Hitting On Korean Girls

Man, it's been awhile since I've posted. I've done a bit of travelling. Went to Japan for a week and had a pretty good time, but that can really mostly be explained in a series of outrageous photos so I may just update this with a Flickr photo album from that trip at some point if you're curious. 

What I thought would be more amusing for you guys back home is to learn about how I've discovered Korea operates on a social level (from my personal experience). It's different for everyone and of course a lot of it has to do with how you approach people, but a lot has happened to me in the past few weeks that, for better or for worse, Korea has played a big part in.

I'm kind of weird because I don't really hang out with the foreigner crowd. Not to say I don't have Western friends that I love to death, but generally big mobs of Westerners just kind of piss me off. I loathe this "Let's hang out with English-speakers doing English-speaker type things in Korea" mentality. I just can't fit into it. It drives me absolutely mad. I know plenty of guys who speak great Korea, have Korean girlfriends, and still go to those Western events so like I said...it's just me. I'm weird. I came to Korea get uncomfortable and to see what life was like in another country...not to replicate some poor facsimile of my life back home.

So recently I've been trying to make an effort to hang out with more Koreans. A few weeks ago, I was drinking at a foreigner bar and it was just...boring. Other than the cute bartender (I'll get to that humorous anecdote in a minute), there was really nothing keeping me there. So I message a Korean girl I'm friends with because I remember her mentioning something about a good club called 247. Turns out she's already there, so I head out and walk from the "foreigner" side of downtown to the "Korean" side of downtown basically just by crossing a big road (I'm sure Foucault would have something to say about the social asymmetry of this symmetrical city planning...but anyway...).

I get to the club and guess what? No foreigners allowed. The fuck. It's already 3am and I promised my friend I'd go inside and I was already incredibly inebriated (Sidenote: Thank you random Russian girl, wherever you are, for showing me your outrageous flaming Sambuca tricks. You will never be forgotten). I dug up some superhuman Korean abilities I don't possess when I'm sober and tried explaining to this guy I already had a friend inside. He finally breaks and says "Okay, tonight you are Korean" and lets me in. Apparently, from what other foreigners have told me, is an atypical result. Which sucks, because this club was INSANE! Koreans just going hard left and right in a way I always believed asian biology would not allow.

Korean Club Life (Part 1):
In America, clubs are usually a hunting ground. As a result, it's very territorial when it comes to dancing and possessive when it comes to...let's call it "attracting a mate". Korea is none of those things. Guys were pretty much pushing their girls to dance with me, I was dancing with a bunch of random bros cheering on girls and shit. None of these people spoke more than 6 words of English or had a goddamn idea who I was. They just want to have a good time and dance and party. It can be a little weird because Koreans are generally very physically expressive of their emotions with close friends and when alcohol becomes involved that expression reaches beyond close friends and I had guys kind of putting their hand around my waist or some shit at times, but it's not a "being gay" thing like we have the tendency to freak out about in America. It's just friendliness.

After the club died down around 8am, I go out to breakfast with my Korean friend and like 9 random people I assumed to also be her friends (come to find out she had no fucking idea who those people were either). The whole time we're just eating and they're calling me best friend and trying to speak English with me and shit. My drunken Korean was still active so I could keep up with bits of the conversation, but slowly people started passing out at the table and I eventually took a cab home around 9:30 to get some sleep.

That is what I wanted out of Korea: To go hard like a Korean. That was one of the greatest times I've had in Korea.

But the next day, I go back to the foreigner bar with the cute Korean bartender and try to keep working on that again. Like this girl was not only pretty but just super fun to dance with and really awesome, so I figured "why not?" Plus her boyfriend broke up with her around the same time my girlfriend broke up with me...so it was like...kindred spirits shit. This is where things get into the "I Don't Understand Korean Girls And The Might Be Crazy" portion of the blog. This isn't solely me saying this...this is my Korean guy friends saying "Korean girls are crazy" and then me choosing not to believe them and going for it anyway..only for them to be proven right.

I Don't Understand Korean Girls And The Might Be Crazy (Part 1):

So basically I had a great weekend with this girl. Did a lot of drinking and dancing, got her number, talked a bit, but always drunk, right? Once daytime came, like a fuckin mythological creature, this girl was non-existent. Would not return my texts or any shit. I invited her to dinner twice and got turned down.

Talked to Korean friends about it again (girls and guys alike) and both sexes said "A Korean girl will [always] turn you down the first time you ask them out. It's expected that this will happen because Korean girls don't want to seem easy"....the fuck? Okay, that's utterly ridiculous...especially when the guys are aware of this as well...it's just unnecessarily complicated, but whatever.

So I keep going to he bar, keep trying at it. Some other dude comes out with one of my military buddies and starts gaming on her and I'm "you much be fucking joking me"...but she was still talking to me and I thought stuff was really good. Invited her out to dinner again the next day, not turned down again because she had to work...so I did some cute ass shit and brought her dinner at work against the advice of my Korean friends who said "Don't act like you're too into her. Talk to many girls and make her think you don't really care." Again I'm like "the fuck is this nonsense?" I hate lying and I hate bullshit games so no guys....I'm just gunna do my thing. Drop off dinner. Head to Busan. [spoiler alert: I fuckin crash and burn].

Korean Club Life (Part 2):

So Naz brings me out to Busan for some real solid club life and to get me out of my head and away from Changwon. We head out to the KSU area where the clubs are supposed to be bumping. It was pretty solid. First two bars were foreigner style bars and they were mad boring (because they were full or foreigners sitting around drinking and trying not to look too awkward) but at the second bar, I run into this outrageously cute Korean girl who was dressed extremely well with a bored "I don't give a fuck "attitude on her face blowing smoke ring soff her hookah pipe. I'm like...well shit.."challenge accepted". 

Go talk to this girl, hit it off pretty well, start talking and shit teachers me how to blow smoke rings. Buy each other a few drinks, but this place is still fucking boring. So I ask her if she likes clubbing. She said no, but she would go if her friend went. So somehow that involved me dragging her friend, a Belgian guy, an American guy, and the cute Korean girl all to the Blue Monkey. It was kind of small, but the DJ was sick...flipping tracks and blending them every 30 seconds.

Soon I realize "shit...this girl can't really dance". Like she was trying to have fun, but it's like she had no idea what to do with herself and was just pantomining what she'd seen dancing look like in American movies (you know...the girl raising her arms in the air and just flipping her hair around thing?) So I somehow go start dancing up on stage and get people pumping, when this ridiculously slutty Korean girl starts dancing on me like we're in a fuckin' rap video. She was really cute but we were dancing like mom and dad would never want to see and I'm like "oooh girl, you fuckin' crazy if you think I'm going anywhere with you" but dancing with her was fun, so I kept dancing on stage with her for a bit until I went back to go find the cute awkward Korean girl, but she was on her way out...I think she was pissed...I probably blew it. Oh well, that was only round three. I think we hit pal cha (round 8) that night. 

