Ajuma Palooza

Well, the day I've been dreading has came and passed. I've exited my 20s and entered my 30s.

Truthfully, it was all a lot less painful than imagined. Good friends and a great party organized by Mark helped.

My actual birthday was on Friday the 13th. I still had to work, so we had a pasta, wine, and movie night. The next morning, we headed into Itaewon for brunch. I have to admit, that while I've adjusted to most Korean food, kimchi for breakfast just doesn't cut it for me. So we treated ourselves to an omelette, a sandwich, and a Bloody Mary. Then we headed back to the apartment to hang out.

Now here comes the fun part. First we met some friends for dinner at this BBQ meat restaurant. The food was delicious, but the best part was the wait staff's outfits.

Then, Mark organized a birthday party. It was a mish-mash of people we've met from all over in Korea: friends from our year teaching, Sogang friends, language exchange friends, and more. It ended up being the most international birthday party I've ever had with Korean, Japan, Turkey, Russia, Taiwan, and the US representing.

The fun place about the bar is that there's a river of 막걸리 (Korean rice wine) running through one of the tables. In addition if you pay about $4, you can drink all the 막걸리 you want for 3 hours. We didn't end up sitting at the 막거리 river table, but we did get to take advantage of the drink special. And we totally got our money's worth. :)

A 30th birthday cake was necessary, I guess.

After our 3 hours were up, our friend Alex (who happens to be a SLU graduate from St. Louis), recommended a bar down the street that had beer pong. For the beer pong uninitiated, basically you set up cups in a triangle formation and have to throw a ping pong ball into the cups.

If you get the ball in, the cup is removed and the opposing team has to take a shot of beer. So we ended up setting up a beer pong tournament with a cash prize. You may actually remember that beer pong kicked off the Metro Olympics we held with my brother and his wife.

As most of the people at the party had never played before and every American spent many college nights majoring in beer pong, we were feeling pretty confident.

But then surprisingly many of the teams seemed to have some serious "beginners luck."

And people's true competitive natures really emerged.

Mark and I got knocked out in the second round by a Turkish/Japanese team. But finally, the other American team pulled out the win.

It was a great way to spend my birthday, and playing old college games with our many new friends helped me forget I was celebrating this "traumatic" birthday. Here's to many, many more!

Ellen's Birthday

I think I've mentioned it before, but there are two girls here that I've gotten really close to while living over here: Kerry and Ellen. We worked with them last year, but since we left Poly we've become much closer.

These girls have been majorly significant in making me feel more accepted in Korea. This is a country where the natives tend to hold the foreigners at an arm's distance. But Kerry and Ellen have never treated us like outsiders. They invited us out with their friends, helped us with any language difficulties, and basically have just been the sweetest, most caring (not to mention fun) friends we could hope to find. Besides my birth family, these two are going to be the hardest people to leave when we head Stateside. We've talked about them visiting us in the US, so I'm really, really hoping that actually happens.

Last week was Ellen's birthday and she turned the dreaded 3-0. (Actually it wasn't so bad since it's Korean age 30... so according to my age counting system she's only 29. But I digress.) So we decided to go to a cute little place in Itaewon, Bungalow, for margaritas and cake.

Since Ellen is obsessed with coffee, we got her a coffee cup shaped cappuccino cake.

And here are the girls... (Mark came too, but was our photographer.)

As always, I was grateful for a super-fun night spent with my favorite people.

Love you Kerry and Ellen!

My Birthday

This birthday post has been a long time coming. I just wanted to stretch my birthday out as long as possible. :)

My birthday was a lot of fun this year. I wasn't sure how it would be since I am so far from home, but my friends and family here in Korea made sure my day was perfect!

The days around the big 28 I was lucky to receive multiple cards and gifts in the mail from my family back home. (Thanks everyone! It made me feel so special to get things in the mail!)

Then, on my birthday... Mark and I started the morning by going to Paris Baguette for Breakfast. Paris Baguette is sort of like Korea's version of Panera Bread Company. Mmmm.

Then, when I got to school, some of the teachers: (from left to right) Anna, Chloe, and Robin surprised me with this really cute white purse and a plaid headband. I thought it was really sweet of them to remember me.

The rest of the day went pretty quickly, considering. Later in the day, all the teachers had a pizza party to celebrate my birthday. They even put candles in a pizza. Blowing out candles on a pepperoni pizza was definitely a first for me! Oh, and Mark had his entire kindergarten class sing happy birthday to me. Squeezable!

At the end of the school day, SangKwun came to Poly with Father to pick me up. We went to a really nice kalbi (beef BBQ) restaurant. 

Here are Mark and me at the restaurant.

Here I am with Father and SangKwun. They both flew to Korea specifically to celebrate the day with me.

Here's a shot of the dinner. The waitress cooked the meal for us. At the beginning of the meal, I noticed that Father tipped her 10,000 won (or about $10). No one tips in Korea, so she was extremely happy and barely left our sides the entire meal.

Then SangKwun presented me with a birthday cake. It was a very Korean cake, with a sweet potato filling. Sounds weird, but it actually tasted good! And I've discovered how Koreans remain thin -- when they cut the cake, they just cut one piece and all 4 of us shared it. Talk about an easy way to cut calories! Especially since I brought the remaining cake to school the next day to be devoured by the teachers. :)

Here I am blowing out the candles. We had a little disagreement on the NUMBER of candles to put on the cake though. The two tall candles stand for 10 a piece, then the small ones count the subsequent years. SangKwun insisted on 2 big and 9 small, since my Korean age is 29. But I wanted 28 as that's my American age and I don't think there's any reason to be any closer to 30 than necessary. Not surprisingly, the big brother won out and I celebrated my 29th birthday in Korea. 

SangKwun presented me with these adorable Puma sneakers. He said he chose them because he wants me to start working out. I think both sets of parents back home with get a kick out of that...

Here I am with all my birthday loot. Father gave me the beautiful flowers.

All in all, it was a wonderful birthday that I will not soon forget.