Chaos and Korea: September 2008

First of all, I (Steph) want to say thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes, cards, gifts, and cakes (all 3 of them). I was a little sad having to celebrate my birthday away from everyone and everything that is close to me, but thanks to everyone I had a great birthday!

It seemed to me that we've been celebrating my birthday this whole month. It started at our school, where some of the teachers threw me a little party and they pulled it off without me knowing. But I guess considering the fact that they speak a language I don't, that probably was an easy thing to accomplish. They surprised me with a cake, candles, balloons, and some other snacks too. For my gift, they gave me a huge box full of kim. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's pieces of seaweed that is used to make gimbap (Koreans' version of sushi). I doubt that we'll ever get close to eating even half of the box but it was a nice gesture.

For the next part of the celebration, myself, Shawn and some friends went to Busan on the weekend before my birthday. We got to enjoy some end of the summer beach time and had a fun night out on the town where we even got to go to a dance club.
Then, on my actual birthday, our friends and I got together to have dinner, drinks, and you guessed it...more cake. And for the final celebration, this past Saturday, Shawn and our friend Gemma threw myself and our friend Kristen a fabulous birthday party. About 30-35 of our friends came out to help us celebrate. It was an amazing time. Shawn planned everything perfectly and mostly without me knowing. But probably the best part of the night was my birthday present from Shawn and our friend Doug. They each had their moms (thanks Vickie!!) send them Clamato in the mail. For those of you who know me know that I LOVE Clamato (maybe even a little too much!). I think it's mainly a North Dakota thing, because I had trouble finding it even when I was in Minnesota. And of course, no one in this country had heard of it. So needless to say, for the past 6 months I've been going into withdrawls from Clamato and was being forced to drink beer plain (I know, how gross right!?).

I posted some pictures below for you to enjoy. Again, thanks everyone for one of the best birthdays I've had!!

Myself and some of the teachers at our school

Notice the cake says a "26" on it. No, I am only 25 but in Korean age I am 26. For other snacks we had grapes and songpyeon which is sweet bean filling wrapped with dough. It's quite chewy but pretty good.