I don't care what you say, I'm not calling it 'football.'

I've pretty much given up on a regular update schedule, I think. Still! Obligatory update to let you know I'm still alive!

Things at my hagwon have been pretty damn crazy for the last week or so- the last week of the month is always a bit nuts. But it's Friday now- and a Friday leading into a three day weekend! As per the usual, I'm not entirely certain what I'll be up to, aside from 'something.'

But enough about THIS weekend- it's time to tell you about what I did last weekend! So apparently, it was foreigner night at the World Cup Stadium for a K-league soccer game. Neat!

So tickets were under 10 bucks, and you got a free (warm) beer and a (cold) hot dog. Neat! My Cousin went as well, but she got there before I did and likely got better seats. In any case, I went with some of my Ilsan-based friends (namely, The Welshman, Gundam Guy, Mr. Gyopo, and the Vegan Canadian Girls- all of whom I have arbitrarily given codenames to), and had a good time of it. I'm not really much of a sports fan in general, but I always enjoy going out to watch a game. And really, Soccer's a pretty fun game to watch.

Unfortunately, I wasn't sitting in the super-hardcore fan section- and I kind of wish I had. There was a big mass of black & red (badass team colors, I must admit) where people had flags and drums and all kinds of crazy stuff.

The game itself was kind of a beat-down- Seoul FC beat Daejon 4 - 1. Still, I guess I was rooting for Seoul, as I live closer to them. And, of course, they have the rad team colors. Makes me kinda wish someone was tooling around in a Harley Quinn getup, but I fear most Koreans wouldn't get it. Pity!

In any case, after the game, we puttered around- and wound up meeting up with some other friends of The Welshman's. Neat folks, really! One of them happened to be Iron Maiden Guy from awhile back, which just shows how incestuous the expat community over here is. Worse than living in a small town, really.

By this point, there's like a dozen of us. And we take the subway a few stops over to Hongdae. Unfortunately, this was one of those situations where there were too many people and not enough initiative- personally, I could've taken more of a leadership role, but I really didn't know them that well, and just busting out with 'FOLLOW ME, LADS!' wouldn't have gone over that well. I need to work on my charisma.

In any case, the lot of us wind up at some seafood place in Hongdae, which was actually pretty tasty. Now, my original plan was to eat dinner, then catch the subway home at a halfway decent hour.

...This didn't happen.

As The Welshman, Mr. Gyopo, and Gundam Guy said 'No! We'll hang together! We'll all just pitch in ten bucks and take the taxi home!'

...This didn't happen either.

Again, the lack of initiative in our big mass of people hurt us, as we spent a good while kicking around The Park in Hongdae. Which, admittedly, is kind of a neat place to be- there was some band rocking it pretty hard, but I'm afraid I only caught the end of their set. Not to mention it was hella crowded, so I didn't get a very good view.

By the time the band wrapped up their set, I'd lost track of my little Ilsan crew. I wound up tagging along with the remnants of The Welshman's friend's group, and hit up some club called 'Freebird' where his friend's band was playing. They were called something like 'The Scott Logan Experience' or...something. They were just a cover band...but at least they were a GOOD cover band. Eventually, they wrapped up their set with a pretty good C-Lo Green cover, and that was about that.

There also was a ninja. That happens sometimes.

In any case, around, uh...2:30 AM, I decided to call it a night, 'cause I'm an old man like that. So I meander out of the bar to get some fresh air, give some directions to a be-kilted scotsman, and I wrapped up the rest of the night by holing up in a PC Bang, where I watched random youtube crap in varying states of consciousness 'til the subways opened up again.

Sunday, obviously, was a recovery day.

So yeah. As I mentioned before, the week's been busy, but I survived! Weather's also gotten a bit cooler- some of the Korean folks are bundling up in fancy pants windbreakers and scarves and such. I might even go for the fleece myself tonight. Just a reminder of the impending bitterly cold Korea winter, I guess!

At least I've got good socks.

Two weekends of hijinks!

