Christmas is NEARLY here!

It seems like another year has literally flown past and tommorrow is Christmas Eve and our first ever Christmas away from New Zealand.

Christmas in Korea looks like it will be very different to any other Christmas we have ever had. Firstly - it's cold, not just cold, but cold ICE LIKE! It has snowed twice already, I am hoping for a white christmas and snow is forecast for Friday so I am crossing my fingers that it happens because if it does it will be amazing.

It's pretty hard to cook any of the Christmas food I'm used to over here, firstly, we have no oven and it's not just us - no one seems to have an oven which makes cooking mighty difficult.

Plus if we did have an oven it would be pretty difficult to make anything due to the fact that baking ingredients are pretty limited. I've had friends overseas and complain about the lack of pineapple lumps or toffee pops or mallowpuff but in Korea you can't buy vanilla essence or cocoa for cooking so it's a much bigger challenge. I have however managed to make some no cook peanut butter cookies from a recipe my friend Hazel gave me (although some fairly major alterations have been made due to the lack of ingredients but they still taste ok - I think).

I am, however, looking forward to buying a Christmas cake from one of the Korean bakeries. I am mostly basing my decision on the free gift you get with your cake. So far Paris Baguette is the winner as their cakes come with a free "wolf in sheep's clothing" hat - you may be asking what a wolf in sheep's clothing has to do with Christmas and I would respond that I haven't got a clue but it makes a really cute hat.

So what will Rich and I do on Christmas day you may be wondering? Well first of all we will open our packages from home (I'm still hoping my Christmas package from my mum arrives tommorrow), we are going to attempt to make pancakes for breakfast, then it will be time to Skype home (so glad there is only a three hour time difference between Korean and New Zealand).

In the afternoon we have some friends coming over for an "Orphan's Christmas" where we shall eat, drink and be merry - oh and watch a random selection of Christmas films and play video games.

So to all our friends home in New Zealand and all over the world - Merry Christmas! Hope you all have a great time - fingers crossed for a White Christmas in Uijeongbu.