구정 Lunar New Year Adventures

Anthony was very happy to celebrate the Lunar New Year.... I believe this was Friday night at TGIFridays. Yeah, Anthony didn't ask permission to use this hat, all the waitresses were staring at us. It was awesome.

Fast forward to Sunday night. The actual day of New Years. We went for Samgyupsal mostly because it was one of the only places open. I've never seen this kind of dome grill, so I thought I needed a picture.

Kathy wasn't eating, so she served us our food. So nice :)

The other side of the table... Anthony had cold noodles, and Cameron and I ate Samgyupsal. Yummy!

At a place called CanMore or something like that. They have potbingsu... my FAVORITE desert in Korea. And, it's so fun because the chairs are actually swings hanging from the ceiling. Kathy and Anthony were on this side...

And Steph and I swinging happily together on this side...

Cameron got rejected to sit in the swing with us, so he had to sit in a rocking chair on the end. Muahahaha.

Our wonderful treats! They gave us toast and whipped cream. I thought that was so interesting, but it comes complimentary. Holla! The front one is basically a pile of shaved ice, ice cream, cereal, and fruit. Anthony got fresh kiwi juice, and the back one is a fruit potbingsu. YUMMM!

So it was during this meal that we were contemplating what to do on our Monday off the next day. We talked forever with no conclusions, so we came up with a compromise. All five of us would choose one activity they would like to do, and we would spend the whole day doing those activities. So, it was decided like this: Kathy-Ice Skating, Stephanie-Cake Decorating, Cameron-stamp hunting competition(more on this later), Anthony-Boba Tea, and Myself-Karaoke (I hadn't been in Korea in a Lonnnnng time).

And so the adventure began....

We met Monday morning at my house at about 9:30 (without Anthony because he had plans, so had to join us later). So here we are ready to start our day of adventures.

Kathy and Cameron riding on the bus to the ice skating place...

Stephanie and I on the bus to go Ice Skating. This was quite the adventure finding the place. We knew what bus we needed to take, but once we got off the bus we had NO idea where we were going. We walked around for a while, and thankfully Kathy was kind enough to ask someone for directions :)

KATHY'S ACTIVITY:
After we got our helmets. You HAVE to wear them sadly. But Hey we looked really cool right? We even all had a different color! haha...

Cameron and I working our magic on the ice...

Kathy and I during our couples routine, we were amazing.

All the special kids lined up in a row...

After we finished... we were tired already! (Please see the bottom for some very special videos of our ice skating time!) Next, off to decorate cakes!

STEPHANIE'S ACTIVITY:

Step 1: Choose your type of cake. We went with Chocolate with white icing. Kathy and Stephanie waiting while our cake was iced by the professionals... I'm grateful for that or it might have been hidious :)

STEP 2: You can choose all kinds of phrases, words, and pictures to get put on your cake. It's basically just a stencil and they sift cocoa powder over it. So cool.

STEP 3: Choose your decoration icing. We went with chocolate. It was soooo yummy. We might have ate a little out of the bag :)

STEP 4: Start decorating! We took turns making the border with our star shaped tip. It was really really fun.

Cameron getting in touch with his masculine side... haha. He surprisingly did a fantastic job.

Next, we made a border around the Happy Forever with our tubed icing.

STEP 5: We decided to make little people to represent the 5 of us. This was me :)

STEP 6: Put all our little peope on our cake.

STEP 7: Putting chocolate shavings in each star and around the cake...

It was so fun, they have little tweaser type things so you can carefully arrange the chocolate pieces on your cake...

FINAL STEP: Writing our names beside our little people to personalize it.

Steph writing her name next to her mermaid I believe we called it! haha.

Like I said, we might have ate a lot of the tubed Icing... Kathy literally squeezed it into her mouth at one point. It was kind of awesome...

Our final product! It was so cute!!! Kathy did Anthonys, that's why it was the best... such a talented little Korean.

The fabulous cake decorators with our masterpiece. If anyone in Korea is reading this, please go do it!!!! It's SOOOO much fun! It's a perfect date place, and fun place for friends too! For everything, we only spent about $20 bucks, so only $5 each, so it's a really cheap activity! Next, Anthony finally met up with us, so we were off to start Cameron's activity.

CAMERON'S ACTIVITY:
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There's nothing here because Cameron's activity kind of crashed and burned.... Basically, what happened was that one day Alyssia had told them at work about a Stamp Hunt she had gone on previously. It's basically these big Korean stamps that we understood as being hidden all over Suwon Station. So, we decided we would split up boys vs. girls and see who could find the most stamps in an hour. However, much to our dismay, there were no stamps to be found :( So at the cost of Kathy looking so silly asking Koreans about these hidden stamps that in fact were not in Suwon Station, we didn't get to do Cameron's activity. We later found out that they were actually hidden all over Hwaseong Fortress, not Suwon Station. Minor misunderstanding. Nontheless, we had to take a rain check on Cameron's activity!


ANTHONY'S ACTIVITY:

After the searching of the stamps, we were all tired of walking around, so we decided it was the right time to do Anthony's activity, getting boba tea. However, we were unable to find the place we were looking for, and again, after much searching, we settled on another place. This place could quite possibly be the pinkest, laciest, girliest, couplyest place I have ever been too. It was really ridiculous, and quite funny that it ended up being the place we went for Anthony's activity since it was so girly.

Jake joined us, and so him and Anthony sat together since they both still needed to eat lunch. Each table came comlete with a cute little lamp, flowery table cloths, and gaudy chairs.

Kathy and Cameron... as you can see, we even had lace curtains over our table like a canopy... so funny.

The non eaters, only drinkers table... we also ate our cake that we had just made. It was so yummy! I was very surprised since cakes in Korea are usually extremely disappointing.

Oh, and this was a treat that we got to see on our way out of the cafe....

I think this guy (yes it's a boy...) most definitely lost a bet. He was dancing in the street. It was kind of awesome... haha! Now, on to the last activity of the day, Karaoke.

ASHLEY'S ACTIVITY:

Kathy singing 1,2,3,4 by Plain White Tees... such a cute song.. Listen to it HERE.

I don't know what they were singing... but it must of been good for Cameron...

Singing Backstreet Boys I'm pretty sure...


THE END.

To finish up our day, we met up with a friend, Sung, that we met at DBU.

Eating Itallian food... from the left, Sung, Cameron, Me, Stephanie, Jake, and Tones... Kathy was taking the picture.


These last few pictures are just random from Steph and I's adventure to Seoul last Saturday. I just wanted to get caught up on blogging :)

We were excited to take the train home instead of taking the bus back to Suwon, it's a little bit more expensive, but sooo much more comfortable than taking the bus. The people in the train probably thought we were crazy because we were so excited.

About to get on the train....

Woohoo! So fun!

And like I said, these are the videos of ice skating... Enjoy!!!