The Spy Vs. Spy party was a tremendous success! We raised over $1400 for charity, between raffle ticket sales, date auctions, games/t-shirt sales, and additional donations. With over 150 people in attendance, it was definitely a crazy party and people danced until past dawn! We're posting photos on our photo site right now, so you can check them out soon. It was a lot of hard work, literally weeks, but it was all well worth it when the party came together perfectly. We couldn't have pulled it off without a lot of help from our friends, Blaise and Nayoung in particular. The raffle went extremely well, with plenty of people buying additional raffle tickets beyond the $2 mandatory donation entry fee, and our friend and former coworker HaeJin won the grand prize of a one-night stay at the Westin Chosun Hotel at Haeundae Beach. We also had a lot of other great prizes, including Korean lessons, signed cartoon books, and food gift certificates. The date auction, a last-week addition, ended up being a great success as it raised well over $400 alone, with the bidding on several of our 10 volunteers being quite heated. All and all, definitely a legendary night, a great party, and a very successful fund raiser.
So that was last weekend, June 28, and the 29th was Anderson's 27th birthday. Sunday was rather low key by comparison obviously, but we did go out for an excellent Korean beef BBQ dinner with our local Yeonsan crew of friends.
The week of work flew by as quick as usual, although Tuesday night was "Canada Day" so went out to the weekly open mic night at The Basement, which was much busier than usual and a fun time, although our exhaustion on Wednesday made the day of work feel a bit rough!
This weekend was quite fun as well - Friday night was July 4, so Anderson's DJ gig was also a Mad Cow Party (due to the extreme Korean controversy involving American beef imports). Liz and Blaise won the Mad Cow Dance contest (prize: $50 bar tab), which was quite hilarious and fortunately recorded for posterity. It was definitely another late night, but a fun one for sure.
Saturday was a baby shower for our supervisor Rose, primarily planned by Liz although Chris nicely hosted it in her posh apartment :-). Baby showers are unheard of here in Korea, so all our female coworkers had a great time playing crazy games, eating tasty food, and having fun. In contrast, Anderson, Blaise, and Joe went to the Busan Ipark soccer game - which was also quite fun, perhaps in a more masculine sense though! We all met up afterwards in Kyungsung for a fun nightcap.
Today, Sunday, we went to Sung Ae Won Home for Children to drop off all the money we raised with Busan Assassin & Spy Vs. Spy. We had over $1500, so it felt great giving so much money to such a needy place. The orphanage is quite nice and very large. It currently houses 73 children all under the age of 5. So after meeting the owners, a nice couple, and their son and daughter-in-law, we then spent over 2 hours meeting and playing with all the orphans. It was tiring yet very fun, although filled with plenty of crying - especially when it was time to go. Afterwards the owners took us to a nice nearby Chinese restaurant (one of the orphanage's sponsors) for an interesting meal of cold peanut-sauce and seafood soup. It was an interesting flavor combination, but very good, as were the mandu that preceded it.
Next weekend is the Boryeong Mud Festival, which is sure to be a crazy good time! We also will get to tour the Hite brewery, so it'll be a good start to a long and dirty weekend of partying Korean-style :-).

PEACE
a&e