Gianni's 24th Birthday!

Gianni's 24th birthday was Tuesday and to celebrate we went downtown for dinner and bowling with friends. We planned on going to What Barbecue for dinner, but the restaurant was being refurbished for the week, so we couldn't go. Thomas knew of another BBQ restaurant in the area, so we went there instead. The restaurant had a statue of a shovel with meat on the end of it outside as decoration, and the grill that we used to cook our meat on shovel-shaped. We ordered lots of delicious pork skirt meat. Marie was good enough to make Gianni a brownie cheesecake with chocolate fudge as his birthday cake. She used her remaining birthday candles to spell out just the word "birth" on the cake. We didn't have enough to spell out the complete "happy birthday." We've been bowling a few times in Korea, but not at all like this! Star 300 Bowling Alley is right above our favorite crepe restaurants. As you walk up the stairs to get to it, there are murals of superheroes bowling. Thor was shooting a laser beam out of his eyes at the pins...I don't think he can do that. When we got inside, we saw that it was glow bowling! It was dark, things were glowing, and club music was playing. The bowling is a little bit expensive (6,500 for one game per person), but you get a lot of freebies. They gave us free socks and glowing bracelets, and you could take a pair of socks if you needed to. Bowling shoes were also included in the fee. The bowling alley is also a bottle bar, so there were coolers full of drinks that you pay for as you want one. There was free popcorn to eat while we bowled. Even the balls, imprinted with Helly Kitty faces, at Star 300 glowed. We only played one game since it was a school night, but we had a really great time. We split into two teams: Gianni, Marie, Maria, and Thomas against me, Sian, Matthew, and Ben. My team lost to every player on Gianni's team! We were definitely losers. The bowling alley also has a few pool tables and an air hockey table. We all decided we want to go back before we leave. After we finished, we put our bowling shoes in a giant sanitizing cabinet like they use for the metal drinking cups at cafeterias here in Korea. Instead of using a spray for the shoes, they just put it in this cabinet under hot UV lights. Gianni's birthday party was a big success. I'm so glad we discovered Star 300. We all had a great dinner, some tasty cake, and a really fun time bowling.

Poor Gianni has been working really hard this week between his camp and the high school camp he's been working at. He has about two hours of each camp per day, and he even comes home late from school because of the high school camp. On Wednesday, he will be finished with his camp, so at least Thursday and Friday he is down to one camp.

My last day of school was Wednesday (today), and I got to go home early. I taught my last class of the semester, possibly ever, on Tuesday. For the rest of the week, I will be desk warming and making sure everything is ready for my three days of camp next week.