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Week 36 - Y2 (Nov 5th to Nov 11th) |
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Sunday Nov 5th,
Ugh. This week has left me hurting. When all of us
were sufficiently awake, we went across the street
from Ry and Lindsey's apartment for some samgyeopsal--
this place had the coolest side dishes! There was
this egg soup/custard stuff that with the samgyeopsal
(pork barbecue) tasted like the closest one can get to
eggs and bacon in Korean cuisine. Nice! We also
started discussing our trip this winter in some more
detail. Ry and Linz will be coming from Malaysia to
Thailand, and we're going to meet in Bangkok a few
days before Christmas. Ryan has a Thai cousin-in-law
who's going to help show us around (and also make sure
that I don't die from the peanuts!), and then we're
going to head down to the islands for some
Christmas/New Year's fun in the sun. After that,
we'll bus into Cambodia to check out Angkor Wat, the
huge and beautiful complex of temples. From there Ry
and Linz are going to go to Laos, but since my time is
a little more limited, I'll go to Vietnam on my own,
or possibly with Jenny and Annabelle, depending on
their schedule. I'm really excited, but there are so
many details that we have to take care of-- hostels,
flights, buses, visas, border crossings, vaccination
shots, just-in-case medicine, money . . . it's
overwhelming! But still, I'm just thankful for the
chance to get to do a trip like this at all!
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Monday Nov 6th,
I took my two Iksan jazz choirs out for samgyeopsal
today. Good god, they made me eat so much, I thought
I was going to die! Everything's always "professor
first". It was nice to see them in a relaxed social
environment, although one of the boys has such a
ridiculous crush on me that it's getting a little
stupid. It's Korean tradition for the oldest person
to pay the bill, so I thought that I was going to have
to pay for all 16 people, and the way all of them were
eating, I was kind of thinking to myself, Oh god, did
I even bring enough money with me today? But turns
out that they wanted to treat me! Very sweet (and so
much better for my bank account!)
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Wednesday Nov 8th,
Had another kind of strange gig today, with Jae, Won
Sool and Saoh (Ben is in Canada right now). The gig
was in the late afternoon at some swanky club in the
rich area, and it was some kind of social club for
rich people who use their Hyundai credit cards too
much. So Hyundai rewards them by providing different
lectures/events every week that are geared towards
making them look smarter to their rich friends/more
culturally in the know. So this week was "Let's learn
about jazz" while geting drunk off of good wine and
eating good hors d'ouvres in the afternoon.
Fortunately, Jae was the one who had to do the
"lecture", so I just had to sing a few tunes (granted
they were my most hated standards EVER! "Fly Me to
the Moon" should be banned from all jazz clubs).
However, the 4 songs that I sang earned me 300,000
won. Somehow Jae always gets the weirdest and
best-paying gigs, not that I'm complaining or
anything. It's certainly not hurting my wallet. |
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Thursday Nov 9th,
Werner, my friend and former funk band drummer is
leaving Korea to return to South Africa on Saturday.
Since he's never really checked out Seoul, he asked
last weekend if he could stay at my place this weekend
and do some touristy stuff. Of course I agreed.
After work, I went to meet him at the express bus
station, where he was coming in from Daegu. But the
frickin place is a maze and it took us forever to find
each other! This was made even more difficult by the
fact that Werner doesn't have his cell phone anymore,
and had to keep on calling from pay phones. After
about 45 minutes, we finally managed to locate each
other, got in a taxi, lugged his suitcases up my
stairs, and went to a local pub for a snack/drink.
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Friday Nov 10th,
We didn't quite make it up as early as we intended
today . . .
When we were finally ready to go, we headed over to
the National Museum, which I had never been to either.
It's huge! It reminds of one of those Russian dolls
that keeps on opening up to reveal another one. Our
main purpose for going was to see a travelling exhibit
of artwork that's on loan from the Louvre-- mostly
French baroque and classical work, quite interesting.
We then checked out some more of the museum--
Indonesian artwork, findings from cave temples in the
Middle East. But the museum is just too damn big;
there was no way we could have seen it all in one day.
