Birthday. Thanksgiving. It's already December?!

A couple weeks ago was my birthday, so I want to catalog some of the things I did.

First, the weekend before on Friday the 13th, I went to an Uzbekistan restaurant and ate lamb an

d drank some Russian beer. Then my fellow teachers and I went to a "funky" singing room where we could wear blue

and red disco wigs. I dunno why I don't have pictures of that.

The next day a few of us went to my first concert experience in

Korea. It was in a 2nd floor bar venue called--get this--FREEBIRD! Hahaha. The place was really cool, and it ended up being all you could drink bottles of Cass 2X for 10 bucks. A great deal. The first band was a really good Korean indie group. Next was some American garage rock that wasn't that great. Final was a bunch of older white guys doing a medley of covers, from Beatles to Dave Matthews to Guns n Roses. Not bad, but not great. Anyway, I at least had a really fun night!

The day of my birthday, Wednesday Nov 18th, one of my classes had a cake with lit candles waiting for me, and they sang me happy birthday. It was really sweet. Obviously, they're my favorite class =) Some of the other teachers gave me gifts, like a beanie, wine, and an English/Korean Poe book, among others.

Then, Saturday the 21st, my friend Victor hosted a party at his apartment. I helped acquire the mood lighting: black lights, red and blue rope lights, plus some Christmas tinsel. He got the drinks: soju, beer, vodka 'n whiskey.

Guests were merry, and we taught Koreans how to play ring of fire and of course, beer pong! It was an energetic soiree, as evidenced by the building security guy coming by twice to say keep it down.

Another thing I did was attend a college concert of graduating music majors. I went with my new friend and fellow teacher, Joan. She is about to finish her masters at Kyeong Hee University, so she showed me around the really pretty campus. Then we saw there would be a concert the day we were there, so we checked it out. It was really awesome.

Music ranged from jazz numbers and piano ballads to straight-up hair-metal hard rock (a little surprising). Here's a clip of some jazz for ya.

My favorite song is called "Space Hippies". It was kinda like Idioteque, and I even got a video of the whole song, so you can check it out yourself. I predict it will be the next big hit of 2010.

For Thanksgiving I hosted a potluck and made some killer mashed potatoes. No turkey, but hens were a good substitute. It was nice to celebrate with a group of all new friends. I was missing family and friends back home though. A lot.

I can't believe I've been here nearly six months already! Time flies.