This week, 쩔어, Jeju, 쩔어, My Life, 쩔어

Hi all! 

It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but here we are in October, which may be my favorite month. 

Everything really is 쩔어. That means "Dope." Like awesome. But 쩔어 or Zutter, or Juttah as it sounds like to me has more impact. Especially after learning the dance. Which I will have to post later. 

Anyway, here's the dance practice for GD and TOP (of Big Bang)'s 쩔어 since I love the song but don't care for the MV:

The background dancers slayyyy. 

Anyway. the highlight of the last few weeks has been Chuseok. My trip to Jeju was everything I imagined and more. I did get realy sick on the way back because a typhoon sent some pretty bad currents our way just in time for our ferry ride, but overall I had an awesome time. A lot of my students are on a field trip this week, so I get to recover a bit and relax.

For my whole Jeju album, look here: Jeju~~

After a late start (2AM on Saturday morning to take the bus... we almost didn't make the ferry at 9 because of Chuseok traffic and as such had a 4 hour stretch of no breaks) we made it to the ferry and on to Jeju.

Now a quick rundown of the highlights:

On the ferry that would try to kill me on the way back.

"Loveland" is a strange and wondrous place full of lewd and provocative sculptures 

I always try to imitate statues but I couldn't stand on my head on the concrete. Sigh.

It was pretty fun!

We then headed off to our hotel, Blue Hawaii, which was a really nice hotel but was quite remote. It took like 40 minutes to get into Jeju city, and even longer to get to many of the attractions of the day. Still, it was nice.

The view!

We went down to our first beach and got some relaxation and food in before heading back to the hotel. 

The beaches here are wonderful.

We got up bright and early to see the Manjung Gul Caves. It's actually a lava tube. And I took a lot of shitty pictures because of the lighting. It was actually pretty hard to walk in since it was not level and was, you know, lava, so the floor looked cool. It was hard to look at everything since we didn't have a ton of time. But it was cool to explore. It was freezing and scary like any good cave should be. I felt really World of Warcrafty this whole trip.

The well-lit area.

The end of the cave with this cool formation.

After hightailing it out of the cave like we were being chased, we headed to Seongsan Crater.

We have to climb that???

(Un)Fortunately there were stairs the whole way up the crater to climb it. It was really hard but the views... Oh man the views....

It's so shocking to see after living in Seoul for so long that I was dazzled. It was a tough climb up the stairs, but we made it!

Desiree and I pretending we aren't dying.

It's so green!

It was really windy up there.

We made our way down and wandered around the area for a little bit more before buying some chocolate and heading away.

It really is such a stunning island...

Sooooo windy

After a long day of exploring, we went to unwind at another beach, Hamduk.

The volcanic rock and stuff here is pretty cool.

We went back to the hotel before heading into town and getting some food.

On Monday we headed to the Cheonjiyeon waterfalls. By my Niagara Falls standards, they weren't much, but by my living in Seoul standards they were amazing!

Look at the colors!

So lovely.

I love Jeju.

After some more stairs and walking we got to the second one, which was also amazing. And the most waterfally of the waterfalls.

The third waterfall had a couple hundred stairs to get to it, but it was also beautiful:

I can't help but think I have never seen such a pretty color of water. Love it.

Afterwords, we hit some museums and then it was beach time! This time, Jungmun Beach. Finally we were at the beach when it was hot out, so we got lots of time in the sun before the clouds rolled in.

Okay but this sand literally never came off of anything.

After swimming and chilling for a few hours, we went to our buffet dinner and got treated to the most wonderful food along with the most stunning sunset:

The tour group made a reservation at this bar called Monkey Beach, which we have in Seoul too, so all of us headed there to get some free alcohol and have some fun. I have no idea how the bar made any money that night...

Everyone got a free bucket and 2 free shots. I do not want to tell you how much alcohol is in this bucket, but you can probably guesstimate that it is "a lot."

The buses took us back to the hotel where we prepared for our final day and journey home.

The last day we spent lounging at another beach, Gwakji.

It was quite windy and a little bit chilly, so less swimming but more chilling and relaxing occurred. 

I also got some awesome fish & chips.

It was a great day.

We made our way back to the ferry and got ready to go home.

When we were at Jungmun beach, I met some surfers who said that the waves would be 3 times as high the next day. I did not connect that it would make my ferry ride back almost hellish. Turns out some aftermath from a typhoon in Japan had made it's way to our area.

I had an absolute saint of a seat partner and some good friends giving me motion sickness cures the whole trip. Despite throwing up about 8 times, I kept in good spirits. I had a good vacation, and there was literally nothing I could do except endure. I knew it was finite. As Tina has me saying, "It's just pebbles." I couldn't let it trip me up for long. 

Aside from that, my trip was amazing. I loved it. I want to go back again. There is more to see and do, and I want to go back in spring or summer. Aside from Chuseok, it's not too expensive to go. See you again soon, Jeju!

I had Wednesday off, thank god, since I arrived at my apartment around 4 AM. I immediately came down with a bit of a cold, but quickly recovered. 

