My 28th Birthday

My birthday was last weekend. It fell on a Sunday, so I decided to go to the beach for the weekend with some friends. The closest beach to Seoul is on the west coast (on the Yellow Sea). It's about 2 hours by train to get there. In my guidebook, it said it was one of the nicer beaches on the west side of the country (evidently the East Sea/Sea of Japan) is a bit better. But it's further away, so we stayed close. There were 6 of us. It's monsoon season here, so the weather wasn't that great, but we still had fun. The beach wasn't exactly what I would call "nice". There were some really weird things that were lying on the beach, like rusty pipes, for example, that I didn't really understand. Not exactly the Carribbean. Oh well, we got over it and were still able to enjoy ourselves. Not many people were at the beach, so it was nice that it wasn't crowded. My friends really came through with some great gifts and cards, which I wasn't expecting at all. They are kind of like my surrogate family here, so we go out of our way to make the holidays good for each other since we are all away from our friends and family back home. I got some really funny t-shirts from Geoff. Because he is Canadian and I am American, we have a little rivalry going there. He bought me a shirt with a maple leaf (Canada's flag) on it and it says "Pure Fuckin Canadian....Born in Canada...Made in Italy". There are also a lot of shirts you'll find in Korea that have English writing on them (because that's the cool thing to wear), but a lot of times, it doesn't really make sense. I got a nightshirt that says "Happy Virus....Sweet! Happy summer! Have a happy day!" What??? I got a tshirt that says "I agree with the cosmetic surgery". Priceless. As you can see, weird. I also got some more "normal" gifts from my other friends.
We shot off some fireworks on the beach that night and watched a scary movie in our hotel room. We also had a massive pillow fight which I haven't done in quite some time.
It was a good birthday! Thanks to all of you who sent cards in the mail. I know some advance planning went into that. :)