And again....

I'm a liar. I didn't make apple cider with my friends on Sunday and I celebrated Halloween again, despite my earlier anti-Halloween declaration. So, let's start with Halloween, shall we?

First, it should be noted that I can't always withstand peer-pressure. There were Halloween parties going on all over town on Saturday night, but Ken and I (acting like a couple of old fogies) decided to sit at home in protest while sipping on tea and teaching ourselves how to do the moonwalk (we're weird old fogies). However, a couple of texts and a phone call later (from peers who were pressuring), I found myself running around the house trying to throw together a costume with only ten minutes to spare. Now, I would like to think that I'm a creative individual in times of crises but, alas, I'm not. The best no-prep-time costume idea I could come up with was "white trash" [insert sheepish wince]. Aside from probably being a snobby and/or politically incorrect costume, I'll be the first to admit that it was lame. But, as mentioned before, I only had ten minutes and a limited wardrobe to work with (keep your "What's so different about you dressing as white trash?" comments to yourself, thank you). The costume kept getting more elaborate as the night progressed and I'm pretty sure I just looked like a gangster wanna-be idiot by the time I went home. Regardless, it was a fun night. My friend's (Mel) boyfriend's (Gino) band (got that?) was playing at a local venue that night and they were really good. They looked good, too, as all of the band members were dressed up as ajummas. Anyway, without further ado, here are some Halloween pictures that you've all probably seen on Facebook already:

Gino and his ajumma band (picture stolen from Mel's Facebook):

Andrea, Mel, Meaghan (great costumes) and me (boooo!):

Looking a little bit scary:

OK, now moving on to the apple cider thing. It didn't happen. We (Meaghan, Andrea, and I) made chocolate cupcakes instead (from this chocolate cake recipe and this coconut frosting recipe; I highly recommend both!). The apple cider thing might have happened if we wouldn't have had a couple of disasters with the cupcakes....

First it was this:

(Some of the cupcakes caved in.)

Then it was this:

(The icing turned into a mucus-y goo.)

(And here we are being unnecessarily dramatic about it.)

Anyway, with some quick thinking and some tweaking here and there, we finally managed to salvage the whole kit and caboodle, but we were left with no time for the apple cider adventure. Maybe next weekend? Here are the cupcakes:

I realize they don't look very appetizing, but they tasted really, really good (especially considering they're relatively healthy).

And off to bed I go.

Happy-ish Halloween

Today is technically Halloween, but yesterday was it for me. And I shall never celebrate it again if I have a choice. We had an enormous Halloween party at our school for the kiddies, and let's just say that I was pretty much ready to shoot myself by the end of the day. I've come to the conclusion that when you put 4 and 5 year-olds in costumes, they are suddenly filled with pure evil and they become irrevocably uncontrollable. Their only redemption yesterday was the fact that they looked super cute all dressed up in their Halloween garb. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the kindergarten students (or myself; I went as a witch--a scary one, apparently, as I made two kids cry) but I did, however, get some pictures of the elementary kids who come to our school in the afternoon. They were by far the worst behaved of the day; repeatedly stealing my witch's hat, stabbing me with their swords, pitchforks, wands, etc. and screaming and running just for the sake of screaming and running. But I know come Monday I'll love them a little bit again... maybe.

You will notice the store tags still attached to the monster's head.

These two were clearly unimpressed by any of our attempts at entertaining them.

And this one was doing an impression of one of our former foreign teachers. The little guy can't be accused of having a poor sense of humor.

In other news, I think a couple of my friends and I are going to attempt making homemade apple cider tomorrow. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared. I hate wasting food but, most of the time, my cooking experiments leave me with edible yet repulsive results. I will give a full report when we're finished.

...

It's official: I'm going to the Philippines during the second week of December. I just dropped way too much money on a plane ticket today, so there's no backing out now (I'm cringing as I'm typing this). Given the unexpected high-cost of the ticket, this had better be the best trip of my life. Because, hey, a girl needs a break every now and then, right? Ugh.

This weekend was full of Halloween celebration and it was a wild time. I went to a Halloween party on Saturday dressed as a________(you fill in the blank). Whatever I was, I was dead and blond. In a shoddy attempt at putting together a costume at the last minute, I ended up wearing a blond wig on my head and white powder on my face. "America's Next Chopped Model?" you may be wondering. You got it. I, of course, found it exceptionally funny, but not everyone did. So, my costume changed multiple times during the night (depending on who I was around), ranging from "Dead Victoria Beckham" (so morbid), to "a dead blond" (not much better). I admit it: I was running low on creativity. I now know, however, that I simply can't pull off the blond look. The wig made me look dead, even before I applied the five pounds of baby powder it took to make me look good and dead (my skin is still recovering, two days later). Sadly, I didn't capture my blond moment on camera, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Random paragraph #3: I got stuck in an elevator for the first time in my life today. Granted, it was only stuck for a grand total of one minute, but it was long enough to nearly make me pee my pants right then and there. I was leaving my apartment building for work this afternoon when suddenly, between the 9th and 10th floors, the elevator jolted to a halt. I didn't actually start to panic until the your-life-is-in-peril alarm went buzzing loudly through the elevator shaft. I shot a look at the Korean lady who was in the elevator with me to find that she, too, appeared to be freaking out. Regardless, I was glad she was there with me, otherwise I would have passed out in panic (I have an old fear of elevators that only resurfaces when the situation calls for it... and this situation called for it). Fortunately, the elevator jolted into movement again and flung its doors open on the 9th floor. The Korean lady and I ran out of there as if we were running from a pack of rabid dogs. Of course, I'm far too lazy to actually take the stairs in any situation, so I made a quick recovery and pressed the "down" button on the elevator across from the rabid one. Needless to say, I made it safely to the first floor. It wasn't, however, a great start to my Monday.

And with those fascinating stories told, I'm off to class. Happy Monday.