the sounds of everywhere

If you live in Korea, you cannot escape the sound of K-pop blasting everywhere you go. In the streets, in the stores, in the subways. It’s everywhere. Basically, if you hate American manufactured corporate slave pop groups such as LMFAO, Black Eyed Peas and Kesha, you will hate K-pop just as much. Its exactly those artists with a Korean twist. They are all manufactured boy bands or girl bands usually with plastic surgery (also very popular in Korea). Although I am generalizing because apparently K-pop has been around since the 90s and has a more diverse spectrum than people think.

K-Pop has such a huge impact on the culture here that it is not uncommon to see a group of young people practicing their shuffling skills in the streets of Seoul at any given time of the day or night (shuffling is a ridiculous dance craze here in Korea).

This is the current chart topper in Korea right now

These ridiculous looking men are called “Bigbang”. This song is like a virus that has infected Korea. It’s everywhere and that is not an exaggeration. No song in America really compares to how popular this is here.

Even one of my students made a drawing for me in reference to this song.

One more. I don’t expect anyone to actually watch these entire videos by the way, they are nearly unwatchable. But this is what I hear everywhere I go. Here is another chart topper right now

Anyway, that’s enough. It was hard making this post because I had to actually browse through K-pop songs that I hear constantly and it was very irritating. However, K-pop has recently gained international fame, it has taken Asia by storm and is even making its way to Western radio stations.
NOW YOU KNOW ABOUT K-POP.

a very dirty weekend

3 weeks in and I have already went on my first trip in Korea. It was my earliest morning since I’ve been here, waking up at 7am to get on the party bus headed to Boryeong beach. It was packed with foreigners, most of whom had been drinking through the night and were continuing their partying for the entire weekend with no sleep. Once we arrived at the beach, I was so excited to just be walking barefoot in sand and going in the ocean. It was cloudy and looked like it would start raining any second, but we didn’t care. We were about to get real dirty, so the rain would not even be a factor.

We spent some time on the beach then headed over to Mudfest aka the biggest party in South Korea. It felt like every foreigner in the country was there at the same time, plus thousands of Koreans. I was too clean when I got there and people were almost mocking us for how clean we were. Some people just came up to us and hugged us or spread mud on us just to make us feel welcome. By the time we finally got muddy, it was like a christening. We walked around proud, like members of a tribe. The booze was flowing endlessly and was fueling the entire mood and atmosphere of the festival, everyone without the slightest care about the less than ideal weather. People were walking around like muddy soldiers, they didn’t want to be clean. They came here to get dirty. So did we. There was something so punk rock about it. I loved the whole atmosphere. Even after mudfest was over, the after party continued through the whole night. We slept on a matted floor and we slept well. We had a late night feast of spine soup. By the time the trip was over and I was back at my apartment, I experienced for the first time the relief of being “home” in my Korean apartment. I slept hard until work the next day. That was my journey to Boryeong Mudfest and as long as I’m still in Korea this time next year, I will be revisiting for Mudfest 2013.

the beginning

June 23rd, I packed my entire life into 2 suitcases and got on a plane to Korea. This is some footage of my trip from Bethlehem to Suwon. I just got around to posting the footage now.

Korean 4th of July

July 4th outside of America is just a normal day. Unless you are with other Americans. Thankfully, my coworker Stephan held a 4th of July rooftop cookout and invited all the other foreign teachers at my school, plus some others. There were no proper fireworks but we managed to have a pretty great time until the cops came because of the noise. So we split and took the party back to my neighborhood where we hit up one of our favorite bars then called it a night/morning.

Yes, that is a big bottle of beer. It costs about $2. Don’t judge. I’m glad I even got to celebrate the 4th being 6000 miles away. I would have rather been on the beach in Jersey but I think we made the best of it!

-A

14 days later

2 weeks ago today, I arrived in Korea. These are some photos of my first night here. I was fresh off the plane! With me are  some of my co-teachers who immediately showed me a good time.

