A celebration for every occasion

Although I am not American, last night I celebrated with a few of them.
Thanksgiving was officially Thursday, but my American friends Bonnie and Anjelie held a feast last night at their apartment.
What a holiday - Since turkeys are almost impossible to find in Korea, we ate chicken, duck (which was accidentally bought since it apparently looked like chicken), potatoes, candied yams, beans, something called cheesy corn (basically cheese melted on corn..but sooo good), stuffing, cranberry sauce (imported from the USA- thanks to Anj's sister) and of course gravy....mmmm.
The guests were mostly Canadians, with the exception of Irish Matt and a Kiwi called Miranda - who cooked the meat and potatoes in her oven, so lets say it was a multi-nation celebration.

Note: Most people in Korea do not have ovens...this makes cooking a Thanksgiving dinner challenging- so a big thanks goes out to Miranda and her oven for saving the day!

After dinner the serious drinking started...although we were slightly unprepared, a quick trip to the local store got us fully stocked on wine, beer and a deck of cards. It was then that a game called Kings (anyone familiar?) was played and lets just say I don't have a full memory of the rest of the night. However, I can assure you good times were had by all. Whoever invented the drinking game....I feel the pains of a love / hate relationship brewing.

Consequently, I was feeling miserable this morning when I awoke....attempted to do some Christmas shopping but had to bail due to a wine induced headache. As I had made plans to go out with my co-workers and some of their Korean friends for dinner, it was back to bed for this hungover Canadian.

My co-worker Anna, had invited me out, as it is her birthday on December 6th, some of her friends were celebrating with her this weekend. She invited me along to meet some of her friends and ex-coworkers for dinner and drinks. Her friends are mostly teachers and they spoke some English - which made all the difference (they also had a good time trying to teach me some Korean words- lets just say there is a lot of room for improvement in my Korean).
We went to a restaurant and ate gogi, drank soju and then continued the party at a bar for more food (Koreans love to eat), cake and of course more soju. Considering I had been sober for less then 12 hours I took it easy on the soju and switched to pop before things turned nasty.
When we sang "Happy Birthday" the bar supplied sparklers and played some Korean version of Happy Birthday - it was funny, everyone singing and clapping.
Everyone wanted to play a drinking game...of course it was in Korean. We each held a chopstick and tapped the table as everyone chanted..then we had to point at a person...eventually they followed the chopsticks and the last person to be pointed at has to drink a shot. It was fun - luckily I only had to drink twice.
I took plenty of photos so you can get an idea of what it was like.
I am home now, tired and in need of some R and R (gone are the days when I could do this sort of thing more then one night in a row).
Tomorrow the plan is try to go Christmas shopping again...the holidays are almost here!
Good night
Colleen