First, Chuseok! Or, to put it more simply, 'Korean Thanksgiving.' For those who don't feel like hitting up google or wikipedia, it's a typical harvest festival. Lots of family, lots of food, and so on. One of the particular things is that EVERYBODY heads out of Seoul to visit their grandparents in the the countryside. Given how I'm not, well, Korean, I was left to roam a quiet and mostly empty Ilsan (and Seoul, later). It wasn't quite 'I am Legend' empty, but it was far quieter than what I'm used to.

Despite being a four day weekend, I honestly didn't get up to all that much. Which was kind of nice anyway- I'm a big fan of being able to just take it easy. I did do a little bit of exploring anyway. I meandered through Itaewon a bit (because where else will things be open?) and I'm rather glad I did, as I managed to find myself a bootleg Defensor. Yay knockoff transformers! The plastic is pretty flimsy, and I can spot at least a half dozen places where corners have been cut- but at least when you put him together, he looks pretty cool. Funny that it's taken me 7 months in Asia to find good bootleg transformers- guess I'm just not looking hard enough. 

Chuseok itself fell on a Monday. I took the opportunity to meander by Gyeongbokgung palace again, as it was free to the public that day, and they were having some sort of cultural folk festival or something. Unfortunately, the festival itself wasn't too noteworthy (at least the stuff I saw), but it was kind of neat to poke around the museum parts I hadn't seen before. In particular, there's a 'folk village' that's set up to reflect what stuff looked like during different decades. One touch I really liked was that they had a 1970's-ish era comic book shop as one of the exhibits. Neat! Once again, I manage to find the nerdiest thing in any given area. It's a talent.

Perhaps to make up for my boringness on Chuseok weekend, I actually went out and about this previous weekend. More specifically, I went on a big expedition with my Cousin and a bunch of our friends to a little town called Sokcho, out on the east coast.

The bus ride was pleasant- though one of the things I've found in my (admittedly limited) travels in Korea is, well...a lot of it looks the same. Heavily forested mountains, and little towns tucked into the valleys. Sometimes picturesque, but a little repetitive.

In any case, the bus went through a couple of tunnels on its trip...and when we went through the last tunnel...it was raining on the other side. Not...exactly the best beach weather, but what else can you do? Thankfully, I remembered to bring my gore-tex jacket. Be prepared, and all that.

Despite the rain, this didn't stop us from having a good time! It was a little chill, and perhaps a little crowded, but there's something to be said for sitting around, watching TV (SWAMP SHARK), and of course, drinking. Many boozes. We found a new use for the rice cooker, as you can see.

When it got later, we hit up a rather tasty galbi resturant (as we usually do), then we hit up the local Norebang (as we usually do). Really, add in coffee shops, mini-marts, and PC bangs, and you've got the most common buisnesses to be found in Korea. Norebang's by far the most entertaining option. I think it's the required way to end an evening whenever you get a certain number of expats together. Or maybe it's just OUR required way to end an evening whenever you get a bunch of us together.

I guess that's kind of rad, right?

Sunday was a little more low key- we lazed around, slept off our hangovers- and even if it was still raining, we played around in the big-ass waves anyway (I even went sans-gore-tex that time) and finally cleaned up and made the trip back to Seoul. Not much to say there (though I did spy another, smaller bootleg Defensor set at a rest stop on the way back. Who knew?).

I'm not sure what I'm getting up to this weekend, but I'm gonna make it a point to do something interesting. Stay tuned!

Also, it's kinda cold all of a sudden. Ridiculously abruptly so. It's like someone realized 'Oh, it's September!' and flicked on the 'cold' switch. I think that's how things work here.

Beach party!

Yes, I skipped a week. But mostly 'cause "I had to spend most of the last Saturday in August in a training seminar of dubious usefulness" would make for a pretty short (and dull) blog post.

Meh. Work progresses as it shall. Just yesterday, one of the Korean teachers asked me to use smaller words so the students would understand me easier. I thusly jotted "use less extensive vocabulary" in my notebook. This...might be part of the problem. Eheh.

Thankfully, I've been up to more interesting things since then! Namely, this past Saturday, I got together with My Cousin and her friends J and New K (I've decided people get rad codenames on this blog now) to hit up the beach. More specifically, we went to a beach on a little island called Muuido- it's really close to the Incheon Airport.

