Feb 27th- March 1st

Friday I believe was the 26th, but oh well. It was a pretty good day at work. Didn't have preschool class because they graduated on Thursday and had a whole big ceremony. So I didnt have to be at school till 1 to meet with some of the korean teachers about our new classes starting next week. We received new schedules, nothing really changed. I start later, instead of 12:50 I start at 1:25 and end around the same time. Instead of having 2 preschool classes I only have 1, but added a DP teens class, who probably are better at Grammar than me, so I am sort of nervous for that class. Hopefully all goes well.
Friday night went downtown for a little, met up with Jay and Jen for trivia at Communes. They love this bar, but I dislike for many reasons, but one of main reasons is that chairs absolutely suck. Anyways, trivia lasted forever because the guys who ran it got too drunk. We ended up tying for first splitting the cash prize getting 10 dollars each.

Saturday- Woke up and packed for the weekend adventure that we were about to embark upon. One of our KT's Sally invited us up to Hapcheon where her aunt lives for the weekend to celebrate the fist full moon of the Lunar New Year and Korea's Independence from Japan (I believe). We left Daegu around 3:30 and met Sally at the bus station that took us to Hapcheon. We arrived around 4:40. Hapcheon is south east of Daegu. Then we took a local bus from the station for 30 minutes to where her Aunt's town is. Sally's brother-in-law picked us up at the station to drive us to the house. That took about 10 minutes. The scenery of the town is absolutely beautiful. The city is built around a damn, so there are lakes which are then glorified by the mountains in the background. Even though the the weather was not great, you could still capture the beauty. Arrived at the house where we met Sally's two other sisters, the oldest and the youngest. We also met the aunt, Sally's mom and dad, and all the children. Everyone was outside surrounding the fire which was boiling water.
The house was located off the road, with nothing around it for miles. It was the only house on the street. The aunt raised 2 goats some chickens, 4 bee hives, and a vegetable garden. Lets not forget the fermentation of kimchi and other vegetables which were on the roof.
After 30 minutes or so of greeting and playing around with the children, they started preparing dinner for us, which consisted of bulgolgi (similar to galbi), lots of vegetables, rice, and soju. We ate outside and enjoyed each others company. After dinner we went back inside, sat around and had Sally translate most of our conversations. It came 9PM and they told us to go to bed, so we did.
Sunday
Woke up around 10 ate some breakfast, which was leftovers from the night before. Washed my face and got ready for the day. Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day. (Sunday night is the first full moon of the Lunar New year so we all wrote wishes on the this special kind of paper then went to tour the town for a little.) After that we went to a Mockely distillery (rice wine), which was pretty neat. Evan, Max, and I bought our host a nice bottle of it as a gift for hosting us. After the distellery we went to a the town's festival, which had all you can eat meat, drink, and a community band that didnt have anyone younger than 55 or 60. In addition, there was a two or three story bond fire that was built, so when the full moon was spotted it would be lit on fire and the wishes that we hung on it would burn and hopefully come true.
Spent hours at the festival; eating, drinking, talking, and playing soccer with the children. Then after that we left to go to a famous Korean movie set that was nearby. They dropped us, Sally, and the kids off while they went to go visit one of their sick aunt's in the hospital. The set was built like a Korean city. Very cool. We were there for about an hour or so, then headed back to the festival, ate some more, as well as drank some more. 6 o'clock finally came around and the ceremony started. Prayers were chanted, then we spotted the full moon and the fire was lit. Dancing and chanting started and everyone had a good ole time. Not only was there a huge bond fire there were also fireworks. It was an awesome night. After the festivities were over at the festival, we headed back to the house where we cleaned ourselves up a little, then started to eat a little more and started drinking rice wine. Went through many bottles and everyone had a good time. Went to bed around 12, but unfortunately could not get any sleep. While I was awake I could hear that Evan was getting sick.
He started puking, not because of being drunk, but of what I believe was to be food poisoning of some sort. He was puking all night till early morning. I felt very bad for him and wanted them to take him to a hospital, which was unfortunately closed due to the holiday. We had to wait until we got back to Daegu, when Sally would take him. We said our goodbyes, said many thanks and headed back to Daegu.
Arrived in Daegu, exhausted, wished all the best to Evan and went back to the apartment. Took a nap and relaxed the rest of the day. Received a text from Evan, who reportedly is doing better.

Peace