Everywhere we went afterwards were just straight Koreans clubbing. girls on stripper poles, guys cheering em on. Felt like the states. Raging with Koreans in Korean clubs is just a hell of a good time. Notice this is filed under Korean Clubbing and not Korean Girls Are Crazy, because they're fairly fucking Western in how they act inebriated. That shit is standard. I can handle it. It's once their cognitive processes reboot again the next day that shit goes crazy. The whole time I'm having a blast in Busan, I'm still messaging this bartender because (of course) she's drunk, so (of course) she wants to talk to me. And I thought I was getting somewhere. I thought fucking wrong.

Naz gets pretty messed up at some point, so I grab a cab back to the bus terminal. But when I told the cab driver to slow down, he thought it would be funnier to speed up instead. So Naz ended up vomiting  in the dude's cab and I had to fight with the cab driver in drunken Korean about him trying to overcharge us for that shit.

We pass out in Lotteria for an hour and then bus home to the light of morning. I drunkenly asked the bartender to the Flower Festival the next day.

I Don't Understand Korean Girls And The Might Be Crazy (Part 2):

Wake up around 4 the next day and, big fucking surprise, totally got ignored by that girl again. So I lost my cool and messaged her that getting stood up that much is fucking embarrassing so not to even bother messaging me again. But I was a little depressed after that, so I met up with Naz and his girl Gina for some coffee.

Gina is the exception to this "Korean Girls Are Crazy" subheading. She might be her own kind of crazy, but it's a super awesome kind of crazy I can definitely get behind. She is unbelievably cool. Naz is English so he hates how I'm teaching her American phrases like "fuck that shit, man". I think it's the most hilariously adorable thing ever.

We go to grab some samgyuepsal and Gina starts coaching me on how to talk to Korean girls. I'm like "Gina, what do I say?" and our conversation goes a little something like this:
G: "Just say hello!" 

Me: "Obviously! I know that part! Where do I go from there?"

G: "Just ask them 'Do you like coffee?'"

Me: "Okay, okay...then what?"

G: "They will say yes. Then you ask 'Do you want to get coffee now?'"

Me: "Wait...what? Gina...I can't just walk up to a random girl on the street and ask her if she would like to stop whatever she is doing and get coffee with me!"

G: "You can! I think she will say yes!"

I'm blown away by the utter and impossible simplicity of this tactic, but I've got nothing to lose, so we bump into two girls on the street and throw out some Korean:
"coffee juhwayo?"

And they say yes so I'm okay...next step...
"coffee han jeun hashileyo?"

And they just start nodding really eagerly and I'm like "what the fuck is happening? This is the craziest thing!"

So they speak like zero words of English, so coffee is a bit awkward with Gina translating, but one of the girls says she likes to drink so I'm like "Fuck yeah! Me too! Let's go do that shit!" ("Do that shit" is also another phrase I've taught Gina).

So we go drink makgeolli and play some drinking games and get a little rowdy when, three hours later, one of the girls tells us they both have boyfriend. And I am like "you must be fucking joking me..."

Do you see why Korean girls are crazy now? In what world can you stop a person on the street, convince them to stop whatever they are doing, get coffee with you, then drink with you for three hours....only to find out they both have boyfriends?! t's utter madness! If my girlfriend did that shit, I'd be like "....what?"

So ending on a somewhat serious note, I was a little depressed after those back to back failures and somehow ended up back at the bar where the bartender works that night. Luckily it was closed and I didn't make an ass of myself. So I started wandering home and I bumped into Coby on the streets. He invited me to go for a drink and I sort of cathartically unravelled to him. He gave me some of the best advice ever. 

I realized, even though I'm in Korea. I'm still kind of afraid of being alone, of travelling alone. I don't really know myself that well and always want to have other people with me or around me. I also have ridiculously high expectations of myself and others.

So that really got me thinking about "okay...what do I really love?" I love making people happy. I love big crowds of strangers and unusual situations, and above all else I fucking love music. Some of the clubs we rolled into in Busan were dead and I just started dancing anyway. Or at foreigner bars I'll always jump on the PC and throw down tracks to bring up the mood. Even in college I loved doing that shit all the time. So I realized I really want to start getting into the DJ scene here in Korea and bring over some more Western club music.

Luckily I have a friend who is a DJ here, and a couple DJ friends back home, who are helping me out. It's a good personal goal to work for just to do something with myself other than learning Korean. So I just take time every day and practice. It gets my mind of things. I get to bury myself in the music. It's really exciting. Gina's a really good friend and is pushing me to go all out for it too.

At the end of the day, after all the emotional ups and downs, Korea is still providing me with a ton of opportunities for personal growth that are just stifled in America. I think I'm discovering a lot about myself here and it's really strange to imagine I'm coming home in 8 months.

I wonder who I will be...

Birthday Postmortem

Just so no one thinks everything is so peachy wonderful here all the time, I'll admit that certain times are ridiculously rough. My birthday was a prime example of this. I started off the day in a phenomenal mood because my fraternity brothers Skyped me and I got a video call from my parents as well, so getting to talk to them put an immediate spring in my step.

Bored and sad at work        

I got to school and started off by teasing my students about the date. Normally   I ask them how the weather is, what today's date is, etc. But today I stopped and asked "why is September 12th special?" and they would get all flustered and inevitably baffled until I told them that it was birthday and I received a round of "happy birthdays" from all the students. Then I would ask "what do people do to celebrate their birthdays in Korea?" and without fail every class said "have a party with friends and family" and the reality of that impossibility for me slow sank deeper into my mind as the day progressed. I started getting a little choked up toward the end of the day until one of my co-teachers asked "what's wrong?" I couldn't even get out the entire phrase and ended up saying "It's my birth-" before having to stop cuz I legitimately thought I was going to cry. 

I was just thinking of all the craziness that would be going on back home for my birthday. A nice dinner with my parents and maybe a day out fishing followed by a party at the fraternity house with all my brothers and a trip to a bar with some of the ones I'm closer to. Instead I'm sitting at a desk grading papers. I think my co-teachers felt bad, because they didn't call me into my later classes and let me just chill in the office, but that was even worse because it was like 6am in America so no one was on Facebook and I was just left alone with my depressing thoughts. 

