Birthday Festivities

These past two weeks I've been having a blast celebrating numerous birthdays, including my own. Last week it was my co-teacher Myeong Jin's birthday. She is one of the teachers I meet with every week so we threw her a birthday party during our normal meeting time. It was really nice to be able to celebrate Myeong Jin and get her a birthday present. I've really become close with the teachers in my Tuesday group and Myeong Jin was the one who first reached out to me and invited me to spend time with them. Without her I probably wouldn't have been lucky enough to get to know so many of my co-teachers on a more personal level.

This week my host mother's birthday was on Monday and we obviously celebrated by having cake for breakfast. Even funnier, we had the leftover cake for breakfast the next morning. A typical Korean breakfast is identical to a Korean lunch or dinner and includes rice, soup, meat and numerous side dishes. Therefore, Koreans often struggle to understand why Americans only eat certain foods at certain times and don't think anything of having sweets for breakfast.

My birthday was on Wednesday and I started the day by having cake for breakfast for the third day in a row with my host family. What a week! At school my co-teacher, SuJin, ordered patbingsu for my birthday. It was so sweet of her.

SuJin's daughter and I

After school I met the other three ETAs at a coffee shop. We chatted and walked around town a little bit. It was great to be surrounded by so much birthday love. Two of the ETAs then went home for dinner and my friend Rachel and I went to our favorite restaurant in town. We then ate and drank to celebrate my birthday. After dinner we went to the one Western bar in our small town. Neither of us had ever been there before so we figured it was about time. The night was extremely fun and we were both amazed that the bar had a flag celebrating the South!

"If the South would've won we would've had it made"

I was also fortunate enough to celebrate my birthday one more time with some of my other co-teachers. We had cake and fried chicken- an unbelievably Korean combination. I'm pretty sure Koreans use any excuse they can to order fried chickens. In my small town there are at least 15 different fried chicken restaurants. My co-teachers were so sweet to think of me on my birthday though and I was so moved when they all showered me with gifts. It wasn't really something I was expecting and reminded me how much I'll miss all the people I've met in Korea. Despite how far I was from home on my birthday, I felt so loved and that's mainly due to the incredible people I've been able to connect with here. Korea truly does feel like a home of sorts.