Everland!!!

Everland was soooo much fun! It was really cold, but there were like no lines and it just made it feel more Christmasy. There were Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. It was so pretty! The people were all really friendly too. In the US the typical worker at an amusement park is a college student who makes it obvious that they would rather not be there. At Everland the workers were constantly smiling, waving (with both hands), dancing, and wishing you a Merry Christmas-uh. I went with Abby, Kristina, and Shawn. We left at 9:30 Saturday morning. It was a 2 hour bus ride, but we were all really excited so there was no sleeping on the bus. When we finally got there we were just in awe of everything. We were taking pictures every few minutes.

First we watched a musical called Santa Express. There was lots of singing, dancing, crazy costumes, and soapy snow falling from the sky. A lot of the performers were foreigners too. It was very entertaining.

After the show they decided they wanted to ride a roller coaster. I had promised Kristina that I would try and be brave and ride a roller coaster...so I did. Now, I didn't ride just ANY roller coaster. I rode the roller coaster that holds the record as being the steepest wooden roller coaster in the WORLD! It had a 77 degree inclination. It is also the highest, fastest, and longest roller coaster in Korea. Of course I knew none of this before I rode it. Afterwards I felt like I could pretty much ride anything as long as it didn't go upside down.

After that we went sledding. Soooo much fun (except when I crashed into this poor girl. I wasn't so good at controlling what direction I was going).

Later we went on a ride called Let's Twist. It was here that I learned you should always watch a ride to see what it's going to do BEFORE you ride it. This was the one negative side to the lack of lines. My bad feeling about the ride was confirmed when it proceded to twist around and turn me upside down (hence the name). At one point during the ride we all saw something fly through the air and crash on the ground. That something was my cell phone. It fell out of my coat pocket. When the girl handed me the pieces of my phone and said, "I'm so sorry, but I love you," I was sure that my phone had reached the end of it's life. When I put the battery back in and turned it on, I was surprised to find that I have the most durable phone ever! We headed off to the next ride. I happened to think that my T-money card had been in my pocket too and now it was gone. It wouldn't have been such a big deal except that a while back I had some issues with the ATM and when I tried to get out 40,000 won (about $40), I accidentally got out 400,000 won (about $400). The largest korean bill is 10,000 won, but they have check like slips worth 100,000 won. You have to sign them and give them your phone number when you use them. Anyway, I didn't want to carry around 400,000 won so I put 100,000 of it on my T-money card. Maybe not the best idea. So we went back to look for the card. I was thinking there was no way I would be lucky 2 times, but after the ride stopped, they found my card. Yay! So we were off again to ride more rides. They wanted to ride another upside down one that appeared even scarier than the twist one so I opted not to ride. I was going to take pictures, but I couldn't find my camera. We figured surely someone would have seen my camera fly through the air if I had lost it on the twist ride so we backtracked to all the places we had been since i had last taken pictures. The guy at the petting zoo called the lost and found and we discovered that my camera was in fact at the evil Let's Twist ride that tried to destroy my life (sorry for being overly dramatic). We were amazed to find that my camera was still working and didn't even have a scratch! I think it must've fallen out of my pocket onto the seat next to me and maybe didn't actually fall on the ground. Whatever happened, I was very happy to have my camera back. So we continued to ride rides and walk around until it was time for the Magic in the Sky show that night. There was christmas music, fireworks, and lights in the sky. I have part of it on video:

Next was the Moonlight parade. Lots of floats with lights, music, dancing, and crazy costumes.

After the parade it was time to say goodbye to Everland and go home:( It was such a fun day!

Sunday was the Christmas service at church. It was different than any Christmas service I'd been to before. He preached from John, which doesn't exactly cover the Christmas story. It was good though. I enjoyed it.

After church Kristina took me and Abby to Bucheon Station because even though we both live in Bucheon, we had never been there before. It has a really big shopping area. There is also an Outback and TGI Fridays right there. We went to TGI Friday's for dinner. It was expensive, but really good. After hearing them sing to someone for their birthday we decided to tell our waitress that it was Kristina's birthday. We were hoping for dessert, but we just got a song:

Well, they did also take our picture and they gave Kristina a card with 4 copies of the picture. They were really nice:)

So that was pretty much my weekend. I'll put pictures on facebook later.