24th Birthday Extravaganza

If I could spend one more year being 23, I would be super happy about it. But alas, time marches on and I am ready to embrace 24. My new friends in Gunsan were really sweet and celebrated with me on the day of my birthday with fried chicken and Baskin Robbins ice cream cake.

On the weekend, I headed down to my old city, Gwangju, to celebrate more! We had one of my favorite meals Saturday night: shabu shabu.

Dinner was delicious and super filling. Afterwards, we went to a photo booth to do sticker pictures. The guys sat out for this activity haha.

Inside the photo booth

The hardest part of doing sticker pictures is choosing which ones you want

 Ready for dessert, we headed to Korean Dessert Cafe for bingsu and cake.

Of course, no good birthday is complete without norebang (singing room)!

Singing "Allstar" by Smash Mouth

Big thanks to all my Gunsan and Gwangju friends for making my birthday so incredible. I really am touched by how selfless everyone was. I'm grateful to have friends to be goofy with!

Bonus picture of my view from a bus stop near one of my schools:

Also I have a fun anecdote to share:

Embarrassing moment in Korea #127: my coteacher had to tell me this morning that I was wearing the office secretary's slippers and she wanted them back pronto.

In Korea we wear "slippers" inside the school. We call them slippers but they probably aren't what you'd expect when someone says "slippers."

I really need to buy my own...I've been using the guest slippers at my three schools for the past few weeks. At two schools, it's no problem at all. But at my third school I am reminded how large my feet are every time I take a step, my heels trying their very best not to hang out the back of the slipper.

23rd Birthday

My friend Seungeun took me to Damyang for my birthday! Why am I not at work on a Tuesday?? Because it is Korea's Thanksgiving holiday--Chuseok! Damyang is not too far from Gwangju. It's a very lovely place. We went to a bamboo forest--the air was so fresh there! It was nice to take a break from the big city pollution for a short time. While we were there we also had bamboo ice cream. I did not know this existed! And my goodness, it was tasty!

Now that we had eaten ice cream, it was time for lunch, naturally! We walked a short distance to Noodle Road. Not sure if that's the official name but that's what I shall call it. It is a long road with noodle shops. Everyone eats outside on bamboo platforms. This was a new sight for me. I thought it was a fun way to seat people!

After lunch, we walked to the Meta Sequoia Road. It's a long road lined with beautiful sequoia trees. Somewhere along the road there was a mini shopping and carnival area for children--including a cute teddy bear store.

By the end of the day we had done a lot of walking! I found it quite rejuvenating--especially with the pleasant weather.

On the bus back to Gwangju, our bishop from church called Seungeun to invite us to dinner. The bishop's wife, Sister Yoon was very excited to feed me here homemade Korean food. And I can see why! It was so, so good!

Enjoy the pictures! There are many of them so I created an album on photobucket. Click here to see the pictures!

Here is a video of noodle road. What do you think??

Music I listened to while writing this post: Post Modern Jukebox on youtube. They take modern songs and restyle them to sound vintage. Love it!