Another year has passed and I am another year older. That's right, I am now 25 years old (according to most Koreans). I am not sure how that works exactly but I suspect it has something to do with the lunar calendar. I can't really argue with it though because if I am 25 here than when I finally head home I will be 23 and feel like a young man again. Plus the lunar calendar brought me other amazing surprises like a long weekend in January and Boracay. Ah well, on to the stories. My school was most generous to me on my birthday. They bought me gifts, got me a cake and sang a modified version of happy birthday. Essentially the beat was the same but every other word was "CONGRATULATIONS" which is something I don't understand. Why am I to be congratulated for turning a year older? Do most people not make it to the age of 25 (23) here? Well whatever the case, I still enjoyed it. One of my students was even so kind to give me a gift box that contained two bottles of red wine, a real fancy type I assume. This student has long been one of my favourites, not because he speaks English very well but because he tries to communicate with me and he is a constant joker. For example, most our dialogues will sound involve me saying "Brown, (yes his name is a colour) where is your homework?" to which he will reply "Your face!" It doesn't seem to matter what I say to the kid it always ends with my face. After work was through for the day Danielle and I met up with the gang near the subway stop in Seomyeon for some dinner. Adam and his friend showed us to this delicious steak BBQ restaurant that was sort of like Korean traditional pork BBQ but instead had delicious beef. Honestly it was one of the best meals I have had in Korea thus far. We sat outside on the patio and enjoyed the massive party that was forming around us. After dinner the whole group of us (probably about 15-ish people) found some batting cages and amusement park type of stuff. We spent a little bit of time here playing baseball and hitting punching bags etc before finding our way over to Guri Bar. You may remember this place from my posts a few weeks back, it was the place that sort of reminds me of Coops in that it is a bar that is decked out with wood everywhere, the customers get to DJ and there is a beer pong table for use. Sam has aptly named this place the "bi-polar bar" due to its constantly changing dynamic between incredibly upbeat and awesome to depressing and painful. I feel like the atmosphere of the bar largely depends on the type of clientele in the joint and fortunately for us, we were there. So as you can imagine we had rockin good night, playing all our favourite songs and yours truly destroying the beer pong table. After leaving the bar we found our way to McDonalds for some birthday breakfast because here in Korea McBreakfest starts at 4:00 am, awesome! The next day Sam, Adam, Alex and I found our way to the beach where we hung out and played some soccer. Afterwards we went to an awesome spa that had a series of hot tubs connected like a river on the balcony of a hotel over-looking the ocean. We stayed here for quite a while to watch the sun set and take it all in. Before leaving the spa we all energized and hydrated by each drinking literally a liter of iced coffee. That night all the usual faces met at Alex's house for the real birthday party which involved a cake handpicked by Danielle to match the exact taste and flavour specifications I gave her and suits. Sufficient to say we 'suited up' for a night on the town and found our way over to KSU. The suits were definitely a good call when you compared us to the other people wandering streets, we certainly stood out in the crowd. The next morning Laura and I hitched a subway back over to Alex's house for some western breakfast that was amazing as always and truly completed the awesomeness of my birthday weekend. I owe a big thank you to Danielle for organizing everything and photo-journaling my weekend and to my friends for making the effort to go that extra mile. Awesome!