Solidly Western meal

Luckily, I do have good friends here in Korea and they helped cheer me up a lot. After work we went to Masan (my first trip to Masan!) to get some Pizza da Gennero, which is the legit Italian pizza joint here. We got some phenomenal pizza (some kinds I've never even tried before) and beer before heading over to Baskin Robbins and grabbing an ice cream cake from a wall of masterfully sculpted cakes. They put it in cool insulated styrofoam box with dry ice and then we headed to Palyong to try and find some alleged pirate ship playground. After walking all over the damn place, we found it and it was a pretty awesome pirate ship, I won't lie. We sat in the pirate ship, lit some candles and had our own little party up there in our birthday-pirate-ship-fort. I couldn't help but feel like I was in that movie "16 Candles"...which I've never seen except for that birthday cake scene but it reminded me a lot of that. I'm really lucky to have met such thoughtful and cool people.

I don't think my birthday had anything to do with it, but ever since then (it's only been like 5 days, mind you) I've just been agreeing to the most ridiculous things that I would have never done in the states. So Friday, Casey, Caitlin, Naz and I meet up with a few people in Sangnam who were trying to start up a "bike party" in SoKo (Erin has coined this term and I love it, so I will now always refer to Korea as SoKo). Apparently this is a big think they do in California? And it gets up to 4000 people in attendance. Obviously we probably won't get 4000 bikers in SoKo, but Changwon has a bike rental system calle Nubija, so it actually makes it pretty easy to obtain a bike. So this group wanted to bike 15 miles through Korea....which normally I would NEVER do...but..what the hell, right?

Those are some
pretty cool cakes.

So we meet in Sangnam, unfortunately I don't have a Nubija because I don't yet have a Korean phone (I'm learning this is more akin to having a SSID in America than your actual SSID in SoKo. They use it to verify your ID for practically everything). The leader of the event, Coby, thankfully had a bike of his own that he lent me. It was one of those collapsable bicycles that look absolutely ridiculous but ride really well. And I'm about to ride it all the way to Jinhae.

                       Peak of my birthday                       

We set off, alcohol in hand, ringing bells and screaming "Bike Party!" like complete assholes, but it was a lot of fun. Not too far into our trip, we pass a Korean man and do the usual: ring bells, chug, scream "bikeparty!". But then, right after we pass him, we stop at a Nubija rental to renew our bike passes. While I'm waiting for everyone to rescan their bikes, he catches up to us and walks up to me saying "so beautiful!" I think it's safe to assume he was drunk. He begins to reach into his pocket and Casey thinks that he is taking out a camera/phone because Koreans are always asking to take pictures with me. Instead, he takes out his wallet and pulls out a 5,000 Won bill and tries to hand it to me. I think he is trying to tell me to rent a Nubija since I'm the only one without one so I say "Ken-cha-na-yo. No, thank you. I'm fine." because I already have a bike! 

He then pulls out a peach bill and holds it up to my face. I'm thinking "What? Is my skin the same color as the bill? Does my face look like the guy on the bill?" Casey is equally as puzzled and everyone else has rode ahead. Next thing I know, the Korean man sloppily kisses his bill and smacks it onto my forehead. I bow slightly and say "kam-sa-ham-ni-da! (thank you!)" and he starts to walk away, so we start peddling away as well. Caey turns to me and says "Did that guy just stick 50 bucks on your forehead?" I pull it off and, sure enough, it's a 50,000 Won note. Only 10 minutes into the night and I already made 50 bucks. Put me in a pretty good mood.

We're about to descend into the tunnel...

We then eventually reach this tunnel...which turns out to be the most magically awesome tunnel ever. It's like a mile long and on a slight downhill slope, so the we just speed down this tunnel-hill and it feels like a rollar coaster. It probably sounds stupid in a blog, but there really is no way to adequately explain how it felt. Probably one of the most fun things I've ever done. The rest of the trip down to the Dream Bay was downhill as well, so it was smooth sailing the whole way. We get to the bay and I spend the 50 on booze and fireworks and we shot Roman candles out into the bay. We then proceeded to drink heavily into the night and were either assholes who scared away all the Koreans, or we were just there until very late. Eventually, we started biking back and it started raining ever so slightly. I obviously couldn't go the night uninjured so, at a downhill portion, I squeezed the brakes on the collapsable bike really hard because I forgot how quickly it stopped. I flew over the handlebars and into the street. Bled quite a bit. The people at GS25 were super nice and helped clean me up, but I was not up for the bars at 330am when we got back like everyone else was. I was out for the night.

Yes, I realize I'm wearing the same thing Saturday
as I did Wednesday...I don't have a lot of fall clothes =P

The next day Casey and I went to Lotte Mart to buy taco fixings for a potluck that night. The potluck ended up being really cool and I met a lot of awesome people. One guy, Sunil, got me to agree to audition for a play he was directing and another group got me to agree to go to a cultural festival the next day. See? Literally just up for anything. It's not like I have a lot to do otherwise, so in that sense SoKo is really liberating. The food was outrageously delicious too. I probably overate.

The next day I met up with Brittany, Suzie, and bunch of other new acquaintances to check out the cultural Airang (I think I spelled that correctly?) It was raining all day, which sucked, but ponchos were free and there was a ton of food to try. SoKo has taught me I am a complete sucker for good curry. I don't think I'd ever had Indian food before coming here, but damn....I don't think I've tried a curry I didn't like. That may have to be a main staple of my diet in Korea. There were also a bunch of musical performances by international pop artists from many different countries. It was cool to see people go wild with such cultural enthusiasm. I feel like my American enthusiasm is so much more lackluster than other people's, but my enthusiasm for things in general is significantly less I think.

A Philippino artist performing at the Airang

Not sure what will come next, but maybe it's better that way! I'll keep you posted!

Birthday Prelude

I won't lie...that days leading up to my birthday have been kind of foreboding. It's just me being too much inside my head, but it sucks knowing I'll be celebrating my birthday without my fraternity brothers, or my girlfriend, or my family. But, that's really being a bit too negative. After the days/hours leading up to my birthday, and those that followed shortly thereafter, I felt the necessity to blog about this moment in time.

First, I should mention that I feel particularly lucky that I've gotten accustomed to Korea so quickly. I've probably said this before, but without people like Caitlin pulling me out into the world, or people like Casey willingly building me a social network (when it really doesn't benefit either of them at all), I would still probably be sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, or just calling it quits and hopping the next flight home and really never self-actualizing the way I am now. I honestly don't even know what self-actualizing means right now...it just feels right. I'm 알딸딸 (tipsy) on makgeoli right now, but whatever. Blog when the good mood strikes, right?

I'm really lucky as shit. I work at a great school. It can be frustrating at times but other times the kids are really awesome and we just connect and it feels really cool breaking down language barriers and sharing our cultures. My directors are nice and my co-teachers are even better. I can't praise them enough for how genuinely awesome they are. They're always so nice and helpful and welcoming.

Boram's going-away dinner =[

My director loved having me take shots of soju with him.

