Restless Seoul : May 2015

Wow. What a week and weekend. So much happening.

First, some random instances in the week.

This adorable little friend lives in my building. Look at that face. So cute!

Since I've been doing my dance class and hiking a lot, I've noticed that I feel better lately. I'm not sleeping much longer than usual, but I am sleeping better, I think. I still have a lot of trouble sleeping but it has gotten slightly better.

In other fitness related things, some good/bad things have started happening. First, as mentioned above, I feel better. Some clothes that were tight are now not. But some of the clothes I brought with me from home (aka my shorts, dress pants, and summer things) don't fit so well. Looks like I have to go shopping!

These shorts once fit much more snugly just above my hips, and now they are like falling off. Also, notice my Sailor Moon socks from Japan.

On Friday we had a hiking trip with my school. Every year they do this. They split up the kids into groups or like one or two students from each grade and all of the teachers take a group with them and we go hiking near the school. They have to complete some missions along the way. It's mostly cute and fun.

The day was hot and I was ready to go. Thankfully I get to just tag along with So Jung, who I think was glad to have my help when corralling the children. We had some of her former students from when she was a 1st grade homeroom teacher, and come of my favorite students in general, plus one that shares his name with my favorite EXO member hehehehe.

First, they had to make a group flag, a-like so:

Hard at work.

Then we stared our hike up. I asked some of my kids if they like hiking. The responses were "not really" and "no." Same, kids. Same.

We made it to the top and had to wait to take a group picture.

Waiting in line.

I had to do a lot of monitoring so I didn't take too many pictures. It was fun! A lot of my kids gave me snacks at one of the rest stops. It was adorable to see some of my 6th graders holding hands with their 1st or 2nd grade members, and otherwise trying to be leaders.

We also got ice cream at the end, which is always fun.

I was supposed to teach 5th period (which is after lunch) but my coteacher Grace and I decided that we were both too tired and the kids were too wild and also tired and whatever else 3rd graders can possibly be after a hike, so we watched an animated version of Gulliver's Travels, which like all my older kids know but it must have been this group's first time seeing since their reactions were hilarious.

So Jung had to leave early so I got the classroom to myself for the afternoon, and I got some of my lessons finished for next week and got to prepare more for my open class on Wednesday. I'm nervous, but I really like teaching with So Jung so I think it will be fine.

Friday evening I met up with Tina (who had the day off for her school's birthday), Lauren, and Young Ah for some tacos and margaritas, and then we went to another place and had some makgeolli.

I have no idea what we found so amusing.

Our food with our makgeolli. I have no idea what it was but it was so good!

Awwww best friendssss

I should know better by now than to drink makgeolli or margaritas from Gusto Taco, because while it was a very very fun evening, it was not so fun in the morning.

Tina and I had to be up reeeeeeeeeeally early for our Dream Concert even because we had to be at the venue at 8 am. Yeah. 8 in the morning for a concert that started at 6:30. We did perform at like noon, so it made sense to be there early and practice. But we were practicing in the middle of a really public area, so a lot of people go a show. Haha.

Last year they performed as the opening act as the concert, but this time we performed as part of a lot of the entertainment happening outside of the concert.

Here's our crew doing a pose from our Miss A performance. We called ourselves Miss A-merica. Thanks for the pun, Tina!

We had the large group number, then individual groups, then the group performance again.

While waiting, we had some fun.

Tina modeling the Paris Baguette hat. Lovely.

The performance was so fun! There was quite a crowd there, and when we did our bits of BTS and EXO, they went nuts! I can't imagine doing it on the main stage in front of everyone. Yikes! This was fun and not so much pressure.

The payoff was awesome. We got staff passes, and as long as we didn't embarrass the group we could do whatever. Really we wanted a place to sit down.

Staff!

We first found a skybox and were watching the million groups sound check.

Seriously. A million groups.

View from the skybox

But we got kicked out. Then we found another spot in the stadium and got kicked out again. We found out later that when it's SM's artists sound checking they demand everyone leaves becasue they're real serious about not having people record them and whatnot.

We also had to leave when people who actually bought tickets were coming in so they could have their real seats. We had to wait til the concert started then could go to the ground seats.

