Sian's Birthday Braai

We had a reason to celebrate last weekend! It was Sian's 24th birthday. Originally we were going to go camping, but because that wouldn't work well for everyone, we decided to do a braai on the river. 

Braai is the South African word for barbecue. I guess it is a bit more of a tradition and has a bit of a difference than an American BBQ, but I will still argue that it is very similar. The food that is grilled is different, but the social aspects are the same. Anyways, we all brought our own meat and threw it on the grill. 

I made chicken kabobs with tons of veggies! I even found Italian dressing to marinate the chicken in. I also took deviled eggs and scotcharoos to share...

For desert I made a cheesecake as Sian's birthday cake. The cheesecake had an oreo crust and was topped with carmel. It turned out tasting great, but was a bit soft from being outside for a few hours. No one complained... :)

Oh! Ben and I had our first "couple-uh" clothing experience! Who is responsible for this happening is up for debate...

It was a great afternoon, but quite hot. We were going to go to the baseball game afterwards, but the game ended up being sold out! Bummer! The sun knocked us out early that night and we really couldn't even move anyways! ahaha What a great day though celebrating a great friend! :)

Duck Boats at Suseong Lake....

Hmmmm.... what to do in Daegu on a weekend...?
Whenever I have this thought I start to attack things that are one my bucket list for my time here in Korea.

# 22. Ride the duck/swan boats

It was a beautiful day and we had no reason not to! Now, I will say that Ben is really easy going about wanting to do all of these super cheesy couple-uh things. I would even go as far to say that he enjoys them and wants to do them! ;)

In Daegu, the best place to ride these duck boats is at Suseong Lake. Suseong Lake is a bit of a journey from where I live in Chilgok, so Ben and I made it an all day activity! Fortunately, there actually is a bus that goes directly from my house, down Chilgok, through downtown and all the way across Daegu to Suseong Lake. Unfortunately, this bus ride takes over and hour to get there!

It cost us 10,000 won to paddle around the "lake" for 30 minutes. I say "lake" becasuse it was more like a large pond. The watershed next to my house in Kansas is bigger than this "lake". That being said, it was a very enjoyable time. We really just paddles out to the middle and mostly floated. Ben cracked open a beer and we just put our feet up and enjoyed the weather, water, and company. The 30 minutes went way too fast. I could have stayed out there for hours!

Oh I forgot to mention: We also got a FREE Polaroid picture of us in front of our boat. :)

I honestly can't WAIT to do this again. Next time I want to go around sunset. There is a fountain in the middle of the "lake", and I think it would be beautiful at that time of day.

Dododog Dog Cafe Itaewon...

 

 Short and simple...at a dog cafe, you order a drink and you get to play with the dogs that are there. This one was a bit different than some others, because people could drop off their dogs for guest to basically "babysit". This resulted in a ton of dogs! It was so much fun. 

I am convinced that dogs in Korea are actually racist... When I ride my bike, they are perfectly fine with the koreans walking and riding by, but as soon as I get close they go nuts!!! Same with the dog in the apartment below me! I only hear him when I am walking by.... geez...

Luckily we had a least three dogs that could look past the color of our skin. They were cute and we got some long awaited cuddles! There were even some cute little puppies who were quite overwhelmed with the older dogs in their faces!

The tiny little guy just kept trying to climb up Sarah's shirt to her shoulder. Once he was up there he perched and watched the action.

 Next on the list...cat cafe... :)

 

Dragon Hills Spa & Ajumma Scrub...

So many things can be said about this experience of going to a jjimjilbang, but in reality- my best friend is one of the most brave people I know! Without going into a lot of detail, Sarah has many reasons that the population of Korea, who already tends to stare at foreigners, for them to look harder! Most people in her situation would not be able to go into a place where you walk around naked the entire time...

Ajumma Scrub:

Gosh, you don't find this in America, that's for sure. Koreans like to SCRUB every inch of their body with a very abrasive cloth to take away the top layer of dead skin off. At a jjimjilbang, you can pay extra (25,000 won) for an old woman to do this for you. Sarah was really wanting to do this. Me, not so much. I knew it was going to be quite painful as I have rather sensitive skin. But I thought, Sarah came all the way to Korea and if she wants me to do this, I very well better do it!
We put our bracelets in line, and waited for our turn. Then we each got our turn to hop naked up onto the plastic covered massage table. The women weren't naked, they were wearing black undergarments.
These women, scrub hard and fast! They scrub EVER inch of your body and twist and manuever you so that they can reach everywhere as well! Every so often they throw tubs of water on you to wash of the dead skin piles. My lady asked me towards the beginning if I wanted a massage, but it was 50,000 won more so I declined. After that moment, I swear she scrubbed me even harder! I was not quite in tears, but it wasn't a nice feeling. I gritted my teeth... I'm not sure I would do it again, but it was an experience, and it is also crossed off my bucket list!