Unfortunately, despite being close to the airport, it was somewhat difficult in getting there. Mostly because there were two buses that headed in completely opposite directions...despite having the same number. Seriously, it wasn't even a matter of doing opposite directions of the same loop- one of the buses went to where we wanted to go...and the other didn't.

We wound up on the wrong bus. It was a bit unpleasant (if hilarious in hindsight). For the record, this was not my fault.

In any case! We finally did make it to Muuido! (It's the little island to the south, on that map) As far as beaches go, it was alright. I may be a little spoiled, having gone to Hawaii so recently. Still, the weather was nice, and the beach wasn't even that crowded. Though one of the real kickers was the fact that, when we got there, the tide was out. Way out. Ten minute walk across some mudflats out. Huh. 

And so, we were left with little else to do but sprawl out, make idle conversation...and drink crappy beer. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, I would note.

Oh, and there was a hovercraft parked on the beach. Rad as hell. I would not object to being able to put 'hovercraft driver' on my resume.

There were a bunch of other expats on the beach as well, and thus it was fun to make some idle conversation with them. A good number of them had arrived for the first annual 'Burning Man Korea.'

For anyone familliar with both Burning Man and Korea, the concept of such a thing is both amusing and somewhat confusing. Mostly because Korean culture is so buckled down, the general craziness expected from Burning Man just couldn't go down.

I'd like to note that our beach trip coincided with the whole Burning Man thing entirely by accident. I didn't know about it 'til the night before, wherein my friend the Welshman said 'oh, going to that Burning Man thing?' and my natural answer was 'Wait, what?'

In any case, I happened to know some of the folks AT said mini-burn (because the expat community is a bit incestuous like that- you'll almost always know somebody, wherever you go), so I steered by to catch up. I will say that the burners were having a good time, so good for them! Sure, there weren't truckasauruses or flamethrowers or naked people painted green, but again, it was the first year (and it was early, too).

For all I know, things may have gotten crazier once it got dark (as things tend to do). But we wound up packing it in around 7pm. Perfectly understandable, given that we'd been there since noon. I could have stayed overnight if I'd really wanted to. I'd taken the precaution of packing the survival essentials: knife, nalgene, matches, towel, etc. Ultimately, I didn't feel like going all Les Stroud, so I didn't. Probably for the best, given how much sand I've got in everything as-is. 

I think this was an important Hite, because I took a picture of it.

Sunday was, as the best Sundays are, 'laze around and work off that hangover' day. And back into the workaday schedule and all that. Though this next weekend is Chuseok- essentially, 'Korean Thanksgiving.' I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do during the holiday, but you can rest assured I will keep you posted on these misadventures.

...once the hangover's passed.

Bar Crawling in Ilsan!

Hump day!

As of today, I've been in Korea for six months. Halfway point! Or, well, at least halfway through this contract. There are times when I have trouble determining what I'm doing on the weekend, much less months or years in advance. Crazy.

In any case, I've gotten back into the swing of things here. Though the sweet 'summer intensive' schedule I've had for the last month ends on Friday, so it'll be back to full workdays afterwards. There are worse things to complain about, I know. Things are getting a little crazy busy, as we have a seminar on Saturay (boo!) so everyone's beginning to scramble to get their presentations together. On the bright side, it's here in Ilsan, so I won't have to drive for hours and hours to get there and back.

But let's talk about something more interesting! Something with booze involved! As last Saturday, I went on a pub crawl- someone the Ilsan expat facebook group (of COURSE there's one of those) organized it as a charity thing. So heck, beer and philanthropy? I can get behind that! Also, it gave me impetus to hit up some other bars here in Ilsan, so yay for that.

As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of bars in Ilsan- and in Korea in general, but not too many 'western' style ones. Korean bars are geared more towards communal drinking- which is fine...but at the same time, it can be a little annoying when all you want to do is sidle up onto a barstool and have a pint.

In any case, here's some arbitrary reviews of a couple of Ilsan's finest pubs!

First on the list was a joint called Into's. Into's is, quite simply, a sports bar. Big TVs, various jerseys and banners and other stuff on the walls, foosball (which may be the only foosball table I've seen in Korea, come to think of it), air hockey, and so on. The Korean couple that run it are really nice, too- I imagine if I were more of a sports fan, I'd be hanging out there all the time. 

