Elyse's Rooftop Birthday

Well last weekend was Elyse’s birthday, which was a lot of fun!  We had some people over on the Saturday night and had a little rooftop party, which was very Korean of us because of the picnic style get together.  They sell these cushioned picnic blanket thingy’s and we bought 4 of them and had a nice little gathering on the roof of our building.  It has a nice view and we played some tunes and hung out.  Ryan Krokofsky came to visit.  We went to university together and he is living in Daejeon, which is a couple hours away on the KTX.  It was nice to have him here and party with him and show him Daegu. 

 

We went for Galbi which is the bbq style dinner where you cook up your own food.  It was wonderful and we celebrated with some Soju and beer.  Ryan and I went out on the town the next day hitting up the shops that Ryan loves and doesn’t have in Daejeon and watched some of the festival that was going on that weekend.  There were crazy drinking contests going on, and at one point, there was a “couples chugging contest” and a couple the age of my grandparents went up and actually did really well.  Man, can EVERYONE drink here! It’s insane.  They were even handing out free samples of the alcohol everyone loves.  You should have seen the line up for that.  We tried it just to say we did.  Their wine is quite different here.  Its called Makgeolli and is super strong.  My students at the adult company told me that if you drink too much of it, you don’t recognize your own family.  Haha.  Oh Koreans.

 

We went for some great Japanese for dinner on Sunday night before Ryan went home, and it was one of those restaurants where there is a conver belt of all different types of Sushi and you take the ones you want.  The plates are colour coordinated and the prices of each colour are on the wall so you know how much each plate is going to cost.  It was delicious and we had a lot of fun!

 

The rest of Elyse’s birthday celebrations that week on her actual birthday were very exciting.  Alec and I went shopping and got her some presents and we had a Christmas eve type evening where she tried to convince us to let her open her gifts early.  Even just one.  Sherry and Rob, we now feel your pain of the begging for presents the night before.  But we insisted that she wait till morning.  I had to leave for work around 10, so we all woke up early to watch her open gifts.  It was so much fun and she got some very nice things.  Alec and I are too good to her.  Hehe.  There was a giraffe theme, which was quite entertaining, and Alec even bought her a giraffe stuffed animal that sings and dances.  We love it.

 

That night we went out to Billibow and there was a good crowd of us.  We didn’t get too crazy though because Elyse had to wake up at 8:30AM to go to a mountain with more than 100 kids with the school.  She was not impressed.  But that night, the school took us out to dinner with all the Korean staff that work with us.  It was nice because I don’t really get to see them all often, because I work outside of the office, but we all ate some really good food and bonded.  There was a great band playing at the restaurant (which was set up like a brewery) and we experienced some crazy drunken Korean dancing from these old businessmen that were TOO funny!  Elyse even got put up on stage because it was her birthday.  It was a riot!

 

The rest of the weeks highlights include getting really confused when I was entering the subway one day and heard this VERY loud warning bell that went off to practice what would happen in the instance of an earthquake.  I was so baffled.  I am sure my face said it all.  I had just left my Japanese gals and it was SOOO loud and ear piercing.  Across town, Elyse experienced the stopped traffic and was also confused.  She called Alec and told him that the weirdest thing was happened.  Not a car in sight was moving.  Everyone had just stopped (which is odd for Korea, cause they are crazy drivers). Eventually we came to the realization what exactly was going on, and thought that there should have been better instructions about this sort of thing.  Especially for foreigners.  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to go into the subway or not.  So I just stood there and looked around like the most confused foreigner ever I am sure.

 

We also opened up our banks accounts this week, which was very exciting.  Being in the bank made me think of TD and made me miss everyone I work with!  TD Gals, you would be glad to know that we have a one-up on them.  They have to wear uniforms which make them all look like flight attendants (not that there is anything wrong with that Steph).  And you would be interested to hear that people take numbers rather than stand in line.  That would actually be nice and maybe cut down on the stares of death we get when there is a big line up.  Hehe.   Eva, they also have a number system for the side staff too.  There are two sets of numbers you take from.  One set is for basic banking, and the second set is for opening accounts, seeing someone about investments etc.  I think you would have enjoyed seeing this.  They were really nice to us though and it was a good experience.  They actually gave really good customer service and realized that we had been waiting a while, so they took us up to this VIP office and opened up my account from there and offered us tea and candies.  Laaa Di Dahhh. 

 

Oh and another weird experience that happened to me that I want to share was when we were on our way to open our bank accounts.  I was with a co-worker from the office, and she stopped to get gas, and all of a sudden this man with a camera came up to the window and asked Claira (the girl I went with) something in Korean that I didn’t understand obviously.  He started taking this photo of her through the side mirror and had the gas-pump-boy hold up the gas nozzle and pour liquid down to make it look like the gas was dripping.  As we left, after the quick photo shoot, I asked, what the heck was that? And Claira explained that he asked her if it was ok if he took her picture for the paper for an article about rising fuel prices. I was so excited that I was part of the photo shoot and told her once she got a copy of that picture in the paper that she would have to save me a copy.  It’s the closest I’ve been to a claim to fame in Korea so far.