee for free as a "welcome to Korea" gift. I was told just to add water so when I got home and poured it into a mug.. I added water.. and it tasted like water. Hmmm. I was also given two bottles of what I thought was jelly or jam. They are fruit based but are too watery to be jelly. I looked it up and it said it was a type of fruit tea. I also have to learn how to drink this. Can I drink it from the bottle or do I add water? Who knows. I'm excited to try it though. And lastly, I got a Starbucks card!!!!!! I'm so excited to register my Korean Starbucks card and start gaining some points! I obviously won't receive the greatest discounts like BOGO lattes or 50% off.. but still.. I love point cards. And the card says "Korea" on it in cute writing.

After work today, I was surprised with a cake from my all-tome favorite place here - Paris Baguette! It was delicious. Kate also gave me a beautiful traditional style Korean bag and inside was a diary type thing. It was super cute and thoughtful. I'm really excited for it because the secretary from my old job also gave me a beautiful journal for my journey here. I've been putting it to good use and was wondering what I'll do when I eventually finish it. Now I have two! Kate also gave a monthly planner so I know when I have long weekends and such for holidays.

I wanted to write about how awesome Lunar New Years is! Yay! It's also tradition to buy your boss a gift so all of the teachers put in money and we got Kate a fruit basket type thing. Their style of gift giving is actually really strange. It's really common for people to give you an entire box set of Spam. Like WTH? And the fruit set was only strange because it was about $70 and contained about 8 pieces of fruit. I wish we could have given her some edible arrangements or something worth $70. Also, when we were looking at the gift sets - we came across a bunch filled with beauty products. BUT, these sets had more packages of toothpaste than anything else. If someone ever gave me toothpaste as a present - I would question their every intention. But hey, I'm just glad I didn't get Spam!