February 22nd is Melissa’s birthday. She is one of my close friends back in Texas. On her birthday two years ago I decided that it would be funny to just send her picture texts of completely random things. I sent her one of those pictures as a reminder and then it got a bit out of control. Mel suggested I relive the randomness so I decided I would do 28 pictures for her 28th birthday. It turned into a bit of a photo diary of my day so I thought I would share it.

I started sending the pictures at about noon on February 22nd (10pm Feb 21st) and my goal was to finish within 24 hours. I was still in Ulsan and was spending the day inside so the first few pictures are just random things in Dave’s apartment. Afterwards, he drove me back to Busan and we had dinner in a restaurant in Shinsegae (the world’s largest department store). My goal was to take make it through 14 pictures before bed. The next 14 were taken when I woke up.

Descriptions:

1. This is the where it all started… one of the photos I sent 2 years ago.
2. This is Dave’s intercom system at his apartment. It started showing this error message the night before.
3. This is a picture of me and Mel when I went home in January. I changed it to my profile picture and it became #3.
4. These are some leftover pistachios from the Mardi Gras party.
5. Dave left this laying on the kitchen table… it’s 1,000 won (about $1).
6.  “How to check a fire extinguisher” – Dave has a book of  How To’s for his apartment. I had it out to look at the dishwasher guide (a lot of help that did me!).
7. I really like this picture for some reason. I just opened up a bag of lemons and snapped a pic.
8. Dave borrowed some extra wine glasses and champagne flutes for the Mardi Gras party so these were just on the counter waiting to be returned.
9. Bidets are really common here. They even installed one in my school (most likely just for the heated seat).
10. When you stand at the windows and look straight down you can see the downtown/market area below. This is a shot of that.
11. The highway on the way back to Busan.
12. The leftovers of my pizza… including a plate full of unwanted pine nuts and raisins.
13. Parking garage signs
14. Fabric softener (this was me desperately trying to find #14 so I could go to bed)
15.  This is the best you’ll get for 5:00am. I woke up, thought I should take a picture and snapped this one from bed.
16. A bit of my refrigerator. Yep, it’s all that cluttered.
17. PB & J Brunch – it gets fancy at my apartment!
18. Every few days there will be magnets stuck on all of the apartment doors with food ads, but every few weeks we get a big book on the door with ads for all of the local delivery places. I flipped through and found my favorite ad.
19. This picture was taken with Sexy Sax Free App for iPhone – Dave showed me the Sexy Sax Man prank video on YouTube the night before and it cracked me up. I recommend all of you watch it.
    
20. Here’s an ad that was in my mailbox. Don’t we all clean our bathrooms like this?
21. I took the subway into town to find better pictures. I went one stop and then walked around quite a bit.
22. Dongnae Station – this is where I came out. It’s a little more than 3/4 of a mile from my apartment.
23. The door of a coffee shop somewhere between Dongnae Station and Mega Mart.
24. This picture is from outside of a cell phone shop (there are no shortages of cell phone shops in Korea). These little guys are meant to draw attention to the shop. They are electronic and they dance.
25. I was originally just going to take a picture at the mannequin legs wearing hose at another shop, but then I came across this shop. It was even better! I got the mannequin legs, but I also got the male mannequin in the background wearing suspenders with PJ pants.
26. This place cracks me up every time I walk past. It’s a restaurant called Hello Samgyupsal (a type of BBQ pork in Korea that is a similar cut to bacon, but it’s thick and isn’t smoked). One thing very interesting about Korea is that many of the restaurants have cartoons of the type of meat they sell on their signs. That wouldn’t fly back home, but it tends to come in handy here because at least it helps me know what kind of restaurant it is.
27. Foreigners (like me) are always on the lookout for shirts with bad English. The best place to go are small markets. I saw this shirt hanging as I was walking through an outdoor market. It made me smile.
28. I took this picture in Ulsan and was saving it for last.

So there is a peak into life in Korea. I hope you enjoyed it.