So after being banished around we got a spot near the elevator to charge our phones and wait for the concert.

This actually proved to be one of the best things to happen. All of the groups would come in and have to go to the elevator to go up to the red carpet, so we got greeted by a lot of them. IT WAS AWESOME.

This is the result of me taking a sneak picture of Red Velvet.

Here they are looking fabulous.

One of the new boy groups, Halo, was so cute. They came to stand near the elevator to go up, and we we, a group of foreigners, were awkwardly staring and being stared at by them, a new idol group. Finally our friend Grace said hello and they said hello and asked us the normal questions they know in English: "How are you?" and "Where are you from?" Then we told them "You're so handsome!" and one replied "You too!" We all had a good laugh. They then said, in Korean, "I don't know English" and we told them they did go, then told them goodbye and they awkwardly waited for the elevator for a few more seconds before leaving. When we saw them later we had been moved (again) but they saw us and waved and were adorable. Their performance was good too! They made a new fan out of me. I'll have to look up more of them.

Eventually we got moved to behind a rope thing. The security people were really rude to us though. But no one ever told us where we could or couldn't go, so then they were really mean when we didn't go exactly where we were supposed to. Some people were trying to take pictures of the idols with their cameras out blatantly, which is a big no no. I shouldn't even have taken the picture I did. So they had some right to be angry, but they weren't stopping other Koreans from standing in certain areas until the real big names came through.

We seriously saw so many groups. They were awesome! I tried to be respectful and not take pics or make a big deal, so you'll have to imagine what it was like to see some of these celebrities.

The door they came in and out of. Literally how close we were to them. This is not zoomed.

Distance to the elevator.

We got quite a show from some of them. The girl groups and especially the younger groups (hehhehe Halo) were really cute and bowed and said hello to us. VIXX bowed a lot but I think that was because one girl in our group was bowing at like above a 90 degree angle to them and started crying when they responded (She's still in high school and I wish I loved anything as much as she loved VIXX) Some groups saw us and did cute little things. Boys Republic and Infinite members saw us and did cute little dances as they left. It was so freaking cute.

Honestly, this is the closest I have ever been to such a large amount of famous people, and I think I played it pretty cool. One of the other girls was surprised that Tina and I weren't freeeeeeeeeeaking out like a lot of others. To be sure, I like a lot of the groups, but no one from my top 3 (Beast, Super Junior, Big Bang) were there.

Then, EXO came.

I think we all almost died a little bit when they walked in. Security was intense and they deal with crazy fans a lot. Still, they stayed pretty concentrated the whole time. They didn't really wave or acknowledge us much. So it was a bit anticlimactic.

BUT THEN THE BEST THING EVER HAPPENED.

We noticed earlier that Leeteuk, Super Junior's leader, was by the elevator. Turns out, he was the MC for the evening.

When he was walking out, he looked over at us. Thanks to the most amazing force of willpower, Tina waved slightly, and he waved back and said "Hi~" and I almost lost it. I reeeeeeeally like Super Junior and Tina loves Leeteuk (often fighting with Kyuhyun as her bias) and he actually acknowledged us. Whaaaaaaaaaat?

We had no clue that we would even see any of these celebrities, so it was a real treat to see them up close in their outfits and to have some of them acknowledge us. I'm still starstruck.

Me enjoying my floor seat.

The concert was sooooooooooooo good.

BUT.

There is a problem with having 27 groups in the lineup. It's a loooooooong concert. Most of the groups only did one song if they were newer, two if they were more famous. Even EXO and the last group, SHINee, only did two songs. But it still lasted for like 4 hours. Thank god we had seats.

It was also hard because they had the new groups first, unlike the long SM Town concert I went to (in the same stadium, no less) when I first got here (full circle, much?) where they had the really popular groups spaced out through the concert. So other than my new loves, Halo and Boys Republic, I hadn't heard of a ton of the songs til like the middle of the show. Sometimes I was bored. But damn did some of the groups make up for it.

Here are some pictures from my cellphone of the groups:

An unzoomed photo of our spots.

Leeteuk MCing

GOT7

BTS

B1A4 (I think it's their blood types)

The group like everyone was waiting for: EXO.

