Daegu Birthday

I have been slacking with the blog-writing; I admit it! So to apologize for my lack of commitment, I am plastering this one with many photos from my birthday weekend in Daegu. My friend, J, reserved a guest house for us which was basically an empty apartment in her complex with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. We arrived in Daegu Friday evening after getting off work, and stayed until Sunday afternoon. It was lots of fun with a great group of people. It definitely ranks as one of my top birthdays ever.

 Grace and Westley

J and Ryan

Stephanie and her new smart phone!

Son and Daniel

Stephanie, Son, Daniel, Waiter, Westley, and Grace

Daniel, Westley, Stephanie, and J

Ryan and Son playing beer pong! (Yeah, they have beer pong here, but only in the foreigner bars.)

Stephanie and J!

Haha! I absolutely love this picture!!

Son and his camera-faces!

Westley?

Bahaha! Another one of my favorites.

Awww, the bro-mance begins.

Noraebang! (aka karaoke)

These two were really into it, and it was awesome!

Great time!

Yeah...

My wonderful birthday cake!

Everyone digging in!

The wonderful Miss J!

Bro-mance! It's not just an American-guy thing. Haha! Love this picture so much.

Daegu and Gumi

My town is in between two cities: Daegu (대구) and Gumi (구미). It's 15 minutes either way by train, so I have been taking advantage of this to have some fun with friends!

The first series of pictures are from Daegu. It was the first weekend after moving to Waegwan when I went. I met up with my friends Stephanie (another EPIK teacher) and J who was our class teacher in orientation.

The first place that J took us was a traditional Korean open-air market. This is a stand selling "fart bread". I wasn't brave enough to try it. The food we did eat there was delicious!

This is J (left) and Stephanie (right) inside the Hello Kitty Cafe. It was soooooooo pink! I was surprised by the amount of men and boys that were inside with their girlfriends. They didn't even seem embarrassed to be there.

Stephanie and I looking a little wind-swept. It was a pretty windy day that day.

And this was my coffee. How cute is that?

J and I outside the Hello Kitty Cafe. As you can see, very very pink!

We finished up our evening with an amazing dinner.

Now these next set of pictures are from Gumi. The guys that live above me invited me along to a volleyball game. At the time, I didn't realize that it was a professional volleyball game. It was unlike anything I'd ever encountered at a sporting event. I felt like I was inside one giant advertisement. For starters, the teams are owned by a business so the team names are the business names. Everyone inside the stadium are chanting this business's name. Gumi's team is L.I.G.

The athletes themselves were excellent players. It was an exciting match. It was just so bizarre to have it to blatant that this was just a promotional event for a business.

The teams also had professional cheerleaders, which is something the guys in my group really enjoyed, haha!

Taking a tour of Waegwan

I mentioned before in a previous post that when I got to my new apartment everything was all set up for me by the fabulous Megan. Well, Megan left me a cute little note pointing me upstairs to two other English teachers who have been here for a year: Alex and Arno! So I went and knocked on their doors, and they were kind enough to take me hiking and show me around Waegwan. These pictures are mostly from the hike once we got to the top. I had told Alex specifically that I didn't want something too difficult...we ended up climbing a mountain!

This is looking down from the top at the river that runs through Waegwan (왜관).

Another shot of the river.

Cool little gazebo-type structure where you can sit and have a picnic, or collapse from exhaustion.

There was actually a war memorial at the top dedicated to both Korean and American soldiers.

This is Arno (left) from South Africa and Alex (right) from England. At certain parts along the trail there are these public exercising machines. This one had two parts which is being demonstrated by these two. Arno's is a massaging back roller where you have to kind of squat up and down to get the effect. Alex's has two back rollers, and you go side-to-side for that one.

This was coming back down from the hike. We weren't quite sure what this area is. It kind of reminded me of a graveyard, but I think it was more memorials for Korean and American soldiers.

A kind of lop-sided shot of the pagoda...memorial?

Farewell to Orientation

This is a little out of order, but I wanted to post these pictures up. These were taken on the day we were picked up by our co-teachers. We loaded up into buses, and drove from Daejeon (대전) to Gumi (구미). We had one last lunch together with everyone moving to Gyeonbuk province, and then we were individually picked up by our co-teachers.

This is Darren (left) and Andy (right). Good guys.

The Americans! Son (left), Stephanie (obvious), and Ryan (right).

This picture is just to stress the Korean cuteness factor. Anything that can be made cute or pretty is.

Ryan with his manly cup of coffee. It takes a real man to drink from something so pink and floral.

The lovely Helen from England. I think she got something with chocolate (probably a mocha).

And this was my cafe latte. It's probably the most cute and pretty cup of coffee I have ever had in my life.

Saying goodbye (for now) to my wonderful Korean orientation teachers Juhyun Do (aka "J") and Daniel. Great, great people. I actually teared up when I had to say goodbye to these two.

Waegwan Apartment

I am going to post some pictures of what my apartment looks like. When I got here, the whole place was clean, and fully stocked with all these little post-it notes from the girl who had lived here before me. Thank you Megan!! You rock! She was also the girl who worked at my school before me.

This is the entryway, and there's this little step up where you take your shoes off.

This is my kitchen. The refrigerator came like that (I think it was Megan's doing). Could you find a cuter fridge than that? I think not.

A better shot of the fridge, because it deserves it.

Another shot of the stove/sink area.

Moving from the kitchen area to the living/bedroom/dining room.

That's my bed, extra bedding, and makeup corner.

That's my "dining table", drying rack, and some maps that Megan left.

This is looking from the bedside wall.

This is looking from the wardrobe towards my bathroom door.

The bathroom. That's the shower head in the upper corner. Water goes everywhere pretty much. Nothing like showering in front of a mirror! It's actually not a big deal at all, and makes cleaning easier.

This is leading off the bathroom to the laundry room. That is a small strawberry trash can that I also inherited from Megan.

This is my laundry room, which is also storage for my empty luggage and cleaning supplies.

Racks and hangers to dry my clothes on.

So that's the tour. It's a really cute, comfortable, little apartment and the best part is that it's a 5 minute walk from work and right across the street from the grocery store!!