So finally around 5pm, we just gave up!
After the museum, I took Werner to Insadong, my
personal favourite, for some shopping/browsing. I
found this little vendor that has all kinds of
hilarious Korean television star paraphenalia-- socks
with soap opera star faces printed on them, notebooks,
playing cards, calendars, Hello Kitty dolls in
traditional Korean dress. They were so kitsch, I
couldn't resist buying some stuff to give as presents.
I also couldn't resist buying "kimchi chocolate"--
whoever gets that in their Christmas stocking is going
to be very lucky . . . ha ha! We also stumbled into
this really cool Andy Warhol-themed art installation
in a courtyard. There were umbrellas hanging
everywhere that were silkscreened with Warhol's face,
tons of pop art inspired by Warhol, so on.
Werner wanted his last Korean meal to be galbi, so we
found a nice traditional restaurant in Insadong, and
had a nice traditional meal next to a table of very
drunken businessmen, hence adding to the authentic
Korean-ness of the meal. We were about to leave the
Insadong area when we kind of wandered into this
performance-- a traditional Korean drummer, a trumpet
player, a traditional Korean folk singer, and a
percussionist/dancer. It was very jam-oriented,
fusing traditional Korean styles with other Easter
music styles, as well as some West African stuff, and
jazz stuff. It was really cool! The thing that I
love most about cities is being able to randomly
wander into something like that-- would this have
happened in Daegu? Not too likely! When the
performance was over, I took Werner to Bar Nana in
Itaewon, where the music was not as enthralling, but
it was fun nonetheless (The bar staff apparently
realized sometime between tonight and the last time
that I was there that it's a good idea to have locks
on the bathroom doors-- a step in the right direction.
Now if only all Korean bathrooms could have things
like soap and toilet paper . . .)
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Saturday Nov 11th,
Once again, didn't quite make it up as early as we had
intended . . . we had been planning to see one of the
palaces and the war museum before Werner had to leave
for the airport, but we got such a late start that we
ended up having to choose one-- the War Museum.
Werner really liked it, although it's a bit of a dark
way to leave Korea behind, I suppose. And then it was
off to the airport. Once again, I absolutely hate
goodbyes. I hate that there's a bigger chance of
never seeing Werner again than of seeing him.
Although it would be cool to visit South Africa . . .
Tonight, Charlotte, Katie, Jenny B. and Nicolla came
up from Daegu. I met them after dinner to go hang out
in the Hongdae area. Nicolla and Jenny wanted a party
night, so we went to this bar, Tin Pan, which was
absolutely insane tonight. It was overwhelmingly
packed, and I almost felt like I was in the midst of a
"Girls gone wild" video, except the guys had gone
equally as wild. One Korean guy actually jumped up
onto the bar and started doing a striptease. Tin Pan
turned out to be a little too much party . . . we
left, and ended up at an eighties bar, just for
laughs. The place was really weird-- first of all, it
was virtually empty. Yet, the waitress kind of had a
hate-on for us right away, and was incredibly rude to
us, despite the fact that we were almost her only
customers. When we were dancing, the staff just kind
of stood around and glared at us, like they were
worried we were going to do something crazy. I felt
like I was at a junior high dance or something. But
here's the crowning moment-- there were two older
Korean men and an older Korean woman at the table next
to ours, and we started chatting with them. They were
really sweet and wanted to continue talking to us.
But the waitress saw this, got pissed off and threw us
out of the bar! I have never been kicked out of
anywhere in my life . . . I've also never really
experienced such direct racism in my life. It still
makes me angry to think about it. Anyway, in the
eighties club, we unfortunately, and much to our
dismay picked up a hanger-on, who decided to pretend
like he was our best friend, despite the fact that
we'd known him about 30 seconds and hadn't shown much
interest either. He ended up following us to the next
bar, Club Funky Funky, where it took us most of the
night to get rid of him. There must be something in
the air tonight-- Funky Funky was equally as insane as
the first bar, with obscene drunkeness all around us.
However, the music was good, and the dj took requests,
so Jenny and I stayed til 5:30am, and the rest of the
girls didn't leave until 10am!
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