what a wonderful weekend!

Saturday was a very beautiful day! It was warm. I felt warm. I took off my coat because it was warm. WHOA!!! Jen and I got a headstart on her birthday celebrations by joining a Family Mart Crawl. Imagine a Pub Crawl but instead we hit the many many mini-marts while exploring Seoul. We peeled off from the crawl before the pillow fight (that's right, I skipped out on a city wide pillow fight!) to go to a baseball game. Of course before we could go to the game I had to get lost. We spent a good half hour being lost before giving up and taking a taxi. Once we got to where we were going (late of course) we were happy to find our friends were being slow as well and hadn't gone inside yet. The game was alright but once the sun started to fall below the horizon it got much much colder and all the girls left early to go to Mexican for dinner. Various boyfriends joined us after the game and let us know we'd won in over time. After a most satisfying meal we headed back to an apt and I had champagne for the first time in my life! It went wonderfully with Jen's B-day cake! After the cake we chatted and had some rum and finished the evening off with a card game.
Sunday was much more laid back. I gave Jen her gifts (giant stationary and a pillow)and we went to a very extensive lunch with her co-teacher and her co-teachers friend. It was T.G.I. Friday and the burger was delicious. Was that enough? NO! Then we went to a famous cafe and had ice cream on a waffle with our coffee. We didn't get home until almost 5 and by that point I was quite tired. Now, in the morning I had boiled and decorated 13 eggs (to spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY) with the intention of hiding them of the roof and letting Jen have an Easter Egg Hunt. Instead I just gave them to her but she seemed pleased enough and now has an abundance of eggs. Whee! We rounded out the evening with a rousing round of "Wedding Singer" Happy Birthday Jen!
Monday we (Jen and I) met up with Julia (all of the following pictures are hers and these and many more can be found on her flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/juliajohansen ) at COEX. It was Julias first time at the massive mall and it was fun to be with someone who is still in shock and awe about about all the newness. First the delight that is Quizno's. Sweet sweet toasted sub. Then we bought our tickets to watch "Clash of the Titans" but still had half an hour to kill so we went to the Ani Store and on the way we were approached by some Koreans for a photo-op



This isn't that uncommon of an experience. Especially for Jen with her blonde curly hair. Several delightful minutes were spent cooing over the cuteness to be found in the Ani Store before we dragged ourselves out and settled in to watch the movie. I knew it wasn't going to be like the original and excepted that. I was a little irritated with the ending but as I came in knowing I was watching it for it's "wow"ness I got what I wanted.
After the movie headed towards Bongeunsa, a Buddhist temple across the street from COEX. Along the way were many many statues and building art, etc. Here are some of the pictures (again, all of them were taken by Julia and posted here without her permission. You can see the rest at her website www.flickr.com/photos/juliajohansen )







and a couple from Bongeunsa itself