SHINee's baaaaaaack!

I really love SHINee.

It was annoying to have people running around trying to move to better seats through the whole concert, and when EXO finished there was an EXODUS (cleverly titles second album, too) so it was hard to see SHINee a lot. Still, I really love their new songs, and EXO was awesome, and like everyone was awesome and my day was awesome.

Dream Concert was not a dream. But man, does it feel like it was.

I'm glad I could do this with Tina and so many new and old friends.

This is our Japanese friend Itsumi. He's in a Kpop cover group and is awesome. This photo sums up our day: Kind of a mess, but awesome.

So on Sunday we resumed our normal activities of going to dance class, this week to learn EXO's "Call Me Baby." We were tired, but excited.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT WAS SO HARD.

It was fun, but I think the exhaustion of the weekend took it's toll really badly. And also there are 10 members in the MV and our teacher was trying to make it so we were doing like all of the parts of the dance. It was really hard. They make it look so easy!

If you want to die, jump right into dancing this number.

Here are my knees the next morning from all of the practice. Ugh. Ow.

On Monday we had the day off for Buddha's Birthday, so we decided to go to Insadong (the traditional area of Seoul) and check out the temples and lanterns and stuff since it's really pretty this time of the year.

Our plans got derailed for what seemed like a continuation of our dream weekend: Eunhyuk from Super Junior tweeted that he would be at his cafe on Monday, so it was an opportunity to meet him. We were so excited!

Sarah, Tina, and I met hella early at the cafe. It opened at 10 but we had to get there early to get numbers for when he actually arrived. Fine. I got up at my usual time despite not being able to sleep well from all of the excitement of the weekend, plus the adrenaline of practicing a million times.

We patiently waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Last time Sarah had gone to a meeting like this, he showed up around 1, so that's what we were anticipating.

That is not what happened.

At a certain point we were ready to leave, but we had waited so long that our anger would have grown exponentially if we didn't even get the payoff of meeting him.

He finally showed up. At 5 fucking PM.

I know there isn't a set timetable for these things and we chose to wait, but when you tweet to your fans to get there at 10 and you don't show up until 5 with almost no message (we were told at like 4 that it would be half an hour longer and that was it) and no apology, it feels a little disrespectful. If you don't have time to do these things, then don't do them. We could have gone home and come back or gone and done anything else instead of waiting had we known. Some people tried to act like this was normal, but the staff and Sarah, who had gone before, had clearly had different experiences before.

After what felt like a huge waste of our time, we did get excited once we finally got in. We had pretty good numbers since we were there so early, so it wasn't much longer til we got it.

The madness of people trying to take a million pictures of him through the glass.

My attempt. Yup. There he is.

Wearing a gift from a fan.

Just like the EXO members I saw, I was struck by how tiny he is. He's not very tall, and is really skinny.

We were the first non-asian foreigners in the line, and he said hello in English to us. But Sarah was first and she and Tina did a good job of actually speaking Korean to him. He didn't seem to really get what Sarah was saying when she asked him if he remembered her from her last visit. When Tina and I got to him he asked if we were friends and reacted very cutely when we told him we were twins. He then asked about our hair, which is pretty standard. He asked why we were studying Korean, and told us we spoke well. Honestly, the only thing I got out in Korean was "Speak some English!" and he said "Yeah, sure." But since I am automatically grouped with Tina and Sarah, who both speak really well, he'll think I can too hahaha. And there were other foreigners before us (Japanese or Chinese??) who just had to pantomime since they didn't speak Korean, so it was cool to actually know how to say literally anything to him,

Tina and I also got finger-lacing high fives from him, and I am far too giddy and having bascially held hands with a Korean celebrity from one of my favorite groups.

While I'm really happy, it was also really disappointing. Had he showed up 3 hours before, it would have been all smiles. But since he showed up so late we were kind of over it. It was overall okay, but I don't think I will be doing something like that again.

Afterwords, despite being tired, we did complete our plans of going to Insadong since we didn't want to end on the disappointment of our long wait.

The lanterns were so pretty! I really have nothing else to say because I am really tired, and they truly are beautiful and require no more words.