 

So I met up with some friends of mine at the first bar, had two or three beers, and then it came time to head to the best-named bar in Ilsan (if not in South Korea), The Whiskey Weasel.

The Whiskey Weasel just opened like two weeks ago, and I dunno if it's really 'broken in' as a bar yet. Feels too new, I guess. It's all sleek lines and movie posters. Lots of black and red, which is trendy, I guess. The bartenders were American (at least, they SOUNDED American, as best I could figure in a really loud bar), which was a plus...but the one I talked to had to ask instructions on how to mix a White Russian. Then again, he might not've been a 'bartender' so much as 'the owner's friend who got roped in on a crazy night.'

So I hung out at the Whiskey Weasel for awhile, having beers- and in an odd turn of fate, nearly every girl I talked to that night (even in passing conversation) was Canadian. The only exception was a girl who looked vaguely like Emma Watson (or maybe Helena Bonham Carter, depending on the light), who was from Maine (which is close enough).

Next, we all geared up and went to Le Pub, which is my typical expat hangout. Le Pub was the first expat bar I learned about, and it's since become my typical hangout when I'm in the mood to go out. Now, the decor's a bit sparse (those big blank concrete walls make me think I'm drinking in a prison cell, sometimes), but other than that, it's a nice place with friendly bartenders. That, and they'll play just about any music you'll request, a fact that I haven't abused as much as I should.

Le Pub has a slightly more laid-back atmosphere...at least, whenever I go there. As the place can be pretty slow some nights. This is especially true, earlier in the evening, which is when I tend to go there, as I eventually get bored of staying in my apartment and want to go out...but then things are slow and kinda dull at the bar, so I head home before they get bumping again.

This...wasn't the case on that evening, as the joint was PACKED due to the bar crawl. And while it was good to see a bar I like doing well...it was also a pain to muscle up to the bar and get a beer from the overworked bartenders. Ah well!

In the crowded mess of things, I lost track of my friends, and therefore I decided to set out. There was one more bar on the list, an LP bar called Old Rock. I...didn't make it there.

Y'see, I got on the elevator with a couple of other expats, at which point a cute girl in a rad hat started talking to me in that wonderful 'invite random people along on your hijinks' sort of way. So I fell in with a new little group of people (neat folks, I will say) and we wound up going to this place called Bar Boom. Hat girl (who was from Canada, natch), had a slightly more discerning friend who out and asked me "Who the hell are you?" (a justified question, I will say). To which, hat girl said "This guy is awesome," so good for her.

Anyway, Bar Boom's a Korean dance club. And...honestly? The place kinda sucked. And I don't just say this as a guy who doesn't care much for mainstream dance clubs. Don't get me wrong, the music was fine enough (if you like top 40 hip hop), and the laser light rig was kind of cool, but...well, I'll be honest.

Too many dudes.

I heard someone describe the dance floor at Bar Boom as a meat market- though I'd say the term 'sausage fest' was a little more accurate. "But Mark," you say, "What about the rad hat girl who lured you there in the first place?" A good question! More idle conversation was had, but there was this guy with said gal who kept in swooping in to kiss her at random times. So, y'know, I decided to let that slide. Next time I want to pick up girls at a club, I should just go to a gay bar instead. (Though I understand the only gay bars in Korea are in Itaewon).

Ultimately, rather than continuing to dance awkwardly upon a gender imbalanced dance floor, I finished my beer and made my way home, entirely intact. Walked back into my apartment 'bout 2am, which is pretty early by Korea standards. And heck, I wasn't even that hungover on Sunday morning, either! Score. 

So stay tuned, friends! More hijinks are bound to ensue.

Does the 'X-patriate' name still count when you're back in the U.S.?

Well!

Been a bit, hasn't it? I should get back into the rhythm of posting here. Of course, in order to do so, I'm going to have to do more blogworthy things. So yay on that!

Regardless, a lot has gone on since my previous posting. Namely, I had a week of vacation! And on that week of vacation, I got to see my family in Hawaii. Wonderful, wonderful trip, it was. So wonderful, it's...taken me a couple of days to really get re-acclimated to living in Korea. Culture (after)shock, maybe? Of course, going to the workaday grind anywhere after a vacation in Hawaii will seem a bit droll in comparison.

