Sandy's Birthday

A few weeks ago Sandy, my friend, had a birthday, which was well-planned out and totally organized, like all events Sandy takes part in. This was a good thing, because she had chosen some fun stuff for us to do. We visited an activity center in a village near Daegu that seemed to have been designed for school field trips and such. There was a big playground with places for students to play traditional Korean games as well as see historical things like an old-fashioned outdoor stove and a stone fountain/stream. There were numerous activities there, including kite-making, candy-making, and strawberry picking, which is what we did.

The weather was perfect, sunny but with just enough wind for kite-flying. It was a little early for strawberry season, but the strawberry "fields" were in a greenhouse, so the strawberries were ripe anyway. Actually, they were quite large and delicious! After all that, we went back to downtown Daegu for a delicious supper, where I ate a burrito, because I periodically miss Mexican food. I'm happy to have found such a good place for burritos so close by. I forgot my camera, so I took a few photos on my iphone, which are after the cut.

Four turtle pillars all at once! Naturally, I'm a fan of these things since they always have big turtles as bases. There are lots of different designs, too, so I love seeing all the different ones.  

Part of the playground. You can see kids using stilt-like poles to balance themselves as they cross on a tight-rope. Looks like fun.

Candy-making step one: Put a big dab of candy mixture on your tray. It looked like molasses, although the ladies running the activity assured us there was no sugar in this candy.  

The birthday party attendees with their trays of candy.

Step two: Mix the candy with flour. Pretty soon you get a sticky, brownish lump. Then you roll it into a long snake. 

Step three: Stretch. A lot like taffy. We had to continually stretch, fold, twist, and stretch the candy over and over. You can get a nice rhythm going once you get the hang of it. 

Of course, not everybody got the hang of it equally, but we all had fun. 

Sandy and Geoff stretching candy. 

Step four: Break into pieces. Once the candy is pretty hard and off-white in color, you're done. Then you can smack the rope of candy with a stick to break it into bite-size pieces. At this point, the previously doughy candy is pretty hard and fragile. 

Sam getting ready to whack her candy with a stick. You had to be a little careful not to whack your partner's hand in the process.

Outisde was this cool piece of art with various flags and greetings on it. 

Strawberry picking in the greenhouse. It was quite warm in there, but thankfully, we were shaded from the sun, so I didn't have to worry about getting burned. 

Courtney picking strawberries. She was a master. 

Geoff picking strawberries. 

I forgot to take pictures of my kite during the making process, but here we are flying them in the field.

To varying degrees of success.