Suwon nightlife

its normal in Korea to be out partying until sunrise. please excuse the language, its a bar video.

Solo journey to Hongdae

So I had plans to go to Hongdae with some of my co-teachers this weekend. However, being out until 6am Friday night caused me to sleep in pretty late on Saturday, so apparently I missed the knock on my door. Just as I had decided to cancel my trip due to not having a cell phone or a means to navigate my way to Seoul, my friend contacted me through facebook and asked if I wanted to meet up in Hongdae since his friend was DJing at a club there. I agreed to meet up and thought, I might as well figure out the way there on my own, how else would I learn?

I hailed a cab right outside my apartment and told him “Suwon Station”. He dropped me off there, total cost of about $3.50. Now this was my first time at Suwon Station, so I had to figure out where to go. All I knew was I want the 1 line straight to Seoul station where my friend was meeting me. After about 15 minutes of wandering around, I finally found where I had to be. The subway runs from Suwon to Seoul about every 10 minutes, so the wait wasn’t long. I hopped on the subway and sat there with my ipod and a book for the hour long trip. I took the opportunity to write in my travel journal and noticed my last entry was exactly a week ago, sitting in Detroit airport during layover. One week later and here I am traveling to Seoul all by myself.

When I got there, I had no clue where my friend was. So I had to find a wifi hotspot and message him on facebook (no cell phone, remember?). This was a bit tricky. But after about 10-15 minutes we were able to track each other down. The first thing we did was grab a couple of beers at the nearest convenience store and head up to Seoul Station where we sat on the steps and talked. After we finished our beers, we started heading towards Hongdae, the party center of Seoul.

Seoul Station at night

When we got to Hongdae, I was completely blown away by how crowded it was. I thought NYC was crowded but Manhattan doesn’t even compare to Hongdae, plus it’s mostly young people and they are all drunk. There are clubs left and right, music blasting in the streets, vendors filling in all the gaps and incredible street food as far as the eye can see. I was also surprised to see so many foreigners. The experience was overwhelming but extremely exciting. I was in the heart of perhaps the biggest party spot in all of Asia. We walked through all the commotion to get to our spot for the night, Hongdae park, which is like the central hangout in Hongdae. There were tons of foreigners there and it was a huge party, everyone was so friendly and I met quite a few really cool people. There was lots of music and dancing and boozing. I met people from London, Copenhagen, Vancouver, and various parts of the US…even a guy decked out in NY Yankees gear who happened to be from Jersey!

I also ate some amazing street food. Here is my friend Benji at a Kebab stand, he is friends with the owner so he was serving us up some delicious Korean style kebab.

So the rest of the night was history. The typical night out here ends at sunrise. So at about 5am we wrapped things up and got a cab headed to north Seoul where my friend Collin lives. I crashed there for the night and we grabbed Korean food the next day, then I headed back home. Here is the view from his apartment.

Anyway, thats about it for now. Again, I am limited in my internet access right now until I get my alien registration card, then I will finally have my own wifi. As for now, I have been getting access at work and at the PC Bang (I will tell you about PC Bangs in another post, they are amazing!)

Love you all. Jaigayo!

photo update 1

I haven’t been taking as many photos as I should be, but here’s some I did take with my iphone.

One of my first classes. These kids work so hard.

 

The view from my balcony in Suwon.

The typical night scene at the main strip of bars and restaurants in Ingyedong, Suwon. Right around the corner from where I live and work.

First night out

Annyeonghaseo from Suwon city!

I’m sitting in my beautiful RENT FREE apartment in downtown Suwon using somebody’s free wifi signal. I am still jet lagged and processing everything so just I’ll start from the beginning. I arrived in Incheon airport yesterday at 3:30pm, everything went as smooth as possible. As soon as I got my bags I exchanged my currency and walked through the doors to find a crowd of people holding up signs for various people. I saw my name, went up to the guy and said “that’s me!” and he took my suitcase and walked me out to his car. Everything went so fast and smooth, I can’t stress that enough.

