June 19 marked my 24th birthday and 4 months in Korea. That called for a celebration, right? Yes. Not only did I have a two-day long birthday with getting messages well into June 20 because of the time difference from home, but we also celebrated all week long.
It actually started on June 15 when I was in Daegu visiting my mom's friend. We were on a US Army base for a Father's Day cookout. Now the cookout itself was amazing. So much good food! Then after a while, Don and Poki called me over in front of where a bunch of people were sitting to a table with a birthday cake waiting for me. Of course then everyone started singing!
It actually started on June 15 when I was in Daegu visiting my mom's friend. We were on a US Army base for a Father's Day cookout. Now the cookout itself was amazing. So much good food! Then after a while, Don and Poki called me over in front of where a bunch of people were sitting to a table with a birthday cake waiting for me. Of course then everyone started singing!
On Tuesday the 18th, a group of us from church
went to dinner to celebrate Alex’s birthday and mine. Alex being one day older than me. I’m very thankful for the friends that I have
made at church and the community we have there. It's making a very positive difference in my experience here. Not sure how I would be doing without it.
Lovely presents from Nicky! I love buying random girly things for presents, so this was perfect and such a nice little surprise. Thanks girl!
On my birthday, I spent the whole work day giving speaking tests
to my students. This actually lasted all
week and I just finished them today.
I really enjoyed this though because I met with the
students individually. They came out to
the hallway and randomly picked three questions out of ten and had to talk to me
about them. It was nice meeting with the 1st graders (7th grade) because I haven't been teaching them yet but will start to in August.
After work, I headed to Shinsegae at Centum City with two
friends, Jen and Laura. This is the
world’s largest department store and I wanted to go to H&M and stop by Smoothie King. I forget the name of the place
we had dinner, but what I know is that I had a bread bowl.
Anything somewhat similar to Panera sounds great to me! Now the soup wasn’t the most amazing soup,
but it still was a bread bowl. I miss
Panera. Panera and Target, I miss the
most! After dinner, we went to
H&M. I really needed/still need more clothes for work for this hot summer and I figured I wouldn't feel bad spending money on my birthday. As I had a bag of clothes to
try on, some announcement came over the speaker and it sounded like they were
about to close! What?! We booked it over to the dressing room and
after a bit of begging, they let us in. I pretty much gave up though because I really didn't have enough time. It was only 8 p.m., so I couldn't believe they were closing. The reason this was such a bummer is because it's about a 45 minute subway ride each way. I also couldn't get my familiar home treat because Smoothie King closed as well. We ended up going back downstairs and got
some ice cream. That bag of clothes I
wanted to take my time to try on, though? Don’t
worry, I went back to H&M after work on Friday!
Once I got home Wednesday night, I finally had a chance to
open my package from my family and I talked to my Aunt Linda, dad, mom, brother,
and sister on the phone, Skype, and FaceTime.
I went to bed way too late, but I’m glad I got to talk to them and see
some of their faces.
The celebration continued to the weekend. On Saturday
Laura and I had a mini beach day! I’m
pretty sure most of my Saturdays are going to be beach days and I am very okay
with that. After lying on the beach for
a bit, we grabbed some lunch and then Cold Stone. Couldn’t pass that up. I'm really talking about food a lot aren't I?! Once we were done there, we met two other
friends in Seomyeon to go to a norebang.
Now this was my first norebang experience so I was hesitant to go, but
it was so much fun! A norebang is a
karaoke place where you have your own little room for you and your friends. We had one rule being that we were only going
to play 90's pop music! They only had one
Spice Girls song, though. What’s up with that?!
As if I didn’t extend this birthday celebration enough already, I
returned to my desk at work on Monday after some more speaking tests and I
found five cards from home! Five cards in one day? Talk about a good day.
I heard from so many people from around the world--Korea, Switzerland, England, and home in the US--this past week. Thank you for all of the sweet messages and for making it a great birthday so far from home.