"The World's ...Second Best cookie" Recipe

I went dancing this weekend with some of my fantastic co-teachers. It was a blast.  It was really the first time that I had spent time with a couple of them outside of school.  Your relationship with someone at work and outside of work is always a little different. It was nice to let loose a bit and get to know some of these lovely ladies a little better. I'm really starting to love them.

My co-teachers and I: On the far right is Shi On (I call her Sean).  I teach the 6th Grade with Sean. Next to her with the head band is Jella (my main co-teacher). She is the one who has been so great to help me get settled in these last few weeks.  She and I teach the 5th Grade. The woman standing and the woman next to me are teachers at the elementary school, but not English teachers.

As a side note: I made a social observation.  I found that Korean guys actually dance at clubs (I know, ladies, go figure!) and Korean women actually dance less. When dancing, the women move their bodies more conservatively than say.. in the States. I don't think I'd ever find a Korean woman "bootie poppin'" or "moving her body like a cyclone" or "dropping it to the floor."

Anyway, to show my gratitude, I was hoping to make cookies and bring them in for my co-teachers tomorrow at school.  I started by searching the internet for "the world's best cookie" recipe. What I really wanted was to shock and awe them with awesome baking skills. .. yeah.. I'm not sure I'll achieve "the world's best baker" status in the eyes of my Korean co-workers.

I'm going to do what we all have become so adapted at.. pointing the finger. Honestly, this time, it wasn't my fault. I was lucky to find the basic items necessary to make cookies (some of which I had to use baking substitutes), much less find the "secret ingredients."  One recipe said that the secret ingredient in the "world's best chocolate chip" recipe is instant pudding.  Hmm..I would have never thought of that. But do you think that Korea has instant pudding? Of course not. Nor could I find butter ((!) only the staple to American cooking and baking! I hardly know what to do!), or brown sugar, or vanilla extract.

My ingredients: The flour had a cookie in the picture so I knew that one was a safe bet. I couldn't find chocolate chip morsels so I cut up dark chocolate Hersey's Kisses. And I'm not sure that the sugar on the right is actually brown sugar. 

I have never seen powered vanilla before.. but I used it!

A few other kinks: the metric system. It's not an entirely huge deal thanks to Google. Just do a general search and you can find what 350 degrees Fahrenheit is in degrees Celsius; but I also had no measuring cup. I couldn't find one and even if I could it would be using a unit of measurement in the metric system. . which is like reading Arabic for me. I still don't understand what people mean when they tell me the predicted temperature for the weekend in degrees Celsius. Come on U.S.A! You are doing your students a disservice by sticking to this outdated American system. I don't know how to bake, or approximate the temperature, or give directions using distances in another country! This is a problem.

I worked with what I had. Added a little of this and a little of that. My cereal bowl served as my measuring cup for the evening. And here you have it...  

The end result: Lets just say that they probably won't be entered into "the world's best cookie" competition, but all things considering, I think they're pretty tasty!