I'm honestly not sure just how much to write here! As I'm pretty sure 25% of my readers were on the trip in question. Still, some highlights include:

Visiting a crazy little town called Pa'ia. It's basically a miniature, tropical Austin (read: weird). Neat times! We hit up a really delicious little restaurant, I picked up a rad blue Hawaiian shirt (which you'll see later), and we even found a Tibetan Buddhist shrine. Neat stuff! Though I think visiting there around lunchtime on a Monday may have muted the craziness. Pity!

Driving all the way up to the top of Mt. Halekala. It's a domant volcano so tall that it pokes up above the clouds. Neat stuff! Apparently the sunsets/sunrises here are ridiculously gorgeous...and rather touristy, as a result. We wound up not re-visiting in the dusk/dawn-ish hours.

Travelling to the Iao Valley. Y'see, Maui's got a 'wet' side (which is Jurassic Park level tropical) and a 'Dry' side (which is sort of like Utah with a view of the beach). Iao Valley is on the wet side, and it's absolutely GORGEOUS.

Maui Brewing Company! You didn't think I'd go someplace and not drink the local microbrew, did you? They're kind of unique, in that all of their beers are canned. Their coconut porter is absolutely delicious. I made it a point to hit up the liquor store to get a bunch of other beers I couldn't drink in Korea- Chimay, Hitachino (seriously, it's Japanese but I haven't seen it ANYWHERE here), Rogue, and even a tallboy of PBR (don't hate! It's better than Cass). This also served to spoil me, as I'm still not used to drinking crappy Korean beers. Shoot.

Bookstores! I made it a point to hit up Barnes & Noble -AND- the closing Borders, in order to boost my bookshelf. I came home with seven new books in my suitcase, including the new Dresden Files novel. Woo! I'm a little less than halfway through said Dresden Files novel- and I'm torn between rationing myself, or tearing through the book over the course of the weekend so I can finally jump into various internet discussion without having to worry about spoilers. Hm!

A luau! We did this on the second to last night on Maui, and I really, really wish we'd done it earlier. It was touristy as all get out...but still wonderful. Rum cocktails! Coconuts! Pig buried in the sand! Poi! (which is actually not that bad if you mix it with something else) and, of course, Hula Girls!

The last day, we took a snorkeling/sailing cruise to a tiny islet called Molokini. I'm afraid I didn't take many pictures, due to the non-waterproofness of my camera, but damn if it wasn't GORGEOUS. The place is a wildlife preserve, so it's pristine and untouched. I'd done a little bit of snorkeling on the beaches, but poking around Molokini was far, far better than that. As soon as I stuck my head in the water, I couldn't help but sputter a bit at how gorgeous the reef was. Very Jacques Cousteau. I wound up swallowing a bit of seawater while puttering around, which made me a bit queasy once I pulled myself onto the catamaran...but then I cracked open a Corona (the boat had a stocked cooler) which did wonders for me.

And, sadly, the trip eventually came to an end. And now I'm back in Korea. But it's not all tragedy, as I'm looking at a three day weekend, which is always quite nice. Rest assured, I've got some more Korea-centric blog posts in mind. In particular, you can expect some reviews of the major expat bars here in Ilsan. Which will be of use to someone, I'm sure!

Nothing says 'summer fun' like mecha!

So apparently, this is becoming more of a bi-weekly blog. This is what I get for being kind of boring. That, and I got a somewhat unpleasant cold, some two weeks or so ago. Nothing a bit of aspirin and sudafed couldn't fix, but 'I stayed home 'cause it was rainy outside and I couldn't smell anything' makes for a dull blog entry. My Cousin went to an event called Mudfest. I skipped out myself, as I heard it was fairly...uh, tourist-y. Still fun, from what I gathered- if folks are interested, I'll see if I can get my Cousin to whip up a guest blog entry on it.

But! Worry not, things have gotten far, far more interesting in the meanwhile. School, for one, has been a bit crazy. For one, we went on a field trip last Thursday! Now, they kept telling us 'we're going to the pool.' Which is fine! But, as per the whole communication gap in Korea, we didn't go to the pool. Rather...we went to the Oktokki Space Center (which has a pool).

