Super Junior Super Show

To all of my 3 followers, I hope that you are prepared for a blog that consists mostly of my excitement and exhaustion resulting from Super Junior. I know that you follow my blog specifically for its value in the Kpop community, so this will be especially interesting to you.

Before I get to that though, I have an observation to make. The idea that there is strength in numbers has never been more true to me than here. When I was with Tina and Sarah all weekend, walking around Seoul and riding the subway and going to a concert with an overwhelming number of Koreans was not daunting. But as soon as I left their company today, I was struck by a strong sense of anxiety to be alone. Suddenly leaving my apartment to get pizza seemed like a monumental task. Getting pizza is not hard because A.) I have done it before. Several times, in fact, at the same pizza place. B.) The word for pizza in Korean is pronounced "pi-ja" and pepperoni is pronounced almost exactly like you would think except you enunciate each syllable a bit more so it sounds like "peh-pehr-row-nee." So it's not like it's hard to order. C.) The pizza place is like a minute walk from my apartment (5 if the elevators in the building are stupid).

My anxiety about ordering pizza resulted from 3 things  (as I am very fond of lists suddenly): A.) I was alone again. I did not have 2 people with me who speak much better Korean than I do. With a group of curly-haired and beautiful Americans walking around, we do turn heads. I do too when I;m by myself, but it feels much more manageable when in a group. Being alone means that I can't hide in my group of triplets. B.) The security guard in my building tried to talk to me when I came home, but I don't understand him and he doesn't speak any English, so it was a bit of a difficult thing to come home to. It knocked my mood a bit and it carried over into ordering pizza. C.) I am awkward and overthink ordering pizza.

Anyway, this sort of thing manifests itself all the time. I have been studying some Korean and feel fine practicing with Tina or asking her for help, but I cannot bring myself to utter much in front of my coteachers or the other subject teachers even though I know they would be nice about it. It's something that doesn't bother me most days but some days it's crippling to try and leave my apartment. I also know that I have only been here for a month and a half and it will take time to adjust. I'm getting there.

Speaking of being here for a month and a half, I have already done some incredible things. I saw CATS and the SMTown concert within a week of arriving, I've been to a palace and a folk village, I've gotten the hang of teaching at least a tiny bit, and I have gotten to see my sister soooooooo much!

But easily one of the most wonderful things I have done was go to the Super Junior Super Show! I couldn't take many pictures, but I will do my best to describe the euphoria that I am still reeling from.

EEEEEEEEEEP Outside the venue.

Honestly, I didn't want to go to the concert when the idea was introduced to me, mostly because I WAS STILL IN AMERICA WHEN THIS WAS A DISCUSSION. I had no idea how much I would come to love Super Junior in my time in Korea. Tina and Sarah wanted to go and I was like “well okay that sounds like a thing to do.” Getting tickets to this thing was a nightmare. Not for me, of course, since in this and all other things in Korea I'm the dongsaeng (the little sister/sibling) so everyone just kind of does things for me (and sometimes treats me like a child in the case of my coworkers – this is not an insult; I don't mind being treated like I know nothing here because I am literally Jon Snow and know nothing). This included Sarah enlisting the help of her boyfriend's friend to get us tickets. When I excitedly told my coteachers that I was going to this concert, the first question they asked was “How did you get tickets? Those are so hard to get!” Instead of explaining that my sister's American friend's Korean boyfriend's friend (who is an EXO fan, no less) got us tickets, I reduced it to “My sister has Korean friends” which got the “Ahhhh” response that satisfied us all. We couldn't get tickets together (I could go on and on about how stupid Gmarket is...) but we all got standing tickets. Even until this week I wasn't suuuuuuuuuuuper excited. But on Friday I kept giggling to myself on the way home from school so I think I looked like a crazy person. By Friday night I was drunk on the idea of going to see this group perform.

IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

I must confess, it was really frustrating for a lot of reasons. For one, we got there super early because Korea. We did not have to get there as early as we thought. In other concerts, if you had tickets in the range of say 600-800 in the standing section, you just went to that area and lined up first-come-first-serve. So we got there early. Lo and behold, this is the one time they take ticket number into account. We had tickets in the 670 area and 780 area, so one of us (Tina or I) would have had to go in 100 people before the other and in the mad rush for standing spots, it would have been nearly impossible to find each other as I STILL do not have a working phone.So we traded tickets with another set of girls WHO WERE HAVING THE SAME PROBLEM BECAUSE LITERALLY NO ONE KNEW THAT THIS WAS THE SYSTEM UNTIL WE LINED UP. We gave them the better tickets because we are nice and also did not want to go through the hassle of trying to discuss who should get them because I'm pretty sure they were Taiwanese or something and we literally had no common language to speak.

