................Taking Flight...............: Cooked My Dinner

Today was one of my longer teaching days-5 classes (5 hours --> it actually equals 5, 40 minute classes, but they say 5). The work day was rather uneventful. As it was time to leave, I noticed that it was raining. I was glad that I got an extra umbrella from Ginger, so I had one at work and one at home. I was able to use this as my spare/emergency one. My 5th grade co-teacher and I shared it to the front gate, where her mom was waiting for her with her own umbrella.

I had thought about going to a little market near the subway station to get an onion and some other vegetables but it was raining so hard I didn't want to walk all the way there. I stopped at the little 'organic' store next to my place, but they only had bags of 5 (already peeled) onions and I didn't need that many or want them unpeeled. (So, I felt bad because this is the second time I've gone to the store, looked at merchandise and put it back...the store lady asked me in Korean if I was Korean, and I told her, "yes, but I can't speak Korean".

I returned to my place to make a grocery list and decided I would just go to the Emart to grab whatever I needed. As usual, I spent way more time there than I thought I would. I got some things to cook dinner and a few other odds and ends.

After shopping, I dove into cooking. It was fun to be chopping and cooking again. The only drawback is that I have one burner and no oven. I'm debating getting a little toaster oven so I can bake things in there. I need to do a little bit of shopping around-might even order something online too. First I fried some mandu (dumplings). Then I chopped my mushrooms, bell pepper and onion. I sauteed those and set them aside. I cooked the meat and added some "marinade" sauce to it while it was cooking. Once the meat was finished cooking, I put the vegetables back in and, voila! Dinner is served. I had microwavable rice and had that with the meal.

The rest of the evening I just relaxed and now I'm ready for bed, nice and early. Which makes me really happy because the last few nights I've been staying up much later than I've wanted.