Also, the place had life-sized (ish) giant robots. I didn't have my camera with me, but fortunately one of my fellow teachers was kind enough to snap pictures on his iPhone. Thanks!

So the kids splashed around for an hour or so. During this time, I tried to keep track of at least some of them during all the chaos- got to play the old game of 'count the lifeguards' (though I eventually spotted at least four Korean lifeguards lurking about, so kudos on them for that). The water was pretty shallow regardless- barely waist deep on me (and I'm short!). Still, a good time, even if I'm pretty sure I tossed at least one Korean kid who wasn't from our school onto a raft. Oops.

The actual swimming part was probably the easiest. Getting them all dried off and changed AFTERWARD was pretty ridiculous, however. Especially when you've got the occasional absentminded kid with the tendency to lose...everything.

"Wait, where are your shoes?"

"I don't know!"

"Were you wearing them before you changed?"

"I don't know!"

"Hey! Don't wander off! Where're you going?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

Thankfully, we found the kid's shoes (eventually) at which point we scarfed down a lunch of...dubious quality (hey, it was science-center cafeteria food, essentially) and proceeded to take a tour of the space center. Honestly, it kind of pales in comparison to, say, the St. Louis Science Center, but it's pretty unfair to make such comparisons, as it's like a quarter of the SLSC's size, if that. Also didn't help that the exhibits were in Korean, so it's not like I can critique them on their educational content.

They had a couple of, uh, 'interactive' rides- which mostly consisted of the kids getting onto some sort of pneumatic elevator that would take them up in the air twelve feet...and then lower them back down. The sign next to the exhibit said 'space elevator,' but it really seemed more like a carnival ride sorta situation. Which got a little silly, considering said rides only held like 4-6 kids...and we had 30 of them to go through. Yeeeah.

We also watched some 3-D mini movie. It was in Korean, of course- but it was fairly straightforward. From what I gathered, it was something about the ant version of Indiana Jones (Indianta Jones?) getting chased around by locusts and spiders and a forest fire for...some reason. Huh.

Anyway! I survived the field trip...all the better for weekend highjinks! My friend S (proper names have been redacted in the interest of anonymity- but people have wanted to earn passing mention here anyway) had a birthday party, so a bunch of us trucked out! Individuals consisting of myself, my Cousin, C, K, D, J, T, Afrikaner Lawyer (he gets a proper codename 'cause 'S' was already used), Iron Maiden Guy (he joined up with us later. Rad dude, though I'm not sure who's acquaintance he was), and a bunch of other people who I couldn't quite keep track of. It was that kind of a night.

In any case, after consuming a lot of meat (and more beer), we wound up hitting up a norebang. Norebang is the Korean equivalent to Kareoke- it's different from the American style, in that there isn't just the one stage- you and your friends all pile into a room...about the size of the one I'm living in, and dial in songs for singing into the system.

This is a thing that happened.

There's actually a halfway decent selection of English language songs, too- Led Zeppelin, Chuck Berry, Electric Six, The Killers, Queen...and, uh, those are the ones I remember, mostly because those are the ones I sang along to. Badly. Of course, the machine was dialed up to ridiculous reverb, so no matter how well you sang, it mostly came out sounding terrible. I've been told there are ways to fiddle around with the machine and fix this...but we made do with sounding terrible. It was fairly hilarious.

Really, I think I might like the Norebang experience a little better than 'regular' Kareoke- at least, if you have a big enough group. It's essentially the equivalent of having a bunch of your friends over with your own karaoke machine- no need to wait/suffer through strangers singing, for better or worse. Though now that I think of it, I think it'd be even radder if we could find a place to play, say, Rock Band as a big raucous group. Because if you're gonna make a fool of yourself, you might as well have a plastic toy guitar in your hands, right?

In any case, we're on a 'summer intensive' schedule at school now- which comes out to me teaching for four hours straight in the mornings...and then I don't have any classes in the afternoon. Fairly neato, I must say.

Of course, this pales in comparison to the fact that summer vacation rapidly approaches! And, for summer vacation, I'm gonna meet up with my folks in Hawaii. Sweet! A blog post will be of course be made on such adventures, but it won't be from the expat perspective so much as a regular touristy one- so the clever/nerdy pun won't apply. Pity!

