Birthday Festivity: Part One - The combined early celebration
The birthday cake in question. It was actually pretty good compared to some birthday cakes I've had in Korea.
Kris and Kyle blowing out the candles. Kyle made a big deal about them taking pictures of pretending to cut the cake. He wanted them to hold hands and pose for pictures. Kristen couldn't stop laughing and neither could I. It looked exactly like a wedding picture cutting the cake, but since they don't do that here in Korea no one else knew what was so funny. However, since we usually laugh hysterically at absolutely nothing (we have decided that we think we are the funniest people in the world, but we're the only ones that think that so no one else ever thinks what we think is funny thus making us just look stupid. not like we care though) no one really thought anything of it. I have a video of it. It's hilarious.
Sharon (from Colorado. Leaving Korea in a few weeks after five years here. I don't want her to leave!) and Rachel, one of our awesome worship band singers!
Diving into the cake with chopsticks!
Joel trying to decide if she'll stuff the whole thing in her mouth or not and Joseph looking on and wanting to smush it into her face...Birthday Festivity: Part Two - The surprise!
I am like the best friend ever. I planned a mini surprise party for Kris. Made her banana fudge ice cream cake, took over balloons and friends the night before her birthday and we had a mini partAy!
We even snuck up the stairs so she wouldn't hear us. She was really surprised. The surprise was even almost ruined when she went to throw out her trash and Gabrielle was outside waiting for us to show up. Gab though Kris saw her and then ducked behind a car and pretended to be playing with the neighbourhood cats. Kris didn't see and the surprise still worked out perfectly!
We had a mini dance party after cake and presents.Birthday Festivity: Part Three - The dinner
Kris, Gab, Somi, and I went to Mi Piache for dinner on her actual birthday.
We are regulars and apparetly that has it's advantages...
I told Somi to secretly tell them it's her birthday so they'd sing a song. Unfortunately in Korea, they just play a song and the computer was broken so they couldn't play it. Since we are regulars and they LOVE us there and felt bad for the computer not working, the manager went out and BOUGHT a Paris Baguette cake and gave it to Kris! We were so surprised! Birthday Festivity: Part four - Seoul
Ice (Our friend from Thailand that we visited while we were there in February) was in Seoul for vacation. It just so happened to fall around Kris' birthday so we went there to meet her and celebrate some more.... and of course to see some cultural stuff! We went to the Lotus Lanturn Festival in Insadong, Seoul.
This dude is painting my name in Korean on the fan I bought. That was part of the deal. It was so cheap too!
The Parade.
This sign says: Cho.Kae.Sa. No idea what that means. There might even be a piece missing at the top that you can't see. Who knows?
Most paraders performed later in the night. I have some pictures, but not of these guys. They were doing back flips and the whole bit. It was pretty awesome! They were also the only ones who visibly noticed the three foreigners in the crowd and got excited and waved. The one guy there is just starting to wave.
The parade was so cool. I love going to cultural things where you see another culture at their finest and what is important to them as a people and country. (Although, there are an insanely large number of festivals in Korea compared to other countries. They live for festivals here, but that only makes things more interesting for travelers!)
These are the lanturns that lined the streets and temples. This is inside the Insadong temple.
This guy was pretty cool. I want to be just like him one day.
Some of the performances after the parade.
After a while, we got bored and went for a walk around. This ice cream guy was putting on a show giving ice cream out to people. He noticed us and decided to single me out. He wanted to know my name ect. and wanted me to buy ice cream. I said I'd only take it if it was for free. That was about the worst thing I could have done. He took that as a challenge and I sure got it after that and I didn't even come away with free ice cream! He told me to come over. Tara's mistake #1: I listened. Tara's mistake #2: He can speak Korean. I can't. I knew he was talking about me to the kids because I heard "miguk" which is "American" in Korean. He obviously thought I was American. But I didn't know a word of what else he was saying. I'm guessing it was somewhere along the lines of:"hey kids, watch this. I'm going to play around with this stupid American and make her think she's getting free ice cream, but really, I'm just going to joke around so that you guys can have a laugh at her. Make sure you laugh hard ok?"
Tara's mistake #3: For a split second I thought he'd actually give me a free ice cream. That was when he gave the ice cream cone, but since I wasn't paying attention, there was two cones and I ended up with only the outside cone and a kid ended up with the first cone and the ice cream. I almost threw the cone at him.
Tara's mistake #4: I stuck around.
He did basically the same thing again, but I ended up with a napkin and no cone. I wasn't impressed. Told him he was mean. He laughed, apparently thinking otherwise.
