I Need U (To Continue to be Amazing)~~

Hello hello!

I had a pretty easy week. 2 classes Monday. None on Tuesday. Only Wednesday and Thursday full of classes. Then Friday off!

Nevertheless, the week was full of amazing things ^^


On Tuesday night I skipped my language exchange to go see Cinderella with Beast's Yoseob as the prince!

It was AMAZING.

SERIOUSLY.

LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE HE IS.

See my previous blog post for videos.

It was even better with friends~~

I got home late but whatever. The show was amazing. The music is awesome. Korean musicals only last like 3 months but they spared no expense in the sets and costumes. I wish I could go again. I want to, but I should save my money and time. Yoseob is only in it until the 20th, and I want him to be the lasting image of the prince I have. 

Ugh I have been listening to it all week and just so happy!!

Wednesday was a bit long since it was back to my full schedule of teaching, but I was pretty stoked from Cinderella. Also I had good after school activities planned.

Normally I just go home and watch TV on Wednesdays, but this week I had special plans. A guy from my language exchange plays and loves hockey, and the professional Korean teams were playing at Mokdong Stadium on Wednesday. Mokdong Stadium is like 10 minutes from where I live! So I met up with him and we went to watch the games.

Hockey is not so popular in Korea.

 It was really fun! I forgot how much I missed hockey. And even though Korean University and Yonsei killed their opponents like 8-1, it was really fun to watch the games. And he's a pretty fun guy~^^

We ate some weird hot dogs at the arena. 

I made my way home and managed to take the bus in the wrong direction because I was a little bit distracted and not paying attention... But all's well that ends well. I even got to skype my friend Bryan from Bona's. I had a week full of Skype with Megan, Bryan, and my parents. Woo!

Thursday's are always long but fun since I have 6 classes, one of them being dance with Bang Bang Bang, and then my language exchange. After, I went over to Tina's and skyped my parents, then we went to bed. We had a long day ahead of us on Friday, so we got up hella early and set out for Seoraksan~

The express bus told us a 2 hour ride was in order, so we thought our 8 AM bus would get us there with plenty of time to hike and explore.

We took this at the rest stop because we weren't sure we would actually see any nature that day.

5 hours later, we were exhausted and frustrated. Then, lo and behold, the cable car was closed when we got to the park. It was really windy that day, so it wasn't running. The whole reason we came back was because it was rainy and dangerous the last time we were there and we wanted to climb to the top...


Alas. We looked around for some food. I wanted pizza, but it was like $18 for a basic one. We ended up at the cafe in the building of the cable car, resigned to chilling and charging our phones before heading home and calling it a lost day.



But then something strange happened. One of the food managers kept checking the glass doors behind us and then told the workers to get ready. Curious, we asked him. Turns out, the wind died down. They were starting the cable car!

At 2:45, we got tickets. At 2:50, we were on the first car up the mountain for the day.


I had joked that we wouldn't get to Seoraksan until 3, and at 3 we emerged from the trees and set foot on the top of the mountain. Amazing.

The leaves changed a bit! 

Views~

Reminds me of home~

Our final destination

Climbing

We kept saying how beautiful it was.

I seriously still can't believe we made it.

Feeling very World of Warcraft up here

Getting to the top!

I'm pretty sure they told us not to climb up to the top because of the high winds, but my Korean wasn't good enough to understand and my ambition wasn't weak enough to listen anyway. We braved the treacherous climb to the top, and with the wind threatening to blow us off we took in the views, still stunned that we were even up here after the day we'd had.

If you look closely, you can see the fear. 

View from the tip top

I didn't realize how close we were to the sea because last time we couldn't see anything.

Beautiful! Ehhh Tina's here too.

Clutching our phones as the wind tried to rip them from our grasp.

On top of the world.