Another music post!

Okay, I know, I missed a week. This happens.

Fact is, I had a fairly boring stretch recently- a combination of crappy weather and generic summer slothfulness made for a fairly quiet stretch of time there. I kind of doubt 'I read some P.G. Wodehouse, wrote a little, and then watched The Supersizers on Youtube' would make for a very interesting blog entry, at least.

But! Don't worry, I finally overcame my laziness to go out and DO THINGS. Exciting.

For one, last week, I went out exploring. I meandered out past Ilsan's Lake Park, and found...this. It's pretty interesting, to go from an urban area to a (heavily developed) agricultural area in the span of a 25 minute walk. I would've gone farther, but it was a little warm, and the place wasn't very pedestrian friendly (seriously, tiny little roads). So I went back to Ilsan proper before too long. Was interesting, however, as Ilsan is pretty much a grid of urban development that's a couple blocks wide, a few miles long...and it's surrounded by farmland. Odd little juxtaposition, but that's Korea for you.

Also, there were giant frog statues out in the country for some reason. 

Thankfully, this past weekend has been much more interesting! Saturday night, I went back to Hongdae to catch another punk rock show. It's a thing they do the second Saturday of every month, so I guess I'll always have ONE show to each month. Woo. Forgot to bring my camera, however, but what can ya do?

Anyway, Hongdae! It was as bustling and crowded as one would expect it to be on a Saturday night, not to mention pretty warm. I probably could've gone a little later, when it'd theoretically be cooler, but eh. Hindsight and all that.

So most of the acts were perfectly serviceable punk-rock trios- Korean and expat both. Definitely more interesting than most dance music some clubs play, but that's just my own personal tastes. However, out of the bunch of bands on the bill that night, two really stood out in particular.

The first? Nacho Pupa. I want to link to their website here, but I can't seem to find it. Shoot.

In any case, the first thing that got my attention was when they were setting up. I watch them fiddling around, bringing instruments out of cases and so on, and I had to do a doubletake and ask myself: "Is that an accordion?"

Intrigued, I looked closer, and found it was. At which point I asked myself another question: "Is that a banjo?" (It was). Not exactly common instruments in the US, much less on the other side of the world. So I'm curious, and eagerly wait to see just what they've got to offer.

So they started to play, and not only did they have an accordion and a banjo, but they also had a guy playing one of those tiny celtic flutes. And they started their set with "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya."

That's right, it was a Korean-Irish-Punk band. And they were AWESOME. I wasn't the only one who was impressed, either- that was the point in the night that folks started moshing and/or skanking. Good times! Nothing like Celtic punk to get you nice and rowdy (in the best possible way, of course). I picked up their CD in a heartbeat, but I fear it's not nearly as good as their live show. Ah well!

The other notable band of the night was SKASUCKS. (For the record, they don't suck). I'd actually heard of them before, but this was the first time I've seen them live. In any case, seeing them play brought up an academic (read, music nerdy) and arguably existential question. Namely, is it possible to be a ska band without a horn section? As they've got everything else- pork pie hats, a rockin' keyboard, the two-tone beat, they even did a Specials cover!...just no trumpets or trombones in sight.

Regardless, they were really damn good, and I had a great time at the show! I'm gonna have to hit up this Second Saturday thing more often.

Sunday went a little slower, but no less fun. As my cousin and some friends of mine invited me down to go hang out with them, which was quite fun. It was a lot slower paced than going out on a Saturday night, but there's nothing like whiling away a Sunday afternoon drinking beer and just lazing around.

We also hit up a really tasty galbi joint- one of those resturants where there's a grill in the center of the table, and you pretty much roast your own food. Which can be a little offputting in hot & humid weather, but you soon get used to it. It's really no different from grilling outside, except you're just sitting down.

In any case, it's Monday now, and so it's back to the workaday grind. Things are going to be pretty crazy busy at work for the next two weeks, but it's nothing I can't handle (I hope). And in three weeks, it's vacation time! Quite excited, as I'm going to meet my folks in Hawaii and have all sorts of crazy tropical adventures.

 I've got some other stuff I'm planning on checking out before the big trip, however. I'll even try to remember to bring my camera. Stay tuned!