I got to have Korean BBQ TWO days in a row!! Once for Boram's going away party and once at school...for dinner at work! It was the best week ever =]. But I really will miss Boram...she always helped me so much with my Korean and was pretty much the coolest person. Plus her mom makes the best eel I have ever had. I hope we can hang out when her mom gets better. I wen to visit her mom in the hospital and it was super awkward because none of them really spoke English. When I feel pressured to speak Korean, I just freeze up and can't remember anything. I'm sure I'll get better with practice.

My Dogye coteachers always cook the most delicious food,
but Samgyeopsal? At work? The most amazing day ever.

I've been introduced to a cool group of people that's constantly expanding the more I put myself out there.  Naz, David, and Catherine are super cool and chilling with them feels kind of natural. I hate when people have expectations for an evening and then you have to spend all night trying to fulfill those expectations. It's exhausting. These are people who go with the flow and you kind of have to in Korea.

We went to a crazy Japanese photobooth...
my students later thought I was really in prison.

Friday night, we went out and met up with Andrew, Myeongwon, and Andrew's girlfriend (who I apologize for her name escaping me at the moment)....we also ran into a bunch of really cool people who I ALSO don't remember the names of, but I'm sure I'll see them again. One guy made tacos. He had a red beard. I definitely won't forget him.

The reason I'm blanking on everyone, is because Casey and I are sufficiently awesome at beer pong and couldn't stop winning. Which you think is good, except we didn't like DOMINATE win....we just kind of...won. So we drank a LOT. This was already after a ton of beer and makgeoli. I'm pretty sure at some point I took my shirt off, stole an American girls umbrella (to be fair...she did accost me in the elevator and then claim I was trying to kiss her = crazy), Casey made me give it back, we walked home half naked in the POURING rain, I got home, passed out, woke up in a pool of my own vomit like a college freshman. At some point David and I won at pool. And then we lost at pool to Naz...or no...we lost at beerpong to Naz and lost at pool to some Korean guy who looked like a member of the Japanese Yakuza.

This kid is like 10...and much better at saxaphone
than I will ever be at anything.

That was a decent Friday night. Saturday, we took it a bit easier and went to Sangnam for the laser light show at the lake. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was actually pretty freakin cool. There was even one part where the projected scenes from the Lion King? Idk how this is free every weekend when I have to pay 80 bucks to see it at Epcot. And some little 12 year old was solo rocking a saxaphone not giving a fuck...so good for you little saxaphonist...but maybe head across the street to the record store and pick up some American jazz. Oh...and I discovered for 3 bucks a street vender will give me a giant bag of THREE different kinds of hodugwaja (walnut-shaped cakes)...literal heaven right now. We also grabbed the most delicious Indian food and hit up a plethora of other little joints for food and makgeoli and all sorts of hedonistic pleasures (wait...that sounded wrong...).

Sunday was meh, because it was pouring rain all day so I just stayed inside and played video games like a dork. Should have studied Korean, but really had no motivation. I finally got my motivation about fifteen minutes after my birthday in the Eastern Hemisphere. Casey took me out to a coffee shop to meet some cool people who invited me to their potluck this weekend, and afterwards we headed back to his place so he could check me out a bike to ride home. What ACTUALLY happened, was that we went into Family Mart and got some alcohol and proceeded to sit outside and talk about future-type boring shit that you as a general audience don't care about, but there were two Korean guys sitting next to us (presumably doing the same thing) and all I kept thinking was...at some point we're going to start talking. I don't even remember what triggered it, but soon enough we had all scooted our chairs together and were introducing ourselves to one another. Can you believe for all the Korean I've bothered to learn, I still don't know how to introduce myself or ask someone their name? It's kind of stupid.

Some board game I don't even know...
But I'm pretty sure we did more talking than playing

So there we were...1:00 am...sitting around on some plastic patio furniture. Casey and I doing our best to fumble through some broken Korean that we knew and these two men doing their best to fumble through some basic English...and we happened to reach a middle ground that was enough for us both to understand one another. They asked us about our homes and jobs, we asked them about their families, we talked about booze. We boisterously shouted for people to take pictures of us together, and they did, then they told us to shut up because we were being very loud, so we said our good nights and scurried
off.

These guys made my night

Because..you know...Gangnam Style...

But that ride home was just like... "I want to do this forever. This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me." I love communicating with people and sharing cultures and languages. There is no feeling like this anywhere. I'm really finding a hard time coming up with a reason to go back to America for grad school to have my head buried in a book forever. Experiential learning is just... irreplaceable. It's definitely making me want to study harder.

I think Caitlin has birthday plans for me tomorrow and they some cool stuff planned this weekend. We'll see what happens, stay tuned!!!

Fitting In

Beginning my 3rd month in Korea, it's actually interesting to see how far I've come. It's honestly probably farther than I ever thought I could come on my own. I started off as a "baby back bitch" who couldn't figure out how to turn on the washing machine and was afraid to leave my house because I thought I would get lost and end up wandering the streets of Korea forever.

Tonight I went out for Korean BBQ with my director and co-teachers as a sort of "going away party" for Boram, and got to bust out a little of the Korean I had learned. Earlier today I pseudo-ordered gimbap on my own as well. If I keep going at this pace, I hope to be able to hold a minor conversation within the 4 month mark. We'll see how that goes.

At some point my director just started feeding my soju,
then after I got a little tipsy reminded me
 to keep my Korean language in "polite" form.

It honestly feels like Final Fantasy X/X-2, when you had to learn the Al Bhed language. Like...at first it's all absolute gibberish..but it's more like a phrasal cipher. I keep unlocking little bits and learning more and more. It's really cool. Certainly more fun than the 3 years of Spanish I took and didn't retain a word of.

It's really a wonderful language and culture. It's really redefined the concept of gratitude for me. Gratitude isn't something you owe to someone after they do something for you, but rather something that you pay forward. You aren't thankful for what people have done for you, you're just grateful for those people. I really miss Boram at work already, after only working with her for two months, so I can't imagine how it'll feel when I have to say goodbye to everyone in ten months, potentially. 

We had the manager help us set it up
thanks to Catherine's skilled Korean.

Same with Casey and Caitlin. They'll be gone at the end of the month, and I'm not sure what that'll mean for me. Luckily, Casey has graciously been connecting me to the rest of his social network in Korea, and there are really some solidly cool people here. This weekend we went screen golfing with a Canadian couple, David and Catherine, who really made me see Korea as a long term prospect. Just listening to Catherine talk to the proprietor in fluent Korean after only a year here was an awe-inspiring insight. There's really no way to explain how cool it is to speak a foreign language on foreign soil. It's humbling and inspiring simultaneously. Their enthusiasm for the language and culture here also drove me to study harder.

Screen golf was a lot of fun, but nothing like real golf at all. I was terrible at it. The feel is totally different, and I didn't really get the hang of it until the end of the game. They were also pretty serious about it there. I would like to open a noraebang/screen golf course, because that seems like it would be a complete blast.

