April 2-3: I love my friends <3

FINALLY the weekend we've been planning for three weeks arrived!

Our mission was to surprise a certain Ms. Lisa with a birthday party.

One of the best things (actually THE best thing) about living in Suncheon is all of the other people who live here.

Three weeks ago the Amandas decided that Lisa needed to have the strangest surprise party anyone has ever heard of. Our theme was "In like a lion, out like a lamb" because Lisa's actual birthday is in March.

Over a hundred facebook msgs later, sent between twenty different people, we finally had the details ironed out.

Lisa's party included:

Lindsey:) (it was her birthday that week as well so the party was for both of them)
Cardboard cutouts of sheep and lions to be worn around the neck
Party poppers
Three birthday cakes
Various other delicious foods and beverages
A prom backdrop for picture taking
A huge card for Lindsey (Lizzie surprised us all with her mad crafting skills)
A slightly smaller card for Lisa with a pic of her from 5am in Cambodia blown up to mad proportions
Lots of presents!

Pre-party night (Friday) Lindsey slept over at my house because she lives across town and we had to wake up at 5:00am.

Wait.

What?

Why so early?

Well, as if a surprise party wasn't enough for one day, we also wanted to go to the cherry blossom festival in Gurye.

The whole town is blanketed in cherry blossom trees. They make gorgeous canopies of white and pink flowers all along the main 6km-long road.

The trees only bloom for two weeks out of the year so the festival is insanely popular. We had to leave on the 6:10am bus to beat the crowds and traffic.

We got to the festival with no trouble at all; apart from accidentaly leaving Norman behind...that was really sad:(

On our second bus we (there were six of us) all had seats on the bus. We were the only foreigners, all of the other passengers were adjummas and halmonis (aunts and grandmothers, old and older ladies). Three stops later fifteen more halmonis boarded the bus. We all gave up our seats and gained instant love. All of these little old ladies were happily chatting us up, completely undeterred by our near-total ignorance of the Korean language. Teeny little hands took our purses and bags. They were placed on bony little laps so we wouldn't have to carry them as we stood.

After we disembarked, we walked down the main road with thousands of Korean tourists. A river ran paralel to the road, so we jumped around on river rocks and had tons of photo opportunities.

Three hours and one kilometre later, we spotted a gazebo further up a hill off the main road. We walked up a million steps until we reached the gazebo (I think I'm turning slightly Korean, my first instinct on seeing a mountain is to climb it. I don't think I had that instinct before I came here).

In the gazebo were two low tables with all sorts of tea accoutrements. A man called us inside in English, "This tea is free!".

Happily we slipped off our shoes and settled on the floor around a table. We peered at all of the different pieces of crockery and tea instruments with interest as we waited to be served.

Upon seeing us staring dumbly, not consuming tea, the man who called to us earlier spoke again, "I am not worker here! You must serve yourself!".

"Ohh" suddenly it didn't seem as if tea consumption would be possible. (I know it sounds like we're INCREDIBLY stupid not to be able to figure out tea, but it was complex!)

Seeing our glassy eyes, the man (Master Ryu- Master because he is a hapkido Master) ordered us to move to the other table.

We obeyed.

There were four women in our group and two men. We sat in a mixed fashion. Master Ryu ordered Will to move so the females were on one side and the males on the other. Master Ryu's brother watched the procedings the other side of the gazebo. We invited him to join us as well.

Then Master Ryu proceded to serve us tea (he was so nice!) We (the females) drank 'woman tea' while the men drank 'red' (what westerners would call 'black') tea.

Our cups were tiny, so we were instructed to drink our tea in one gulp. If we wanted more, we had to put our cups on a wooden slab in the middle of the table, and Master Rye would top us up again.

It was a really beautiful experience- sitting high on a mountain, overlooking thousands of cherry blossom trees, being served tea in a traditional manner by the nicest man and his brother.

Tea came to an abrupt end when the police called Master Ryu and told him that he had to move his car (this was not a big deal: in Korea, motorists have their cell phone numbers on display in their dash so it's easy to call the driver if you need them to move their car).

Less then a minute after the brothers took off down the mountain, the sweetest little four-year old girl (Yuji, we later learned from her mother) approached our table and started chatting away. We smiled at her and told her she was beautiful (that's as far as our Korean went).

Yuji was entranced by Amanda's curly, blonde hair. She joyfully dug her hands in and gently gave Amanda a pony-tail. She was so cute!

The six of us agreed later that our gazebo experience made the 5am wake-up call completely worthwhile.

We left Gurye around 1pm. The line of cars headed towards the festival was at least five kilometres long. Now the 5am wake-up call was definitely worth it!

A couple of hours later I called Lisa and told her that Jodie needed help baking a cake. I asked her if she'd be willing to help.

Lisa agreed.

She came down to my apartment where we waited for Lindsey.

Twenty minutes later I took them to Jodie's.

Lisa entered the apartment first.

We got her good.

The poppers blanketed Jodie's apartment with confetti, and fifteen of Lisa and Lindsey's closet friends were gathered around cheering wearing lions or sheep.

We totally pulled of the weirdest surprise birthday party in history.

What a great day!