April 29, 2009
It’s like rising from the dead. Except it’s my birthday.
My apologies for a lack of posting. I was merely caught up in… other things. Yeah. That’s right. Other… important things. So! Onwards!
Okay, let’s get this blog restarted in style!
Friday, April 17th was my birthday, right-o, and I even got to celebrate two days in a row. One friend was going to be gone my actual birthday, so she threw me a small surprise party on Thursday night. Complete with a bear cake:
Mmmm cake!
We went to Mr. Pizza, a Korean pizza joint which has both American style pizzas and Korean. We got one American veggie pizza, a “bulgogi” pizza (bulgogi is just meat, so we thought it would just be a meat pizza…), and a sweet potato pizza.
It was definitely an exercise for the taste buds. The bulgogi pizza was surprisingly not-good, and I can’t even describe why. It was just strange. It was the least popular of the pizza choices.
The sweet potato pizza was insanely sweet, plus it was served with canned fruit on top. A bite of cold pineapple wasn’t too bad with the gooey pizza, but the other fruit wasn’t quite as good. There were also cherries on top, just to finish it off. Our group was very divided on this pizza. Some really like it (Andrea took all the leftovers home with her, she really liked it) and some didn’t want more than a few bites (er, me).
After pizza, we went for makkoli, which is a very sweet alcoholic drink. Like most alcohol, you can buy it in the store, but the only way to properly drink makkoli is at a makkoli bar, where you’re served it in teapots and drink out of small bowls. Then, of course, we went to noraebang.
Mmmm makkoli
I’m pretty sure I’ve described noraebang (kareoke). It’s tons of fun. You simply go with a group of friends and rent a room, which has tv (or a few), couches, and microphones. Most also include tamborines. You get to pick whichever songs you want to sing to, and no one but your friends in the room can hear. The noraebang has food and drinks as well, which they bring to you in the room.
Unfortunately, we decided to try a new noraebang, which had an abysmal selection of English songs, so it was hard to find songs we liked enough to sing. Plus, it was Thursday night, and I was tired, so we didn’t stay out too late.
The next day, my Korean teachers had a birthday party for me!
Before school, we met in the teacher’s lounge, and they gave me a blueberry cake:
Mmmmmm blueberry cake
It was quite delicious, even at 9 AM. We also had fruit, and the vice-principal brought champagne! I don’t know if my birthday was THAT important of an event, but it was fun.
Once the kids found out it was my birthday, they went a little overboard, too. A few sixth-graders (who knew in advance, because they asked) actually bought me jewelry. It was cute, but I would have been satisfied just with candy! For the most part, I just got a lot of handmade cards, which were very cute. I think my favorite gift was the “toy cake” some of the 5th grade girls made me.
The only cake I don’t have a photo of. 
It may not be edible, but it saves a lot better!
Friday night was simply more celebration with friends, but it’s not really blog-worthy.
It was a pretty awesome experience having a birthday in Korea.
Koreans used to not celebrate an individual birthday, but everyone would just age up one year at Lunar New Year’s (Chinese New Year), probably because it was hard to keep track of days. Now they seem to have a mix of it: they have a party/gifts on their birthday, but I think they count their actual age based on Lunar New Year.
Also, a note on Korean birthdays… we’re doing a unit on birthdays (learning months) with the sixth graders, and one of the boys has a birthday on May 5th. May 5th (5-5) is Children’s Day. We have the day off from school, kids are freed from responsibility, and they’re also given gifts by their parents. So having your birthday on Children’s Day is terrible! The equivalent is having your birthday on Christmas… you always get jipped out of gifts!
Well, I think that’s it for my thoughts on birthdays in Korean.
Coming up… I had a fieldtrip with my school, so I’ll post about that (although science museums are kind of universal, so it won’t be that exciting…), I was going to have dog for dinner one night but couldn’t make it because of my school (boooo), went to Yeoju Pottery Expo (plenty of pictures, that will be a full post), and Friday is our school sports day, so that’ll be a post… and this weekend I’m off on a trip, so hopefully I can get some nice shots and make a post about that!
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Wilma Tays said,
May 14, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Great pictures, great writing! Very interesting! So happy that you are having such a good adventure. Love, Grandmother