Almost all my December favorites were from the last week of December, because I was practically a living zombie for the rest of it! Once my finals were over and I had finished grading and paperwork for my job, I finally got to breathe and meet up with friends to celebrate the holidays!
#1. Shilla Stay Buffet – A close friend since high school treated me to lunch at the Shilla Stay Buffet. We had to wait an hour because there were so many people despite being a weekday afternoon, so we had fun taking selfies in the beautiful lobby. The food was delicious and I loved that they had a cheese board and a diy salad station! Usually pasta at buffets aren’t the best, but I was pretty impressed by their carbonara.
#2. Christmas Light Tree – I was teaching three courses at Osan University this past semester, and the TA working at the office put up a Christmas Light Tree on the wall. I thought it was so cute and creative how she decorated for Christmas and it really cheered me up while I graded papers. Aren’t the Olafs at the bottom so cute?
#3. Crème Brûlée – I spent Christmas Eve with my friends at WinK Kitchen & Taphouse at Kyodae station in Seoul. They were having a Christmas Dinner event with Oven Roasted Turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, mulled wine, and crème brûlée. The crème brûlée was so good and my friends described the mulled wine as Christmas in a cup!
#4. Christmas Strawberry Tart Cake – A family tradition of sorts, every Christmas my family celebrates with a strawberry tart cake from the Paris Croissant bakery. Christmas cake is huge in Korea, but our family prefers this strawberry rare cheesecake in a tart! We have it for birthdays and Christmas and this time was no exception. I dropped by the bakery in Gangnam before I headed to dinner with my friends on Christmas Eve, and picked it up on the way home. Apparently the bakery was open till 1am on Christmas Eve to accommodate all the Christmas cake orders! Christmas has become more of a couple’s holiday than a family holiday in Korea, because it wasn’t a widely celebrated holiday until recent times. Christianity didn’t take root in Korea until the late 1800s, so Christmas wasn’t celebrated with as much enthusiasm as Lunar New Year. Now a days, Christmas trees and decorations are the norm for Christmas, but it’s not as family oriented as in the Americas or Europe.
#5. VIPS Buffet – If you’d like to try a great buffet while traveling in Korea, mark VIPS down on your list! While the Shilla Buffet is nice it’s a hotel buffet so it’s on the pricier side. VIPS buffets have a more average price range when it comes to their buffet, but the food quality is much better than a lot of the buffets I’ve tried in the States. For Christmas they had green tea ice cream with sprinkles for festivity and I enjoyed it after helping myself to all the different dishes they had out for Christmas!
#6. Cozy White Sweater– Zara had a huge sale after Christmas, so I decided to brave the crowds to see what they had. They actually had beepers for the fitting rooms because the line was so long. Yikes! I found this cozy white sweater marked down to $20 and saved something like $50 on it! I love the oversized look because it’s the next best thing to wrapping yourself up in a blanket. Usually I go for blacks and greys but lately I’ve been gravitating towards white. I used to hate turtle necks, but I’ve found that I don’t mind them as long as they’re not tight around my neck. If it’s a roomy turtle neck that wraps around loosely like a scarf, it doesn’t bother me and keeps my neck warm!
Your Turn ♥ What were some of your December favorites? Hope you had fun during the holidays!
