My Birthday

I had a lot of fun on my birthday. Between hanging out with people on the 5th here and all the internet birthday wishes from home (on the 5th in EST), it was like my birthday was two days long with the time difference. In the morning I met up with some friends from church and had coffee. After work that night all of the staff and teachers went out for dinner downtown. They brought a cake that was the best cake I’ve had here. In traditional Korean fasion, after dinner we went to a noorae-bang (karaoke room- it’s a place you go to where your group has their own private room to sing in. They have tons of Korean and American songs.) I teamed up with my coworker Melissa to have a chance at making a pleasant sound, but she had the same idea and so we sounded terrible… but it was a lot of fun. My boss pulled out the Mariah Carey and Beyonce and nailed them. By the end of the night we knew this would have to be a regular event.

The group at dinner


My cake

Dinner

A picture with the boss

Outside of the noorae-bang (karaoke)

Skiing

I went skiing with my coworkers and a bunch of my friends from church. We had so much fun! We took a train ride down to Busan early in the morning. As we approached the mountains I thought to myself, “they have absolutely no snow on them?” (Apparently it only snows up north in Seoul. Here in Daegu it has only snowed once.) So all the snow on the slope was man-made. Some quick differences are… the chair lift is wider. It fits 6 people so the lines for the lifts are so short. You can also rent a snowsuit.
I’ve only been skiing a few times in my life, but some of you know that I loved it the first day. Usually when I do the first run of the day I need some time to “find my legs” and get used to it again, but this time it was instantaneous. I improved a lot that day and even got so I felt very comfortable on the “black square” which I guess is harder than intermediate, but easier than black diamond.
Here are a few pictures…