Casey ended up being pretty damn good.

We were mostly dicking around...

Meeting people in Korea is also pretty strange. It's very ephemeral. It feels like we're all chilling at this eternal rest stop. Some people get off the train and join the circle as other say their farewells and board the train for God knows where. Some people have grown tired of even greeting their new company since they'll most likely be gone soon enough anyway. Everything feels very spectral...very transitory...like we're all just sort of floating between dimensions. But that's not a bad thing. It's just not...America. haha. It's more about enjoying the journey than fortifying the castle, so to speak.

I finally feel like I'm fitting in. I have Korean friends, Western friends, and sort of can fumble my way through basic Korean. A few things are still on the agenda:

1) I found a comic book (manga) store, and thought it would be a great way to learn the language because of all the pictures. However, it turns out it's a manga LIBRARY, which I really have no idea how to negotiate my way around yet, so that'll have to wait a bit.

2) I opened a bank account yesterday and will hopefully a bike pass and Korean cell phone will follow.

Doesn't look like anything special, just a bank.
The ATM is what looks super awesome. Need a picture...

Seriously, Korea is the future. They use their phones for everything from bank transactions to bike rentals to online shopping to vending machines. Unfortunately, that future sucks for foreigners. lol.

They also have ATMs that let you deposit money AND checks so...yeah...we're a bit behind the times.

It's strange. Before coming here, I honestly thought my life was extremely limited in terms of what I could do professionally...but today it suddenly dawned on me...I can practically spin a globe, stop it with my finger, and any landmass I'm touching, I could go teach there. I basically have a free ticket to explore the world. I'm not sure what's next. I love Korea, but maybe I'll go spend a year in Brazil to be close to my brother, or go to Japan to be closer to Alexis, or Peru...just because! The world is full ov possibilities!

There's like a million flavors of this stuff.

I've gotten really lazy about blogging and I should spart posting useful stuff I'm learning for newbies. I'll probably post my "MTVKorea Cribs" blog/ "Survival Kit" blog soon...and I've set a goal for myself to document every single kind of triangular gimbap they sell and rate it (there is a LOT). I'll post that some day too.

This weekend should be a pretty awesome adventure. More fitting in and expanding of the social circle. I'll let you know how it goes! Good morning America! I'm off to bed!

Alexis' Adventures in Asialand (but only Korea...was just going for alliteration)

So Alexis was finally in Korea! If you read my last post, you'd know all about our first disaster trip in Seoul, but UMF 2012 was totally worth it and now I can say I was at the first every UMF in Korea. Pretty cool. It's taken me forever to write this because I've been busting my ass finishing my TESOL certification, but now that's (mostly) done, and now you can hear about Alexis and I's adventures in Korea!

Everyone pitches in to cook dinner.

So to pick up where the last post left off, ....well....we honestly don't remember a lot of the normal week. It mostly consisted of taking Alexis out to every kind of Korean restaurant we could think of and making her try everything. One night Casey, Alexis and I went to 10F (probably one of my favorite restaurants) and we got kiwi flavored soju, which happens to be the most delicious flavor of soju ever (and...as Casey and I later found out...also the best flavor of makgeoli). We also went to a Japanese restaurant at one point which was pretty good, but Korean Japanese food honestly isn't much to write home about. We did have some sake in a box that actually wasn't half bad. The rest of the week involved me working while Alexis stayed home and pampered me by being super domestic, and my apartment looked really nice for awhile after that. It was a good thing too, because one night Casey and Caitlin came over and I tried my hand at cooking Korean food for the first time. It was pretty damn good if I say so myself, and the girls made deviled eggs too!

Alexis actually got to come to work with me twice...luckily on days where the kids weren't being terrors. All the kids ran around whispering "yeojachingu, yeojachingu"which means "girlfriend" in Korean. They were all too terrified of her to try talking to her in English though. I showed her how massive Lotte Mart was and we went grocery shopping for actual food since I wasn't living alone for the next week.

Chillin at the office and painting students with gel pens

On Thursday, my director invited Alexis and I out to dinner on Sambok, one of the three hottest days of the summer, for some traditional Sambok Samgyetang! It's boiled chicken with ginsing. It was pretty delicious, but impossible to eat with chopsticks and a spoon. I looked ridiculous. I also got to show off my Korean skills a bit.

Samgyetang! Delicious but impossible to eat...

Felt so good to get it short!

On Friday, I wake up early because I decide my hair is way too long for how hot it is outside. We go to the Franck Provost hair salon in City 7 and I proceed to get treated to the hair cut of my life. I get the most meticulous cut ever (like this lady wanted each strand PERFECT) and then had a cute assistant girl give me a legitimate scalp massage. While this massage is going on I start thinking about how much this is going to cost....$80? The massage was convincing me it was worth it. After getting thoroughly pampered, I go to pay and learn my haircut is only $20! Later, my co-teachers would tell me that's expensive in Korea.... America, sometimes you suck.

...But I still love you!!!!! And I miss your fatty, greasy food....mmmm....I digress....

Most delicious ice cream ever!
And a cute picture Alexis made <3

We grab some ice cream from Baskin Robbins on the way out of City 7 as we waited for the bus to Dogye. Alexis got Vanilla Sky (creamsoda and vanilla I think?) and Shooting Star (raspberry and poprocks) while I got Apple Mint sorbet and Blueberry Aloe ice cream. Apply Mint was a little too minty, but Blueberry Aloe was like the most delicious thing I have ever had in my life.

We went out pretty much every night after work, but we didn't go too hard because we were "saving ourselves for Seoul" (that was Casey's excuse). It was probably a good thing too because at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning we all boarded the bus to Seoul. Per the usual, I slept most of the way.

We met up with Minyoung at the bus terminal and headed to our first destination: Itaewon. We made the smart decision on the way and picked up a T-Money subway card for discounts on the subway fares. It probably saved us a lot considering how much we rode the subway that weekend.

First thing we did when we got to Itaewon? Ate Mexican food! It was damn good too. I still think there are way too many people in Itaewon, but it was inevitable since I had to take Alexis to Namsang Tower and show her the lock I left. Alexis and Casey realized I wasn't lying when we got to the base of Namsang Tower and they saw how ridiculously steep that incline of the hill leading up to the tower was. I still can't believe girls make that walk in heels.

Jump photo!...and other cool shots.

This time we put it INSIDE the heart...

We get to the tower and - would you believe it? - they took my lock off the heart statue. -_-; Apparently there is a sign that says not to put locks on it. Whatever. Alexis and I got another lock and each wrote on it this time. Then we locked it on the inside of the heart. Casey was running around trying to be super nonchalant, but was actually super suspicious. He didn't want us to see what he wrote for his girlfriend OR where he locked it. I respect his privacy. I bet it's something super cute/romantic.