Gangnam Style...Seoul

 

 We needed to find a place to stay in Seoul because we went up one night earlier than planned. A love motel was our obvious choice of a place to stay. They are roomier and private so we could spread out. When we asked, we were told that Gangnam would most likely have a love motel. We were able to find one, and actually requested the circle bed. I think that is a must that if you are able to stay in a circle bed in Korea- you NEED to do it!
Anyways, staying in Gangnam also allowed us to try and check off another thing off of the must dos in Korea- Dance Psy's Gangnam style in Gangnam... needless to say- check that off the list! We even got some authentic Koreans to jump in and join us!

Board Game Cafe...

 

In Sarah and my relationship, we have spent hours playing board games. Before Abby came along, it was one of our favorite things to do after all of the kids went to sleep and we would stay up quite late. It only made sense for us to go to a board game cafe while she was here. Fate made us stumble on the board game cafe in Gangnam. We had a great time! This is the process of the cafe:
1.) Sit down and look through the  game menu (the games are all pictured and discribed)
2.) Order your food/drinks
3.) Start playing the game... (we picked Yahtzee)
4.) The time you start is logged and you pay for the amount of hours you play when you leave. (We only played for 1 hour.)

Damyeong Bamboo Forest

While we were in Gwangju our main objective was to see the sights around the city and not spend too much time in the city. I know that Gwangju as a city is probably lovely, but with our time crunch we really had to be selective!
One of the things we wanted to see was the Damyeong Bamboo Forest. I had never seen a bamboo forest and I thought it would be really interesting to see. There happened to be a bamboo festival scheduled for the weekend that we were going to be there, but again because of the ferry accident, it had been cancelled. Apparently, enough people had plans to go to this festival before the accident and weren't interested in cancelling their plans, because there were tons of people there. Our bus ride that was quoted as taking 40 minutes took 1 1/2 hours to get from Gwangju to Damyeong. The bus was just crawling with the traffic!
We were let of and not knowing really where to go we just starting walking. We noticed a huge line multiple blocks long and though- I sure hope that is not the line to get in! This is because we really only had a couple of hours before we needed to get back to catch our but to Seoul. We just kept walking, and eventually realized that we were cutting all of those people... As bad as we felt, we knew we were really only going to get to spend 30 minutes in the forest, and if we would have gone to the back of the line we would have just had to leave without seeing anything. Add the fact that I am cut in line at all times throughout the day, we didn't feel toooooo bad....
Inside the forest, the bamboo was really tall. I'm sure if you were to see it with a few less thousand people it might be really mystical, or if you saw it in the fog or mist... We wandered a bit and tested a few of the festival foods, before trying to figure out where to board the bus back to Gwangju.

We asked at least 5 people where the correct spot for the bus stop to go back to Gwangju was because we COULD NOT miss it and still make our bus to Seoul. We waited for at least 30 minutes as panic started to set it.  Finally we saw the bus coming our way slowly. As it approached, it didn't start pulling over to the sidewalk which we thought was strange.... It obviously wasn't planning on picking up the 15 people standing at the stop!

Just then- ajumma came to the rescue!!!

The bus wasn't able to move because of the traffic, so the woman ran up to the doors and started yelling and hitting the doors! The driver wouldn't open them and was yelling back at her. (It appeared he picked up from a different stop because of the traffic or somethings.) The ajumma was not going to take NO for an answer! She marched over to the police officer standing nearby, dragged him over to the bus, and made him tell the bus driver to open the doors!!! All of us piled on. It was such a funny sight to see, but we were so grateful for this woman!

We made it back to the bus terminal in enough time to get our bus out to Seoul... and we were on our way!

Boseong Tea Fields....again...:)

 

Boseong Tea Fields Daehan Dawon

Photo Credit: Sarah Leming

 I had been to this tea field before on a trip to the Jindo Sea Parting Festival, and I thought it was must for Sarah to see during her time in Korea. Plus, i was hoping to go back when the weather was different than I had seen it the first time (misty & raining), and boy did I get that! It was so sunny and clear during our time at the tea fields. This was a benefit as we climbed to the top of the hill to try and see the sea! I hadn't warned Sarah that the hope was to see the sea, so she was pleasantly surprised when she did in fact see the sea! Originally, there was going to be a festival at the tea fields on the weekend that we were there, but it was cancelled because of the ferry tragedy. Looking back, I'm glad we didn't see this place with a billion more people than were already there. It already seemed like a lot, so add a thousand more people and that is too much!

Festivals in Korea can be an overload...

This was the view from the top. The previous time I was here, I couldn't even see 50 feet in front of me because the fog and rain. This time we could see all the way to the sea! It was really beautiful! :)

The view from the top...

   

 

 

We enjoyed some food from the cafe. We got some items that you can traditionally find on menus here in Korea- bibimbap & pork cutlet. They weren't the best ever examples of this kind of food, but none the less, Sarah got to try them.

The best thing that we ate was the green tea ice cream! It was really good, and perfect with the sunny weather.

After spending some hours here we headed back to Gwangju. It was an hour and half bus ride back, so we settled into our luxury bus- the buses in this country can be really nice- and planned what we were going to do next...