Weekend of Birthdays

This weekend was so much fun! It was a weekend full of birthdays. Taleah’s birthday was on Friday so she convinced Jade to let us get off work at 5. We all rushed home to get dressed to the nine’s and head to Seoul. The theme was “All Black Everything” so everyone was wearing black from head to toe, with a few colorful accessories. I thought it was cute to have all of us looking the same and I was pretty excited to wear my zipper-back black dress and my wild multi-colored heels ;-) The plan was to go to a nice restaurant at one of the hotels in Seoul and attend an all you can eat/all you can drink buffet for only 25,000 won each. All of us had been looking forward to it all week and were dying of hunger on our way up to Seoul. When we arrived, at about 9:15, we found out that the buffet ended at 9!!! We were so upset!! We thought about staying and just eating at the restaurant, but a just a bowl of fresh fruit was 40,000 won! No way!!! Taleah decided to stay with a bunch of her friends and meet up with us later, so Andy, Tia, Katie, and I decided to go to a convenient store to pick up some soju and buy some cheap food at Gecko’s in Itaewon. Amy, Sarah, Janine and the rest of the group met up with a little later to grab some drinks. We were sitting in the back of the restaurant at a long table and we laughed so hard when we realized that we sat with white people at one end, Asians in the middle, and black people on the other end! Sorta interesting how that just seems to happen. Sociology at it’s best. After dinner and drinks, we went out dancing at a few clubs. We danced the night away, having the most amazing time goofy dancing with Andy and breaking it down on the dance floor and having goofy dancing contests with Andy. At some point Summer Nights from Grease song came on and Amy and Andy acted the whole thing out. I guess you had to be there (or drinking) but it was pretty cute. After meeting some new people and dancing like we think we look good for a few hours we made our way back early, around 6am. Even though everyone was pretty upset about the buffet we had been looking forward to, it ended up being a pretty entertaining night!

Chase's birthday was on Sunday, so we celebrated on Saturday night. Him and his Pyongtaek family came over and we had little party in my apartment, which is WAY too small for 10 people!! We played some Catch Phrase and just hung out and drank for a few hours before going to Suwon for the night. We all met up with the other Dongtan girls, bar hopped for a few hours while the boys ended up meeting a group of Korean guys and having a soju drinking contest- they lost! I bought some chicken on a stick for the first time, Katelan and I had a stick fight- pretty funny stuff. Everyone was definitely celebrating Chase’s birthday as if it was their own, we all had a blast that night! Sunday hurt a lot. When we met up at 7pm on Sunday for Chase’s birthday dinner everyone was quiet and still dying from the night before.

This weekend Amy and I were having a pretty interesting conversation. We were talking about how my kids go nuts whenever they look me in the eye and see that they are blue because they aren’t used to seeing color in eyes. All the Asians look exactly the same. I have definitely been talking the diversification of Americans for granted. At home there is all sorts of colors for eyes, hair and skin. Here they only have black hair and black eyes. That's why their style is so wild and unique-because it's the only way they can express themselves. Some Asians have perms or crazy cuts and dye job to make themselves look different from the rest of the crowd. It must get so boring looking exactly like everyone else. It’s times like these that I appreciate the red hair.

Alright, well that pretty much sums of the weekend. Be back soon.