Busy Weekend

Kim and I had a pretty busy couple of days 2 weekends ago.  We finally had our cable and internet installed on Friday night.  Once again I was amazed by the Korean service.  The guy came to our apartment at 8:30 PM even though he was suppose to get off work at 6:00 PM.  Our cable is called internet cable.  I still have not figured it out but basically we have to download anything that we want to watch.  Its nice having our own internet now so that we do not have to search around for a wireless connection to steal. 

A few months ago, Kim joined an organization called G.O.A.L which is an organization that helps Korean adoptees.  They have a service that provides Korean tutors for their members.  Kim applied for one and we were contacted last week by a college student named Sinae.  We had our first meeting with her last Saturday.  I think that she is going to be very helpful to us since she can speak English extremely well.  We plan on meeting with her for 2 to 3 hours every Saturday afternoon.  She only lives 2 subway stops away so we will not have to travel that far.  

Then later that night, SangKwun's friends took us out to dinner and for drinks. They have all really gone out of their way for us and we appreciated their generosity. There were 3 guys - the one standing, Dennis, lived in Canada for a year and speaks English pretty fluently. The girl with us is named Cary and she is a Korean teacher at our school.

After dinner at a beef BBQ place, and visiting another bar, the group decided to go to a seafood grill. This is basically an outdoor area covered by a tent with all kinds of marinated seafood to grill. It was delicious!

I'm not sure if we've mentioned this, but one of the English teachers at our school, Chloe, is getting married to a Korean guy in a few weeks. We are all invited and are excited to experience a Korean wedding. Chloe is a Korean American, but her husband-to-be is a Korean who happened to be studying in America when they met. The female English teachers decided to throw Chloe a surprise shower and take her out for a massage. So on Sunday, Kim and the girls went to get Thai massages. This was a picture Kim took of the place they went.

Then everyone came back to our apartment for some food and cake. Here's a shot of the group.

And here's the bride-to-be, Chloe, cutting her cake.

Immediately after the shower, we got picked up by Father and taken to a buffet at the 63 Building. This is the second tallest building in Seoul, and has 63 stories. 

The buffet was really, really good. We continue to be amazed by the quality of the buffets in Korea. But the best part was that Peter (the translator from our wedding) was in town, so we got to eat and spend some time with him and his extended family.

After dinner, the whole group headed up to the top of the building to see the art gallery and the sights of the city. It was really cool to see the lights of Seoul from up high at night.

Here's a picture of Kim, Father, and me at the top of the building.

Here's the entire group. From right to left, there was Peter's brother Young (who also was at our wedding), Young's daughter (who's taking the picture), me, Father, Kim, Peter, Peter's nephew's wife, Peter's nephew, and Peter's cousin.

Here was an example of the view.

Here's Kim with Peter's nephew's wife at one of the exhibits. She really took a liking to us and even asked for our phone number.

And here we are at another exhibit/photo op. I'm noticing that Koreans love to have things to put their faces through to take pictures with! They can be found at almost every place you go!

Overall, it was a fun and busy weekend. I'm glad that every weekend isn't always this full, it's nice to have some time to relax on our days off too!