We didn't waste much time, because we had too much to see and do! Caitlin and Minyoung had planned the whole trip out, so we were whisked off to our next destination: Myeongdong!

Got my Binsu bartending license yesterday...body shots!

This place was crazy. We tried shopping, but it was literally like a "where do we start?" sort of shock and awe. And there were thousands of people everywhere. It was pretty difficult just to keep track of the group leaders. We eventually decided to stop at a cafe for a rest and some bingsu (imagine a snowcone mixed with a sundae but...infinitely better. I'm pretty sure I posted about it in my trip to Taejongdae). We had no idea what the drinks were, so we just randomly ordered whatever sounded good. I ordered the "Golden Lighthouse" and it was pretty fantastic. Some sort of wine...beverage. lol. and complimentary cheesecake! Can't beat that!

After a good rest and some inappropriate photos, we marched out of Myeongdong and onto our next destination: Gyeongbokgung Palace. As Caitlin pointed out in her blog, this was mostly just Casey's "artsy photo" time and we were all his models. But it was really cool/crazy to see the magnitude of these palaces. We must have walked for ages and barely covered half of it. It was pretty surreal to see ancient buildings in the foreground and massive cityscapes with giant LCD monitors on the front of buildings in the background. It was like something out of a Samurai Jack cartoon.

I was exhausted from all that walking, so Caitlin suggested we do a little MORE walking and find a Cat Cafe. Well, as expected, Alexis absolutely flipped shit over this idea, so we couldn't say no. We saw some crazy stuff on the way over. A mini Corona parade passed by, blaring music with cute asian girls hanging out of a convertible VW. So Western. We also discovered this confectionary wonder that will blow your mind - ice cream filled waffles. Like -WHAT? So GOOD! And only a dollar?! Casey practically had to drag me away when I wanted seconds.

Ohhhh yes! Ice cream waffles and mexican food!
...and all the other cool stuff we ate along the way.

We then came to the Cat Cafe which, as the name implies, was full of dozens of cats of all sizes and varieties. My favorites were a little flat-faced one that looked like an Ewok and these two cats that, for whatever reason, had one pair of legs shorter than the other. It made them look super adorable! I called one Lil' Lowrider and the other was Scrunchinz. We were probably there for like...forever. So many cats to play with! And Alexis attracted them like a magnet. They began to slowly pile up around her for luvins.

^This cat's front legs are shorter!

After being covered head to toe in cat hair, we cleaned up and decided we were all absolutely famished...so it was off to find some Korean BBQ! We tried a bunch of new kinds including...pig skin, I think it was? Ended up being infinitely more delicious than it sounded and everyone got super full. We decided it was time to kick off the evening right and look for a bar to live it up in. We poked in and out of a few, but none really had the vibe or the crowd we were looking for. As we wandered, we stumbled past a randomly placed Korean shop with cool men's clothes and I was eagerly whisked inside and dressed up like a Korean Barbie Doll (not that I minded). I ended up buying a hat, a shirt and a sweater with some of the money from my first Korean paycheck! I'm not going to lie, I looked pretty studly.

We finally found this bar called Ho Bar (which one? I don't remember. There are like 17 throughout the city) that was pretty awesome and we ended up getting two pitchers of mixers, a bottle of Absolut and a large tra of fruit for like 70,000 KRW? Which is roughly 70  USD. Between the 5 of us, we each only spent like $14? It was a ridiculously good deal. And we all got hammered. I was already a little drunk because I had discovered Family Mart sells flasks of whiskey for $6 and we had been passing that around since early evening. I also discovered Korea has hundreds of flavors of cigarettes, so I bought a pack of Mojito flavored ones and passed the night with a few of those as well.

This is where things got a little fuzzy...

This is the point in the night where we have to find a place to stay. Luckily we had Minyoung with us or we would probably have been wandering the streets of Seoul all night. He tried checking us into a jimjilbang (hold on...I'll explain) nearby but they we're repairing the women's section or something so we had to find another place to stay. Minyoung apparently knew where he was going, so Casey, Alexis and I just kept drunkenly following them. At some point Casey decides to pour water all over me and retaliate tenfold, so we're both drunk and soaking wet, stumbling through Seoul. At some point I think I felt bad and ended up drunkenly begging Casey not to leave Korea...and it came off more like a marriage proposal.

It was beautiful...i don't care what you say.

The hot room. It was pretty gorgeous.

We stopped for some late night food and I had a minute to sober up before we got to the jimjilbang. Now, a jimjilbang is a lot like a resort spa for drunks (not only drunks...but it works out well for us). As long as they aren't full, you can come in without a reservation, pay like ten bucks and spend the night. They give you a wrist band with a key on it and some clothes for the night. You stuff your clothes (that probably smell like alcohol anyway) into a locker and get naked. No one wears like bathing suits or anything. You just get naked and go shower and whatever. The men and women are obviously separate. The bathes for each are on separate floors with the public common/sleeping floor in between.There are three or four public baths of varying temperatures in each bathing area. One is like a cold pool, one is warm, and one is ridiculously hot...but it felt really good. There are also a few saunas the relax in. It was really nice getting some time away from the girls and getting to talk about guy stuff and relax in the hot spas.

Then, whenever you're finished, you put on the clothes they've supplied you with and head to the common area and go to sleep. Apparently the bunkbeds were only for women, and Minyoung and Casey got kicked out in the middle of the night, but I was like "screw it, I don't speak Korean" and just turned over and went back to sleep. The perks of being ignorant =P There were also "hotrooms" and "coldrooms" that you can lay in if you want, but the cold room was too cold for me after the spa and the hot rooms freaked me out because I felt like I would suffocate in an oven, but plenty of people were chilling in both.

P.S. - Random stop at Condomania! Here you can see
condom pops, Anime condoms, and a Pikachu one!

The next morning we get up and go out to the common room where Casey and I grab breakfast and Caitlin treats us to massages from the massage chairs. I observe the common room and there are WAY more people here then their were last night. And I thought WE got in late. It kind of looked like a refuge camp with so many people sleeping everywhere. We showered and changed back into our own clothes and finally headed home. We got lucky and a cafe near the bus station had like 12 different types of massagers: one for feet, one for calves, one for back, etc. It was just what I needed after all that walking!

We grabbed a bus back to Changwon and slept the whole way back (at least I did). There wasn't a whole lot of time for rest, because I had to be back at work on Monday. We woke up early monday because Alexis wanted to try to get in some Korean shopping time, so we went to City 7 again to hunt down some shoes and a bag for her. Finding shoes for Alexis' huge American feet was impossible =P, but Alexis was impressed by my ability to talk to to the clerk (in the most elementary level of Korean ever, but enough to get us what we needed). We stopped for lunch at the Lotte food court and it was the best food court food I'd ever had. Then it was time for work!