Again, Tina, thanks for always having these adventures with me~~

Colors on the way down

Never thought I would smile like this that day.

my feelings after the 5 hour bus ride and the news of no cable car

my feelings after making my way down the mountain 

<3

Okay so the whole time Tina kept singing a song and here is that song:

Beast's "Bad Girl" contains the words "Down, down, we gotta get down" but Tina kept singing "Down, down, we're gonna get down" when she was scared when it was so windy and I was listening to my shuffle on my itunes and this song came on and I spit my drink everywhere. Also debut Beast is amazing to watch. I love this song.

Victory! 

It seems unreal that we got to accomplish our goal. We didn't get to do any other hikes, but we got what we wanted. We had some incidents at the taxi stand of people trying to shark our taxi, but we managed to get down the mountain.

We bought bus tickets and then headed to a cafe to chill.

Best Hot Chocolate I've had in Korea. 

I got worried because the bus times seemed long, and my suspicion of a long ride was confirmed on the bus, which was also late. But the 4 hour suggestion was an overestimate and we made it back home to Tina's apartment before midnight, which was shocking.


Thank you, Universe, for giving me not the day I was expecting but a wonderful day nonetheless. I'm so glad I have Tina here to share it with. And to take these sick pictures!

In that moment, it felt like the whole world was mine.

There's so much world out there left for me to see~~

After a long day, we chilled Saturday. Like napped and got Gusto Taco and straight up chilled. 

Sunday brought us back to our regular schedule with dance class, which we knew would be a doozy.

Our song? BTS's "I Need U." BTS (Bangtan Boys) is on par with EXO in popularity with my students these days, and I've seen them a few times at concerts and whatnot. They're pretty good! Really new - 2013 maybe? But after "I Need U" their popularity skyrocketed.

Their dancing is INSANE. With other groups we learn about a minute and a half to two minutes of the song. For BTS? 40 seconds. The hardest 40 seconds I've danced in this class. But man was it fun!

Here's the pros doing it:

The actual dance starts at around 45 seconds AND OFF IT GOES SO FAST OMG WHAT.

Holy shit. This dance isn't that hard in each step, but combined and at that speed it is killer. Like, oh my god I am so sore. But it was so fun! We all went in knowing we would have trouble, but we have a lot of good-natured people in the class and we're here to have fun, so it works. Our teacher is awesome too and she knows how we are, so she had fun teaching us this difficult choreography. Here are our attempts:

Tina's group, Group A

My Group, Group B (or group BTS as I dubbed us) featuring two girls from the LA Dand Joa studio and our Korean friend who hasn't come to class in forever on account of all the girl groups and performances we've had. 

I think the whole class did such a good job with this one! I loved it. I hope I can practice it more. Someday I should bust it out in front of my students. Instant popularity.

Another funny thing that happened: To leave our classroom. So Jung and I started quizzing the students on the vocab, having them spell the words. We did past tense, so we would tell them the present tense then they had to say and spell the past. This time we decided to give them the Korean and they have to say and spell the English. This requires me to speak Korean, which most of my 6th graders don't know I can do. We did insist to them that So Jung wrote out the pronunciations for me and I don't speak Korean to keep the illusion. Strictly speaking, So Jung DID write the pronunciations... in Korean... But all my kids were FREAKING out. Some were like "No it's weird stoooooooop" and some kept asking me to say more words. I can't wait to shock them someday and say a full sentence. Their heads might explode.

If you like BTS, you'll love their other song. When Tina and I first watched this, we thought they sped up the chorus because there's no way they can move that fast. But they really are that good.

This song, like last wee's GD and TOP song. is called "쩔어" but instead of "Zutter" it's translated as "Dope" or "Sick." So here is BTS doing 쩔어:

I love this song, but the dance looks like it would literally kill me to learn.

Here's the actual "I Need U" video. I prefer the dance version though. 

This week will be back to a normal schedule, I think. My energy is so high from these last few days and weeks that it's hard to be sad that I am back to my normal workload. Everything seems to be going my way these days. I'm enjoying my time here so much! I can't believe it's like halfway through October and it is just now FINALLY feeling like fall. SO HAPPY~~^^

Love you all! Can't wait to see what else October has in store.

^^