My friend Esther is in town this weekend for her nephew’s 1st birthday party and we were invited. It was such a big party for a 1 year old. They’d hired a hall and filled it with balloons, had about $2,000 worth of food catered and even had a huge banner with his pictures on it. It felt more like a 21st birthday than a 1st. But apparently in Korean tradition, the 1st birthday is a big thing and if we were in Korea the celebration would have been even bigger. It’s pretty crazy considering the birthday boy had no idea what was going on and will probably not even remember the day (expect through many many photos).

The birthday boy, Zac, was actually sick today so he looked extra chubby and drowsy. The poor boy, most of the time he just looked like he wanted to be cuddled up in bed fast asleep, instead he had heaps of people carrying him and dressing him up in traditional clothes. He did look very cute in his traditional Korean clothes, but I’m not quite sure why it was pink. He’s a boy!

As I mentioned earlier, they got about $2,000 worth of Korean food catered for the lunch. This was music to my ears and is why I got out of bed so early this morning. At 10am (yes that’s considered early for a Saturday for me) Esther calls and tells me that there was heaps of potato noodles and Kim Chi – and I was up. I didn’t eat anything for dinner the night before, the only thing I ate was a few chips and pretzels and about 4 mouthfuls of soup. So as you can imagine, I was starving.

When we arrived at the venue all the food was there nicely set up and staring us in the face. It was so unfair, we were starving and we couldn’t dig in. It was a tease, but it was well worth the wait. There were a few odd dishes on the table; some strange pig intestine sausage thing, pickled radish stuff, bone marrow stew and others; all of which I didn’t dare try. My stomach was still a bit queasy from the night before and I thought it was best to play it safe and eat what I know. The winners were the potato noodles, kim chi, crispy chilli chicken wings and sweet and sour pork. Yum!

After eating a mountain of food (and some more) we spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the kids. It was mostly us trying to jump for helium balloons or boost the kids to grab the balloons. I think they were letting the balloons go on purpose because they liked getting carried.

As we were leaving we each got one of these happy meal looking boxes. Kobie thought it was filled with candy and was uber excited, then sorely disappointed to find that there was only cake and strange looking glutinous rice balls inside. When I got mine home, I realised that I must have picked up someone elses box because the cake was half eaten.