woomin's bday party!

The soccer team gave me an award of appreciation on Thursday. I was supposed to receive it at our banquet last Saturday that I was unable to attend due to Kalie/Julie xmas. So, they presented it to me during a team meeting on Thursday. It was super nice of them and unexpected. The plaque is in Korean but it also has the English translated as well. Apparently they got a Korean who has lived in an English speaking country for 6 years to translate the message. The translation reads:

As a foreigner, you participated in many completion with Hongcheongun Women Football Team in Korea and greatly congributed to the excellent results, Especially a lot of effort has gone into the growth of Honcheongun Women Footdall Team. In deep appreciation of your excellent work, we present this token of our appreciation and wish good luck to you.

Saturday was Woomin’s first birthday party (Sharon’s son). There was a huge buffet of a variety of fantastic food to select from, a video, and a few activities that they did. One of the activities was to having the select an item to determine their future with things such as a mallet for a lawyer, a stethoscope for a doctor, a pencil for a teacher… you get the point. Anyways, Woomin picked up the microphone; he’s going to be a little kpop artist! I wouldn’t expect any less from Sharon’s kid. We also got numbers before we sat down and Woomin drew out my number so I got to go up on stage in front of all the Koreans and get a prize (ceramic mugs). 

Woomin with his microphone!

After Sharon’s party, Chris (the teacher I replaced at Wonderland) Adam and I went into Seoul to hang out. We ended up going screen golfing and hung out all night in Gangnam. It was a fun night. Korean’s love screen golf here and this was the first time I have been…. Pretty dumb on my part, that’s for sure. Sunday I went into Myeongdong to do some shopping. I heard it was christmasfied as well so that was also a draw for me to go there. People were correct. It was very festive and I enjoyed it!

Chris golfing

Myeongdong at Christmastime...

kalie/julie xmas!

Last Thursday I went to Seoul after work to meet up with some of my friends I met working at Disney World in Florida. One was my friend who lives in Seoul named Claire and the other was my friend Jen who’s from Taiwan and was in Seoul visiting for a few days. It was awesome to see them both again. I don’t get to see my friend Claire often even though we live so close because she is very busy all the time with grad school and work. We met for some drinks in Sinchon and got to catch up on life. While we were there, Claire checked on her iPhone and Lucas, one of our Brazilian friends, was on Skype so we called and chatted with him for a while as well. It was pretty fun! 

Jen and her friend Blake

Claire and I

The three lifeguards!

Claire took this pic on her phone. It's kinda fuzzy but you get the picture. This is our friend Lucas!

Chatting with Lucas!

Kalie/Julie Christmas was last weekend. Everyone in Korea that knows me probably knows about kj xmas because I was talking about it nonstop until it arrived.  Kalie and I have to plan months in advance to hang out because weekends here in Korea seem to go by so quickly and fill up with random things to do. When I arrived in Daegu on Friday night I walked into Kalie’s charming apartment set up with a little comfort of home. For those of you who don’t know my family well, my mother’s favorite holiday to decorate for is Christmas. She goes nut! We have a whole storage closet under our stairs solely dedicated to Christmas decorations. If you think I’m joking, please stop by my house this Christmas season and check it out for yourself. I’m sure my mom would enjoy your company. She claims to have toned it down this season but I highly doubt it. Anyways, Kalie had a Christmas tree lit and I brought some Christmas lights that Hadley gave me that we put up, Thanks Hads! She also had some presents already wrapped and under the tree for me! It was fantastic. To add to it, there was Christmas music playing as I walked in! 

Kalie's decorated apartment! 

Our Saturday was spent getting up and going to Starbucks in the morning for a breakfast sandwich and beverage. Then we went to go get out nails done, it’d been a while since I’ve had any maintenance done to my nails. The lady took one look at my nails and had a frightening look on her face like; dang these nails need some work! We then wasted away the afternoon hanging out and eventually made it to an Italian restaurant. This restaurant is where one of Kalie’s students father owns. He is completely Italian, married to a Korean. It was the best meal I’ve had so far here in Korea. It was amazing; we both got a pasta dish and had a glass of house wine. Since the dad was working, he gave us so much food for service – I love the free service dishes! 

Starbucks! 

The Italian at work! 

The salad was one of the service dishes! Kalie's won't even look up from her food to take a picture because it was that good! 

The rest of our night was spent wondering about Downtown Daegu enjoying the many lights that they had displayed in town. I had told Kalie a while ago that I was going to miss being at Macy’s around Christmas time with my mom and sisters, seeing the Christmas display on the 8^th floor and wondering about the Christmas items. Kalie was so cute and brought me to the department store to look around in Daegu. We looked at some of their holiday displays for a bit. Thanks Kals, it was awesome. I had a great holiday weekend, I’m so happy that I got to spend a bit of Christmas time with my best friend from home. It makes the holidays overseas so much better! 

In front of a little tree display at the department store... it was no Macy's tree in Chicago but it'll do this year I suppose.

Had to take a picture from the outdoor stand in Daegu on Kalie/Julie xmas! 

You can't really tell but there are at least 8 employees working the tie section in the department store with no one even shopping in that section... The department stores are overstaffed like crazy here in Korea.

My lovely surprise gift from my mom, christmas in a box! I received this on Tuesday just as I was feeling crappy and sick. It was such a great surprise to get! Thanks Mom, you're the best! Ps. nice christmas "family tree".... haha.