Saturday brought us to another Kpop cover dance performance with some friends. We did our AOA and Apink routine again, and we got some good spots for the concert the following day.

This was actually one of the most legit stages we performed on. It was after a marathon. Not sure why, but we got really good spots for the concert out of it, it was fun, and we got to meet up with old friends and make some new ones.

The concert on Sunday came after we slayyyyyed in dance class, so I was a little tired.

But we got escorted to our nice view and had a great time.

I took a few photos of each artist and then put my camera a way to enjoy the concert in the moment UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE WITH SELFIE STICKS AND DSLR CAMERAS AND STOOLS BLOCKING VIEWS.

hem hem.

Anyway:

Zhoumi from Super Junior M with the MC, Leeteuk from Super Junior.

Henry (Super Junior M)

He played the violin and piano because he's amazing.

Next we had the only girl group:

Red Velvet

And finally the group that I was most excited about, D&E: Donghae and Eunhyuk from Super Junior!

This is their last scheduled performance before they enlist in the army. I'm sad because I love Donghae. He's my bias in Super Junior. And I met Eunhyuk at his cafe. And they're awesome dancers and it's sad to see them go away for two years. Two other members are in the army from SuJu, and one more is set to enlist this year. I have never seen all of Super Junior perform together and perhaps I never will. They're not my favorite group anymore (I listen to Beast and Big Bang more these days), but Super Junior has such a special place in my heart for introducing me to Kpop.

Anyway, they were easily the best performance of the night. They have 10 years of SuJu experience and stage presence, and they were awesome and did my favorite songs. 

As such I took the most picture of them.

Eunhyuk

Donghae, 사랑해~~ (I love you!)

NOTE THE STUPID SELFIE STICK PEOPLE BLOCKING VIEWS. 

I know people love them and want to remember the performance, but do you have to record the whole thing? Are you really going to rewatch the cellphone video of a two hour concert over again?

Super Junior's Yesung (who just got out of the army) snuck on!

Perhaps my favorite dance, 촉이 와 (Choke-ee Wah or Can You Feel It?)

The one shot I got of Donghae without his silly glasses.

It was a great sendoff. Best of luck!

The moment we had been dreading finally arrived. EXO was on. Nevermind that I think it was a bit rude to put the younger group EXO as the closing after the much more senior and going-into-the-army Super Junior members (this is normal for SM to treat SuJu unfairly though since they sell themselves... SM puts no effort into them...) but the fans for EXO are insane.

We had no problems with people shoving around to get better views during the other parts of the concert (EXCEPT WHEN CHANYEOL WAS FEATURED IN THE RAPS AND PEOPLE WENT NUTS) until EXO. Then suddenly the stools and camera and elbows were flying.

Tina was not amused.

I love EXO's music. It's so fun to dance to. It's catchy. Them boyz iz hella fine. But their fans are crazy and ruin everything.

Thankfully we managed to get out of the way and enjoy the dance circle we made since we all knew Call Me Baby, a song we danced to the day before. So we still had fun. It's just rude and annoying to try and enjoy something and have so many people blatantly disregard everyone else for the sake of a video or picture.

And honestly? EXO looked terrible. Their stylist should be fired. But man is their music fun!

Those salmon suits do them no favors.

We took advantage of the stage setup and all of the crazy fans to take a picture that the security and press people also found amusing:

That is EXO so close on the stage behind us. Woo!

Selfies with EXO.

Overall it was really fun. Even the EXO part, because you just have to laugh. I was a 17 year old girl once. I know how exciting boy bands can be. But damn.

Thankfully all sorts of field trips are happening this week so I had 2 of 5 classes on Monday and I have none today, Tuesday. We also have Friday off for Hangeul Day, which is when they honor the Korean alphabet being made by King Sejong. Look at me, knowing things about Korea. I'm mostly happy for the day off.

So this week I get to coast a bit. I only have 2 days of teaching.

And I'm going to see Cinderella tonight! When we booked tickets to Beast we found out that Yoseob, the main vocals of the group, would be playing the prince! So we got tickets. So stoked!

So here's some music for this week:

D&E 촉이 와 (Choke-ee Wah or Can You Feel It?). Seriously, it's so adorable and fun. 

"Growing Pains" Ugh I love this song. I love them.

And an old favorite and the first chorus dance i ever learned, "Oppa, Oppa." I love how ridiculous this song is from start to finish. Ah man. I'll miss these guys a lot.

On to Cinderella:

My two favorite songs:

"Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?" From the Brandy version because I freaking love that version.

And my top favorite song:

"Ten Minutes Ago." It's slowed down in the Broadway version, which I really like.

Anyway, here's a clip of Yoseob (the girl is from the drama "Let's Eat" with Beast's Doojoon, which I also love) as the prince singing "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?" The song starts at like 30 seconds:

Isn't he so adorable and dreamy? UGH so excited to see it!

Off to plan some lessons for next week! ... Or to just listen to Cinderella all day. Either way, I'm off to enjoy! My life is really 쩔어 (zutter) right now~^^