Previously La Dolce Vita, which documented my time spent living in Perugia, Italy, Restless Seoul will be my way of sharing my experiences in South Korea. Enjoy!
Monday, June 15, 2015
Roses are Red... and a lot of other colors... (A Lot of Little Things)
Hello all! After finishing Game of Thrones (WTF, GOT??) and having a busy but wonderful weekend, I'm back!
Game of Thrones got me like:
Also please listen to this. You will not regret it.
Seriously, I am so glad to put this season of destroying plotlines, characters, and using sexual violence as a plot device behind me.
On to Penny Dreadful, which I am also watching! Soon I'll watch Orange is the New Black.
This last week has been crazy. MERS is causing all sorts of panic. My school decided on Wednesday, after being informed that Mokdong Hospital and a small clinic close to my school had confirmed infections, that students wouldn't come in on Thursday or Friday. I had to go into school Thursday where I planned some lessons since this messes up my schedule, but we got to leave at noon and were informed that we didn't have to come in on Friday.
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!! It was stressful coming back today because like every grade I have is off track now, but whatever.
Other random happenings this week:
My cellphone is like no.
This is the second time one of my earbuds has been like no within 2 weeks. I suspect these headphones are cursed.
On the same day as the headphones, I bought Vitamin C drinks for me, Eunhae, and So Jung to stay healthy. Mine, of course, broke when I tried to open it. Sigh.
This bag is hilarious. TVXQ had one of the most famous splits in KPOP history and now consists of only 2 members.
So after relaxing on Thursday and knowing that Tina also didn't have class Friday, we planned to go shopping and see Jurassic World.
We went shopping in Edae, which was hella empty. Consequently we got a lot of attention when we were in stores. One beauty store actually had people drag Tina in and refuse to let her leave until she started yelling in Korean and muscled her way out. It was really scary and unnerving. Some salespeople here are pushy but this one was extreme.
Jurassic World was awesomely terrible. Like soooooo bad but so entertaining. I loved it. Would totally go see it again.
I stayed over at Tina's after shopping, and on Saturday we headed across town to Olympic Park because I wanted to see the Rose Garden. We were shocked to find out there was a TVXQ concert that day, which is especially funny due to our shopping adventure the day before with the bag. Hehehe.
Anyway, the roses were beautiful. Not much to say other than they were stunning and also I had no idea there were so many kinds of roses.
After, we met up with my friend Helen in Itaewon for some burgers and goodness.
Fried pickles!!
Burgers and mini chickens
Heavenly Baked Mac & Cheese
So much good food. Must go back. Left Coast Artisan Burgers, you are awesome.
In other news, here is other food I ate this week:
My first time eating fish mandu, and some awesome pork - like sweet and sour
My unfortunate streak of small mishaps continues.
On Sunday we headed across town to the Seoul Arts Center (I was all over the place this weekend!) where I saw the piano concert and where we saw Dracula to see another favorite: Giselle! I love the ballet Giselle, and I was so jealous when Tina saw it last year. We booked these tickets back in March, so it finally paid off!
Basic summary from Wikipedia: The ballet is about a peasant girl named Giselle who dies of a broken heart after discovering her lover is betrothed to another. The Wilis, a group of supernatural women who dance men to death, summon Giselle from her grave. They target her lover for death, but Giselle's great love frees him from their grasp.
Ugh I love this story.
A guest dancer is Russian. Wow!
They always have cool posters.
Side note they had some costumes from Sleeping Beauty which were awesome.
The Lilac Fairy and Carabosse
So anyway going into this I knew the story of Giselle, plus I've seen it before. But we also knew that they choreography and such was reimagined. So we were excited to see new choreography.
our $10 seats.
We're seeing Giselle!!
We sat down and read the synopsis of the new version.
Or are we?
So in the original, Myrthe is the leader of the Wilis, who are the spirits of women who died before their wedding (presumably due to betrayal or broken hearts or whatever) and they summon Giselle once she dies of broken heart. But in this new version there's like a backstory with Giselle's parents... Myrthe was in love with Giselle's father, but he chose to marry Giselle's mother. Naturally Myrthe becomes an evil spirit and will have none of that so now she's all vengeful against men and especially in the village. Also Giselle's mom is the keeper of some weird crystal that can stop Myrthe. Okayyy....
In the original, Giselle has a heart condition so she's not supposed to exert herself - you know, not dance, or fall in love. So when she finds out Albrecht, her true love rich boy disguised and gallivanting and who could have avoided everything by not being a dick, is engaged, she goes mad and overexerts herself and dies as a result (or kills herself in some versions). In this version, Giselle is much stronger and more of a rebellious teen. Her rejection of Hilarion (her suitor who realizes Albrecht is straight up lying) is pretty funny in this version. But it makes her death make a lot less sense.
Albrecht and Hilarion are fighting over ME.
The second act was way better than the first. The first act was tooooooooooooooo different for me. The second held the spirit of the original a bit better. In the original, Albrecht is being danced to death by the Wilis and Giselle helps him by dancing with him and in his stead until dawn, when the Wilis disappear. Her love protects him and he gets to live. In this version, She fights against Myrthe, who is adamantly trying to kill Albrecht, but Giselle's mom comes in with the crystal to ultimately get rid of Myrthe. So that was different. There is still a tender moment where Giselle and Albrecht have one last pas de deux and I got really emotional. You watch them dance so tenderly and look so in love and you believe in all the things love can do before you remember that Giselle is already dead and they still can't be together. So she goes back to being dead and Albrecht gets to keep on living.
It's a beautifully sad story, really. The reimagination was kind of Giselle in names only as it used none of the choreography, setting, or even score. The names and skeleton of the narrative were the same, but they changed it to fit more with Korean instruments and stuff.
Always posing.
I'm left to wonder: couldn't they have made a new ballet? Many cultures have similar stories to Giselle: Boy and Girl fall in love but cant be together, they try, girl dies, boy tries to move heaven and earth to get girl back, supernatural forces must be beaten by combined love, boy loses girl again. Why even pretend it's the same thing as Giselle?
I was disappointed to not see the traditional Giselle, but I quite enjoyed this version. Had I been more aware going into it, I might have felt even better. I'm satisfied with the experience but I really want to see the classical version!
After, we got popped over to Gangnam to get pizza and cupcakes:
Butterfinger, Pink Chocolate, and Wedding Cake. He told us if we ate the wedding cake one we would get married soon LOL
Finally heading home after such an eventful weekend, we braced ourselves for the new week. MERS is still happening, and our schedules are a mess.
I was sad to miss dance class this week but it was nice to see some dancing rather than doing it.
Still, I feel pretty good about the way things are going.
Anyway, this week music wise here is a song I've had stuck in my head, along with the WTF video.
At Dream Concert, SPEED used skateboards. Here, heelies. Also the video is creepy to me, but the song is awesome.
Aaaand Fiction by Beast. As you know, I love Beast. They're supposed to have a comeback soon so I'm all about them.
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