At some point in the week we ended up drunk
in front of the Pullman Hotel...this was the result.
...their fault for having an army of white tigers.

We grab the bus to Sangnam, not realizing a string of bad luck seemed to follow from that point on. Alexis and I go to work on Monday and I think "hey! I have an hour off for lunch! I'll take Alexis to this huge department store next to my work!". We went shopping and Alexis bought some cool Korean clothes that the salespeople begged her to wear out of the store so they could show off their wares on an American girl =P. The store was like 6 stories and even had a restaurant and a market inside!

We eventually get back and it's like the school is burning down. Apparently, the two teachers I work for, who each give me their personal half of their schedule, got something mixed up, or I got something mixed up, and I didn't have an hour off after all. So I missed a whole class! Everyone was pretty pissed, but I still had classes to teach, so I just powered through it.

The next day I tried to make up for Sangnam campus blunder at my Dogye campus by cooking for my co-teachers and they really liked my Korean soup! My director didn't deliver my registration card to me herself, so I took that as a bad sign. Then we got chicken with Caitlin and Casey and I got off at the wrong bus stop like 3 times before just taking a taxi to the restaurant. I didn't dwell on it too much since it was Alexis' last night in Korea and we wanted to party hard!

New additions to the crew and some
good ol' fashioned American drinking games.

Party hard we did. We went to Monster Bar and ran into these two awesome guys named Andrew and Jake who have been here for 3-4 years and speak pretty awesome amounts of Korean. We drank quite a bit of makgeoli with them and then headed to IP's for some intense beer pong like true Americans. Everything after that is kind of a blur. We lost Caitlin, Jake and Andrew somewhere, but Casey kept us drinking strong. I remember hitting up a few other joints and getting supremely wasted and deciding just to go home, grab Alexis' suitcase (she left the heavy one here) and get on the bus to the Gimhae Airport. I'm actually surprised I managed all that, because it's really a blur. I just remember getting to the airport, sitting in a chair, and passing out.

I woke up about three hours later, realized Alexis was gone and I was VERY hungover. I stumbled to a bathroom, relieved my stomach of its toxic contents, then went back and passed out again. After about four rounds of this, I was aware enough to realize I had lost my bag somehow/somewhere. I groggily shuffled around the entire airport looking for it and eventually (after composing myself enough) placed a claim at the lost and found before dejectedly boarding the bus back home. I was so bummed the next day at work (I really loved that bag), until Minyoung messaged me and told me he called the airport and they had found my bag! Even all my money was still in it! Koreans are so nice!

Oh...and Alexis made it to Japan safely too =P

For wading through all that, you get bonus pictures!!

Bonus Alexis!!!

Bonus Casey!!

Bonus Caitlin and Minyoung!!!

Bonus Me!!!

And Bonus Me AND Alexis!!!

See you soon!!!!

휴가 - Jinhae and UMF Korea 2012!

On our way to Jinhae!

I'm finally getting somewhat caught up on this blog! I really need to update it more frequently, because I don't even remember what I did the first day of my vacation. Especially because there are no pictures from that day, so let's just assume I did boring stuff like clean and nap and whatnot. I was supposed to meet up with Minyoung for dinner and was planning on probably just being a lazy piece of shit until then (Actually, I was going to work on my TESL certification), but then I get a message from Boram saying she wanted me to come visit her hometown of Jinhae with Kimyn, Irene and her. I was like "Well...that sounds WAY better than what I was originally planning on doing, when do you want to meet up?" and it turns out she wanted me to meet at City 7 in like 20 minutes. Well, shit. I got dressed super quickly and messaged Minyoung that I was heading out to Jinhae but I would still be back at 7 for dinner if that was okay with him. I waited a few minutes for a reply (I only have wifi), but I couldn't wait too long, so I took off without hearing back, determined to be back by 7 pm for dinner.

I got to City 7 and looked around, assuming Boram and crew would be waiting for me on a bench, but I didn't see anyone so I figured that I must have beaten their bus here. Suddenly people in a strangely cube-shaped car start waving at me and I realize, stupidly, that Koreans actually have cars in Korea. They don't have to take the bus everywhere. A little embarrassed, I jumped in Boram's car and we waited for Irene to pull up behind us before caravanning to Jinhae!

Jinhae is...kind of like the Satellite Beach of Korea. It's really pretty and earthy, but I get the feeling that it might be a little on the slow side. Still, it reminded me of home and i was excited to be back by the ocean. Boram took us to her mom's restaurant where we were treated to a feast for kings. I tried talking a bit to her mother, but she spoke about as much English as I speak Korean so I didn't get too far. I was content just hanging out in the kitchen and watching her clean and cut the eel so effortlessly. She had each eel fully cleaned, disemboweled, decapitated and ready for consumption in three strokes of her knife. It was pretty amazing to watch. I wish she could have taught me, but I'm pretty clumsy in the kitchen and I feel like I would have just gotten in the way more than anything else.

I left the kitchen to help Irene and Kimyn set the table with twenty different side dishes and a few bottles of beer and soju. We hardly had room at the table for our own plates with everything we set on it. I pretty much just ate off the side dish plates. Koreans aren't really germaphobes like Americans are.

Boram cooking us eel!

The eel was finally ready and we sat down to eat the easily five pounds of eel Boram's mother prepared for us. Boram cooked most of it while we watched and took shots of soju, but we could only wait so long to eat. It became a perpetual cycle of us eating and Boram cooking more until we forced her to stop and eat some herself. Koreans are way too hospitable. the eel was the most phenomenal thing I have ever eaten in my life. I'll probably never have a meal that good again ever. Until the next time I go back.

After dinner we went down to the seaside and took a ferry out to some unknown local island Boram wanted us to check out. The ride was so relaxing and the view was gorgeous as well. I'll stick in a bunch of pictures of just the scenery. I usually hate scenic pictures, but some of this is just absolutely gorgeous.

We just don't have anything comparable in Florida...

Korean lighthouses look pretty sweet.

Irene just looks absolutely terrified...

We finally got to the island and it was actually a little sad. There was graffiti everywhere on houses because people were being thrown out by the government because they wanted the island for some reason or another. It felt like a ghost town in some places, especially at this elementary school we found. That despondence was immediately remedied by a giant trampoline we found on the playground! We probably wasted a solid hour bouncing on this trampoline, but it was so much fun I can't describe it without sounding crazy. Most of the time, Irene was just curled in a ball trying not to get stepped on. She's so tiny! We realized that we were going to miss our ferry back soon, so we headed back to the boat and enjoyed the peaceful ride back. Obviously, more scenic pictures to follow.