Also, we were in the standing section and people are dumb. The stage was split up and they would walk to different parts, and wherever they were people would try and run and push to get closer to them. Some people brought giant cameras and were trying to get pictures of them (which they were removing people for) and one girl shoved me out of the way near the end and I flipped out because after 3 hours of being sandwiched and stampeded on just so they could get marginally closer to Oppa was annoying. I don't think they understood my frantic and swearing English but they apologized like crazy to me and Tina. It was really crowded in the standing section and I am sore and a little battered.

BUT WE MANAGED TO GET AN AWESOME SPOT AND IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT.

That's the main stage. We were ridiculously close to it.

I cannot overstate how close we were. The main stage was maybe 20 or so feet from us, but the way the stage was extended was awesome because we were maybe 7-8 feet from the middle section that they had to walk on to get to the other part of the stage. We could see their faces sweating. We were close enough for me to see that Ryeowook (one of the smallest human beings I have ever seen) could probably fit in my pocket. Seriously, his legs looked like both of them combined would not equal my thigh. We also had a very good view of their... ahem.... assets... when they were downstage to the left of where we were standing.

Look at how cute and little he is!

We were sitting down inside before the concert started and this over 40 something woman and her friend LITERALLY SHOVED TINA OUT OF THE WAY to get a better spot AND THEN THIS ONE PROCEEDED TO ACTUALLY SIT ON MY LEG. WHY.

Side note, I may have talked about the lightsticks before. Each Kpop group has a color and a name for their fanbase. Super Junior's fanbase is called E.L.F. (Ever Lasting Friends) because I have no idea why and it makes no sense but whatever, and their color is a beautiful sapphire blue. I like getting the lightstick because it is usually on the cheaper end of concert souvenirs, is cool, can double as a flashlight in my apartment, and MAYBE OPPA (either older brother or a term of endearment that girls use for older male friends/idols/boyfriends) WILL SEE MY LIGHTSTICK. It also looks fucking awesome.

Here I am waiting for our spots with my lightstick because I NEED ONE SO OPPA WILL SEE ME.

Isn't it stunning?

Incidentally, one of my favorite songs they performed is called Oppa, Oppa. It's only two of the members of the whole group, but it's awesome. Here it is from a different Super Show:

Tina and I learned the refrain dance. it's awesome. The dances are always the same, so it's pretty easy to remember and figure out the formations and where everyone is on stage.


There were also 2 members from Super Junior M (the offshoot that has Chinese members and sings in Mandarin) there and they performed my favorite SuJu M song Swing:

Swing!! This is the Korean version.

This is the Chinese version. It's impressive though I am partial to Korean (not sure why)

Here's another one of my favorite songs from the show:

It's called Shirt. And it is awesome. SuJu has aged well and I am a little embarrassed by how excited this song makes me. Like it's called Shirt. Calm down, me.

I'm going to sound like a crazy fangirl at this point because at one point during the show they were all standing on the middle section that we were closest to and they were waving at everyone, and the lights in the audience were up so I'M 100% POSITIVE THEY COULD SEE ME AND TINA. Seriously, when you're in a group of Koreans and you're both blonde (my coworkers insist that I am blonde and Tina is just blonder), you can get some attention.

BANG! There go my ovaries.

Kyuhyun, my personal favorite member, was walking along the stage waving at everyone and he looked at our area, waved, looked away, and did a serious double take before waving back in our direction. I'm preeeeeeeeetty sure he saw the two curly haired blonde girls (people near us had banners too so it's possible he was looking at/near those but I've been in Korea long enough to know the twin double-take when I see one) and was hopefully like "whoa foreigners cool" since that's the normal reaction to us here.

All in all, it was incredible. They're such good dancers, singers, and performers that the show was enjoyable beyond words. My feet hurt so bad after, but I didn't really notice throughout the whole thing. Plus, we got waves. And I am now trying to make an entire set of Super Junior Zumba routines because I miss Zumba and SuJu has some awesome songs just begging for routines.

We stopped to take some pics after the show

Suju Fighting!!! 

I have another long week of teaching ahead of me, but it's going to be awesome. My coteacher is taking me to set up my phone, bank, and internet tomorrow, so I get to not sit at my desk lesson planning (which is fun but also I am always stressed about lesson planning...) for a day! yay!!

I'll leave you with one last song, Bonamana:

Stay well, everyone! Fighting!