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Week 50- Y3(Feb 17th to Feb 23rd) |
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Sunday:
NO!!! Gordon gave away the room to a guy today. I
knew it wasn't going to work . . . but I'm still
pretty disappointed, as is Garan. We would have been
awesome roommates; and while I really want to move, I
would have preferred not to live with strangers. I've
started looking for other places though, and hopefully
something will come up-- I've only got 2 weeks before
I have to resign at this apartment.
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Tuesday:
My apartment hunt started today. At 2pm, along with
Garan as my second opinion, I met Mandy Kim at Indigo
(a cafe in Haebangchon, which is the neighbourhood I
want to move into. It's primarily a foreigner
neighbourhood, and it's really close to my dance
studio and the band rehearsal studio, not to mention
most of my friends). Mandy took us to several
apartments around the area, all 2-bedroom places that
I would be living alone in. Some of them were okay,
but I wasn't exactly sold on any of them (although
anything would be better than the little craphole I
have now!). After the meeting, Garan and I killed
time for a little bit until I met Summer, my next
appointment. Summer is an American girl who manages
the foreigner band "The Bellows", and does a lot of
concert promotion work for the local music scene.
Summer and her roommate are moving into a new place in
March and they're looking for a 3rd roommate. She
took me to the apartment, and it was beautiful! Huge,
well kept, a rooftop with a barbecue . . . so now the
question is do I want to live alone in an okay
apartment, or do I want to share an awesome place with
2 roommates? It's a tough decision!
A note on Haebangchon-- it's such a small community of
foreigners that pretty much everyone knows eachother!
Even just spending a day here, I've run into more
people I know than anywhere else in Seoul. This could
be really fun!
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Wednesday:
Tonight I was the teaching assistant for my first
salsa class. My teaching partner is Bryan, Helen's
brother and co-owner of the studio. It was scary!
Bryan had planned moves that were too difficult for
the beginners, and he was teaching way too fast. A
lot of people were completely lost! I'm going to have
to sit him down and make a better plan for the class,
or we're going to lose a lot of students . . .
Also Helen offered me a fulltime job at the studio!
It's really flattering to be asked, but there's no way
I could do both my college job and a fulltime dance
studio job-- I'd go insane (plus legally I can't have
2 visas). It's weird teaching dance, because I feel
like I have so much more to learn still.
After dance class, I met Bobby, the other roommate in
Summer's place. I've decided to move in with them!
Bobby is a British girl who is teaching privates here,
along with an art class and a dance class in English.
She's very creative and open-minded. I think this
could be a really cool living situation-- we're all
kind of arty and bohemian. So it's official now-- I'm
moving to Haebangchon!
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Thursday:
Tonight a bunch of us from the dance studio went out
for a farewell to Chris. Chris is an excellent
dancer, and a great guy, so we're all pretty sad to
see him go, especially under the circumstances-- his
grandpa is sick, and his dad needs someone to help him
run the farm. We all had a good and rowdy night out.
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Saturday:
Tonight was the Bellows' cd release party in Hongdae.
The Bellows are the band that Summer manages, and she
put together quite an event! Lots of local bands,
comedy acts in between sets, and an awesome crowd of
people. I was impressed.
Now, I had been getting a lot of stomach pains over
the past couple of weeks, and I mentioned offhand to
Garan that I thought it might be because I'm drinking
a little more since I'm on vacation, and I was going
to cut back down. Next thing I knew he had convinced
me that both of us were going to quit drinking for a
month! We even shook on it . . . (why did I agree to
this?) Here's the funny part: after the release
party, Garan and I went to Free Bird to say hi to
Johann, the manager and our friend. The second we
walked in, Johann offered us a free bottle of Jack
Daniels (which happens to be my AND Garan's poison of
choice). We looked at eachother, and then Garan said,
well, if it's free . . . So I guess you could say we
fell off the wagon . . . Eventually, a lot of people
came into Free Bird, and next thing I knew it was a
huge party consisting of 5 of the big foreigner bands
in Seoul! It was really cool and a lot of fun.
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