I refused to buy his ice cream. He didn't deserve my money.
Next came these dudes who were making honey cakes which used to be a Kings food for important guests. These guys were hilarious! They had a whole sing song thing going on while they made the honey cakes. It went back and forth between Korean and English for all watching and was highly amusing. I bought some of those and they were delicious! I also learned how to make honey cakes and because of their sing song, remember a lot of it.
Later that night we met up again with Ice (we met her for dinner earlier) and headed out for a night of super fun rockin' fun. I'm going to miss that girl. She's back in Thailand now. Bangkok of all places. Not a great place to be living right now. I hope you all read the news and know what's going on. Weird to think I was there a few weeks before this all started. The Canadian Embassy keeps sending me e-mails warning us to stay away from Bangkok. This morning I got one warning us to stay away from all of Thailand in general. I'm glad I went when I did because it's an amazing country.
Ok, this is the end of the birthday festivities.
Next up is my Monday at Family Land with Samgye. So fun. My school picnic this semester was an amusement park. Only grades one and three went because grade two is in Jeju for the week. So is Samseo. I haven't had many classes this week. Five to be exact. Usually I teach 23 a week. May has been a wonderful month for me. Next week it's back at it again though. ANYWAY. Family Land. I was the only non-korean in the entire park. It was amusing at times because everytime I did something stupid everyone would notice because I was the only foreigner there so I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Cindy's face before I got her on every ride in the park. 
Her face after I took her on Chaos which she didn't see run before going on it. I told her it was fun and then spent the rest of the ride laughing so hard I started crying because she was screaming so loudly. All the teachers and students watching heard her and were also laughing. She collapsed the minute we got off and I basically carried her off the ride. I got her to go on again at the end of the day though. She's a trooper.
Everyone watching the next group of students on Chaos while trying to calm Cindy down. 
The roller coaster. Here's a bunch of grade three students just starting the ride. I took Cindy to the front of this ride. The announcer thought it was hilarious. Cindy didn't. She went again right away though.
Eventually we had a posse of grade ones following us around. It was so cute. The boys were always trying to figure out how to ask me if I'd ride the next ride with them. I'd pretend not to know what they were trying to say until they could get the English out. 
A group of my grade three girls. Cindy has most of the pictures from the day because her camera is better. When I get the pictures from her, maybe I'll post them. There's so many funny stories from the day. I got only a small tan and was the only one not hiding under and umbrella all day nor a hat nor wore sun screen. I am amazing.
Summer is definitely here in Korea. It was 27 today. 31 and 32 the next two days. The gross bugs that I have been dreading since coming here are now entering my aparte. I am so disgusted by them. I hate grey fuzzy bugs and flying green cockroach-like things. Hee Jae called me a half hour ago and laughed and laughed and laughed when I complained about the bugs.
The good part about summer is baseball! My wonderful amazing sweet kind mother mailed me my ball glove. Kris and I went out to buy her one tonight and a ball. I am so excited to play!
My word/sentence/phrase of the week: 외톨이야. Try to figure out what that means. Actually, it wouldn't be hard. It's all over the internet. After you figure it out, copy it into youtube and listen to the song. In my head ALL the time.
Embarassing story of the week: I slept through my alarm on Tuesday so badly that I had less than 10 minutes to get ready to leave. Problem: I needed to shower (and subsequently blowdry my hair and straighten it), eat, dress, pack my books, brush my teeth. Yeah, right. Shower was out. Thankfully it was pouring rain all day and on those days my hair goes nutso anyway. I didn't have baby powder so I stuck some flour in my hair to try to make it look less greesy. Though maybe it's baking powder you're supposed to put in? I don't remember. Either way, it only worked until lunch. By 5pm my hair was disgusting. Thankfully my lack of classes meant I could hide in the teachers room. I blame the sleeping through my alarm to my alarm clock, which died. So now I'm using my phone because I can't figure out how to work my other alarm clock for the life of me. My phone alarm apparently doesn't have a sleep button because rather than sleep I push off. Bad idea. Hopefully this doesn't happen again in the next three months.
I feel like there was a lot more stuff I meant to post, I just can't remember any of it. Either way, this is long enough anyway. Tomorrow: HOLIDAY! the big man's birthday. Buddha. Happy old age. I forget how old he is. It said it somewhere.
Kris: HAPPY 23rd BIRTHDAY! "you're my heart heart heart heart heartbreaker!" And while I'm at it, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Phil as well! Although I know you don't read this, this still makes up for not writing on your wall on your birthday. Adelle, you better tell him I wrote this.
No comments:
Post a Comment