(If you don't think those pictures are breathe-taking, you're a Communist.)

We say our farewells to Boram's mom and head back to Changwon in Boram's car with just enough time for me to make it back for dinner. Boram lets me use her phone's wifi (which is a cool feature on Korean phones I don't think we have in America...) to text Minyoung and let him know I'm on my way. He messages me that he isn't arriving in Changwon from Daegu until 8:30 since I told him I was in Jinhae for the day. I was a little bummed, so I asked the girls if they wanted to get some drinks with me in Sangnam-dong while I waited for Minyoung to come to dinner. They agreed, we stopped by Irene's house to see Tony the cat, and then headed off to beer republic for some overpriced American beers. Yum. At least they only stock stuff like Stella and Hoegaarden and not anything repugnant like Michelob or Icehouse....

Girls going wild at the noraebang...

We drank for awhile until Minyoung came into town, but then he texted me that he was tired and wanted to stay at Katie's. I was quite a few beers in at this point and didn't want to leave so we just agreed to raincheck our dinner date and I headed further down the rabbithole with Kimyn, Boram, and Irene. We went to a few bars/restaurants and then, as expected, we hit the noraebang! I discovered Irene is a phenomenal singer and makes everything everyone else does sound like garbage, but I was really proud of my ability to sing Jason Mraz fairly well while intoxicated, so Boram (also a huge Mr. A-Z fan) and I dueted the 3 or 4 songs of his that were available and even 100% "I'm Yours". That felt like a pretty fantastic accomplishment especially after my epic drunken failure to sing Tenacious D which Katie so graciously recorded. Obviously, there are never any cameras around when I do something awesome.

Lots of Korean army guys at
the rest stop on the way to Seoul.

Soon Boram had to get back to Jinhae, but that didn't stop Kimyn from dragging Irene and I to at least three more bars/restaurants for "one more drink" and we even managed to get denied at a few "No Foreigner" clubs. I managed to haul myself away around 4am and, per the usual, ended up getting onto the bus to Seoul with only an hour of sleep to go pick Alexis up from the airport. The bus ride there was peaceful, but I didn't sleep much, so I was super worried that I would be exhausted for Ultra that night.

I got to Incheon airport an hour and a half early so I spent some time exploring the airport and tracing our route out so that we could hurry on our way to the concert. We would be a little late, but that wasn't a hug deal since I didn't even know the opening acts. I discovered a few cool little treasures the airport had to offer as I waited. On the way to the airport subway, there is a random ice rink set up for kids to skate for fun. There was also a Korean choral group preforming/rehearsing (?) in the airport randomly and they were really good! They also had some funny little bits and I was thoroughly entertained for about 30 minutes. Then I went to go wait for Alexis to get off her plane and, luckily, it came in like 40 minutes early!

Ice skating rink in the Incheon Airport

See what I had to carry?!

Of course, she had all her luggage to move to Japan with her so each bag was roughly 70 pounds. It wasn't so bad on the airport subway, but once we hit the Seoul subway and had to transfer a few times, I was cursing those damn bags and every single stair I had to climb or wrong elevator we went up/down in the unrelenting heat. I was sweating like a far man eating a philly cheesesteak. We finally made it to Jamsil and I couldn't find an elevator to the surface so I had to haul both suitcases up two flights of stairs. From there it took us 15 minutes to hunt down a taxi driver who could take us to our hotel, but we finally got there, dropped our bags and took of for the stadium. After a few wrong directions and taxis driving us to the Olympic Park instead of the Olympic Stadium, we made it to the concert ground and learned that we weren't quite out of the woods yet. Korea was extremely unprepared for it's first Ultra and there were so many superflous and arbitrary lines we had to stand in or didn't have to stand in but thought we did. One line was to claim our tickets, but another line was to trade our tickets in for wristbands....? -_-; Not very well thought out. Plus it was hilarious to see all the Korean girls there in clubbing clothes like long dresses and 5 inch heels. They looked damn good though.

We finally got in for the beginning of Steve Aoki's set and managed to squeeze up toward the middle of the huge crowd of Koreans going absolutely crazy for this Japanese DJ. Steve Aoki alone was enough to make up for all the shit we had to go through to get there. He started at 8 and played for an hour and a half. Then when he called out "last song", he played another 30 minutes. He dropped some new track with Knife Party and a few more UMF exclusives. I've never raged so hard in my life. I have also never seen Koreans go so crazy either...for anything...especially electronic music. Then Skrillex came out and then it was just lights out. People were jumping and screaming and dancing. Skrillex has evolved into an absolutely wild live producer/dj since we saw him last year and his remixes of his own songs were jaw-dropping. We got up to the front at one point, but I had just been going so hard for the past three and a half hours that I had to leave and get some water. I was like 100% drenched in sweat and about 40% of it probably wasn't mine.

After the show we grabbed some Pocar Sweat (Japanese Gatorade) and a kebab before trying to grab a cab. The cabs parked outside the arena were asking 30,000-40,000 Won to take us the four blocks to our hotel. We were like "Hell no". After unsuccessfully trying to grab a cab on the main drag (people were running into the street trying to get cabs and they all just kept driving by...idk why) we just decided to hoof it back to the hotel. We grabbed some bulgogi burgers from a Family Mart and I ate mine in the shower while Alexis just fell straight asleep. We were exhausted. The hotel sucked. There were no plugs in the entire hotel room, so we unplugged the mini fridge to charge our phones, but what can you do? It was a last minute hotel for like 50,000 Won four blocks from the venue and the subway. Not bad.

We left early in the morning fully intending to make the noon bus back to Changwon to get there in time for Caitlin's birthday dinner that night, but we failed to consider that goddamn luggage yet again. We had no idea where we were going and at some point it turned into some old silent movie slap-stick comedy where we ride an escalator down a floor, then see a sign for an exit so we drag the luggage up a flight of stairs only to realize that we're back to where the escalator is that we just rode down. Drenched in sweat yet again and thoroughly fucking sick of Seoul and this 150 pounds of luggage, we finally made it the the bus terminal with minutes left to catch the 1:20 bus back to Changwon and we almost missed that one. It pulled away as soon as we got on.

Caitlin's birthday dinner was awesome. We ate at an Outback...in Korea...and I had a cajun shrimp and rice dish that was a succulent taste of home that I probably wouldn't have the luxury of tasting again any time soon. We all got our own dishes, but ended up eating down of each other's dishes Korean style anyway. It becomes habitual. Caitlin had a wild steak with a gorgonzola cheese topping and a wine sauce on top. It was very rich. Everyone's food was super delicious. We went out a bit after that, but Alexis and I were exhausted so we called it a night soon after that. She's here from the 3rd until the 15th so my nextpost will probably chronicle all that insanity.

Until next time, America! 안녕!