Adventures in South Korea!: The First Annual Jay Day!

Our friend Jay, when asked what he wanted to do for his birthday, said he wanted to hang out with us. Later, we found out what he really wanted: to play the Wii and have a cake baked in our oven!

Playing Wii and searching for Waldo

Since it was his birthday, we forced him into doing 6 minutes of Wiifit hula hooping, one of the hardest and most demeaning things available on the Wii.

Blowing out the candles on the 'lovely' German chocolate cake that we baked for him. Baking supplies are pretty limited here in South Korea, and especially in our apartment, so we had to bake the cake in loaf pans, that's why it looks like that. It was perfect that Jay wanted to come to hang out with us on his birthday because months ago Andrew found a stock pile of baseball hats in a dollar store that all said "JAY" on them. They were pretty amazing. Some were pastel, some were sequined, but all were beautiful.

Jay Day!

After lunch, we hopped on a bus and headed to the beach.

Most convenience stores in South Korea have tables and chairs set up outside of them where old men usually sit and drink the cheap alcohol they just bought. After our delicious BBQ duck and sausage dinner, we walked past a Buy The Way with a particularly nice patio arrangement, so we decided to join the old men for a while!

"I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can...."

After Buy The Way, we all decided we could eat again, so we took everyone to another BBQ place we know of for some incredible garlic marinated lamb. We had just discovered the place the night before, and talked about it all day. The lady that runs it was more than delighted to see us two nights in a row and loved that we brought so many other foreigners with us the second time.

Delicious!

While we were at Buy The Way, we had the brilliant idea to only order a little bit of the lamb so that we could then go to another restaurant for even more delicious food. Our next stop, (the third restaurant of the day and the 5th type of meat) was Ilsan Jukumi, a favorite of all of ours. Jukumi is baby octopus with sprouts and mushrooms cooked in a spicy sauce that you wrap in lettuce. The description doesn't sound too great, we know, but it is delicious.

(So delicious we didn't get a picture of it...) But, we did get a picture of the rice that comes at the end of the meal. After you've finished the majority of the octopus, you call a waitress over and they fry rice in the sauce that is left over. There are quite a few restaurants in Korea that offer this service, and it never disappoints.