Joseph's Birthday 2014

Happy 34 to Joseph!

Joseph had a great birthday.  His students and co-teachers helped make his day special by giving him some much needed coffee and birthday wishes. 

Several of his past students sent a video to him singing happy birthday. 

Our nieces sent a few videos singing happy birthday as well. Completely made his day!

We had a nice lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant and a lovely steak dinner at home with nice dessert from a cafe we know. 

On Friday we got together with Brian and Tiffany for mexican food (kind of) at a restaurant called Takorea (taco-re-uh). 

Saturday brought us to our explorations. Joseph and I hopped a train to a new city: Osong,South Korea. 

We had planned on going to Andong or Daegu but considering I am 32 weeks pregnant and already having some contractions we decided to stick closer to home.  Osong is about 30 minutes by slow train and 15 by KTX. We took the slow train. Our total ticket price for 2 people one way was 5,400w. Pretty darn cheap. To start off with the train station there is HUGE. It is really big and there is nothing in it save 2 coffee shops and a donut shop (stale donuts) and the slowest ticket counter we have yet to encounter in Korea. We walked outside and couldn't see anything except the train station. Just space and lots of taxis. Flat land all around for farming. We walked a different direction and came upon the "city" part of Osong. It is pretty but very, very, very small.  There were mainly villas (4 or 5 story tall apartment buildings) or very large tall apartment buildings (30 stories).  We walked around and through the streets. There was not a lot of traffic at all. The streets were mostly deserted with a few exceptions here and there.  We came across a lot of restaurants that were closed and finally found one that was open. Called Asian Kitchen they had pretty good food.  After lunch we walked around to the top of a hill and then walked along the lake that was there and then wandered back to the train station to come home. 

We were pretty hungry when we returned home and tried a new chicken place by our house. Steamed chicken cut up with glass noodles, vegetables (carrots, cabbage and potatoes) mixed together with a mildly spicy sauce. It was delicious.  

Home again to finish off our leftover birthday dessert and then we were so exhausted we went to sleep early. 

Super fun and adventurous day!

Sunday brought us to Starbucks where we did classwork for our two university classes to update our teaching certificates.  Stayed there about 4 hours or so and got a lot done then came home and raided the fridge for leftovers.