Happy Birthday Sandy!

Beautiful Birthday Girl!

Happy Birthday Sandy!

This weekend we went to Daegu with some people to celebrate our good friend Sandy’s birthday. This day was by far the most planned and organized day of our whole six months in Korea so far, I’d have to say. But first, let’s start on Friday, because that is after all the day that weekends begins.

After a week that felt like forever, we were all ready to start the weekend off right! We met up with some friends for dinner at an “all you can eat” vegetarian Korean side dish place. There were about 8 of us, and the table that we sat at soon became absolutely covered in dishes and dishes of very strange and different foods. There were about 6 different kinds of greens; all marinated in different flavors. There were multiple fish dishes with all shapes and sizes of fish. We also got a plate of fried Korean foods, and our own bowls of rice. The food was great, with each one of us picking out a certain dish and eating all of it! After dinner we met up with some more people in Pohang and painted the town red! The night ended in the new improved Tilt which moved from a small tiny space hidden somewhere in Pohang, to a much bigger venue right along the beach. Everyone left there happier than when they came, and I’m sure we all slept like babies that night.

I almost ate this, but then realized what it was. So i set it down. 

The next day, Courtney and the twins and I were all planning on meeting at the bus terminal at 10 to head to Daegu for Sandy’s birthday. Silly Sam, I forgot to set my alarm, so I woke up 20 minutes before we had to meet for the bus. I saw my phone had 5 missed calls from Courtney, so I called her as soon as I woke up. She reminded me that we were meeting at 10 and by the way she worded it, I thought they were already at the bus terminal waiting for me. So I sprang out of bed, got dressed and RAN out the door. I didn’t get to shower or brush my teeth or anything. I was really worried I would miss the bus, because it normally takes me about 20 minutes just to wait for the bus to get me to the bus terminal in the first place. It turns out; I was the first one to get there…

The trip to Daegu was a very smooth 1 and a half hour bus ride. When we got there we had a bit of time to kill so we grabbed some food before meeting with the others who came from Yeongchun. We had another 40 minute bus ride to the village where Sandy had planned a great day of fun activities. She had planned for us to go strawberry picking and make candy and kites at this village. After all that, we would head back into Daegu and have dinner at The Holy Grill. She even went so far as to print out the menu so that we could choose our food before we got there to make everything go faster. And she brought the whole itinerary, on a clip board. The. Most. Organized. Person. EVER! Haha this is why we all love Sandy so much!

So when we got to the village, the first thing we did was make the candy. We each had to sit across from a partner and we were given a tray with a molasses looking glob and white powder. Courtney and I were partners and we watched as the Korean ladies showed us what we all had to do with the glob. It turns out we were pretty much making taffy and we the people were the machine that pulled the taffy. It was really fun making it, even though some of us (cough) were not as good as others. After the pulling, we rolled it out into a long rope and then we took turns hitting the rope candy with a stick. When we hit it, the candy broke into little pieces. At one point, I was holding the candy and Courtney was hitting it with the stick. There was a family that came to look at us all doing this and in the family there was a little boy who looked very fascinated with the whole process. So Courtney gave him the stick so he could try breaking the candy. And so he squats down next to her, grabs the stick, pulls his hand back, aims… and smashes my thumb. And what does Courtney do? She burst out into tears and LAUGHTER! 

Group Shot!

Yummy!

They were pros!

We were not! (p.s. the boy in the background with no baseball cap is the one that smashed my finger!)

There is Polish in the bottom left corner! It says "wide road".

Only two left!

After the candy we were all really excited go strawberry picking. We walked for a little bit to a greenhouse place where they gave us a bin and let us loose! We weren’t sure exactly if we were allowed to eat some while we picked, but that didn’t stop anyone from stuffing their faces with delicious fruit! It didn’t take long to fill up our bins, so after about 25 minutes we headed back to where we made candy, and learned how to make kites from the traditions Korean paper. The kite making was really great, and after we finished, we went out and flew them. The weather on Saturday was absolutely beautiful! The wind was blowing so it was an ideal day for kite flying.

Everybody loves strawberries!!

Sam creating a kite!

Sam flying her kite!

After we finished with our kites, we headed back into Daegu and made our way to the restaurant for dinner. It was a great idea to have decided what we wanted earlier on, because there were a lot of us, and we were all really hungry! We wanted our food as fast as possible. When we finally got our food, it was amazing! We got Sandy some birthday cakes and sang happy birthday and everything. It was truly a fantastic day, and hopefully a great birthday for Sandy!

I'm a pro photographer.

Birthday girl!

After dinner we Pohangers headed back home and spent the rest of the night downtown.

Sunday was a work day for me. The semester just started recently, and I have a lot more classes this time so I actually will have to take days where I just lesson plan. Dinner time was the only time I actually got to do anything fun and it defiantly was great because we went out for one of my favorite meals, Cheesy Jimdok! After we dinner we had some ice cream because apparently that is now a tradition to get ice cream ALL THE TIME!!

It was a good weekend indeed.

P.S. My vacation home entry is coming soon! I’m just hit a few speed bumps writing it. 

And also, I did a little modeling for my friends middle school text book.