The ride to my apartment was around an hour I think? Time was not really a concept to me at the moment. I was so happy to be in Korea that I didn’t pay attention to the time. Plus after the long day of travelling, 1 hour was nothing. On the drive from Incheon to Suwon, we crossed a massive 20km long bridge (about 7 miles long) called Incheon Bridge, the driver told me it only took them 2 years to make and they just finished it a couple years ago. Here’s a photo I snapped of the bridge from my cab ride. I was amazed.

I took some video footage of the trip which will be posted later, I’m working with minimal battery on my laptop and don’t have a power converter yet!

So after I arrived at my apartment in Suwon, my head teacher Stephan was sitting right outside at a picnic table waiting for me. He introduced himself and showed me to my apartment which is directly next door to the school. It would actually take longer for me to wait for the elevator and walk outside my apartment building than it would to walk to the school…it’s literally right next door. The school building is huge and must be one of the larger hagwons in Suwon.

So after the quick little tour, Stephan told me he would take me out later for some Korean food and beverages with the other teachers. So we met up, he introduced me to some other foreign teachers (+1 Korean friend) and we walked right down the block from me where there is an endless amount of bars and restaurants. So we went to my first Korean restaurant which has grills inside the tables. This is the moment I fell in love with Korea and realized I made a great decision. The food came out faster than McDonalds, almost immediately after ordering. Before I could even turn around the whole table was full of all kinds of dishes, appetizers, 2 big slabs of pork on the grill, kimchi, beers and soju. Oh – by the way – soju is way better than I expected. I took my first shot of it and didn’t even need to chase it. It’s not delicious or anything but it tastes way better than vodka to me. The dining experience was incredible and this is when I really felt like “woah this is it.” It was a great introduction to Korea, my co-teachers are amazingly friendly people and we got along great almost immediately.

After we finished up, we went to another bar down the street which none of them had been to yet. We walked up the stairs and to a rather empty but nice looking bar. To my surprise, there was a decent selection of foreign beers, which is something I was worried about. But I was relieved to find that I actually don’t mind Cass (the Bud type beer of Korea). The group expanded here. I met about 3 or 4 more foreign teachers from the states and we all got to know each other a little more. After a few beers here, we all went to the next spot – a downstairs bar with pool tables and darts, again pretty empty (it was Sunday night though). We played pool here and drank more, also I was surprised that they were blasting current American hip-hop which was awesome to hear cause Korean rap is terrible.

Anyway, that was my first night out in Korea. I am kicking myself for not taking photos but there will be plenty more of this as its a pretty typical night out here. In short, I am already loving it here. I got free wifi in my apartment and a really nice setup in a beautiful part of the city. I start teaching today so that is happening in a couple hours. Although I feel pretty confident going into it since I spent a night out with some of my co-workers already and they even assured me they would help introduce me to the kids today.  So I will be teaching a class within less than 24 hours of arriving in Korea. Pretty crazy but this is what I came here for.

Love you all. More pics and videos to come later.

Bye for now.

Saying goodbye to friends and family is without a doubt the hardest part about leaving home for a year. I suck at goodbyes and I am not a very sentimental person, but the memories I’ve had with my friends and family back home will stick with me stronger than ever while I am half way across the globe from them. I have only known what it is like to be within an hour to most of my friends and family, so being in a foreign country without any of them there will be strange. Yet their support for this adventure I am about to embark upon has been way stronger than I expected, which strengthens me throughout this transition. I will miss all of them individually and will often recall certain memories that for the most part will make me laugh and smile. Thank you all for being so supportive of me and for the great times. I love you all.

(Insert your favorite “goodbye” song here, or don’t. You don’t have to.)

The year will go by fast and we will reunite soon enough.