Restless Seoul : Hot Pink

Hello all! Welcome to 2016!!!

After all of the drama and intensity leading up to last week, this week was relatively quiet. I got even more sick after the dance performance and was deskwarming all day at school for the week, so nothing much happened there.

If you want to see a few more pics from our dance performance and see some of the other groups, Click here! At the bottom of the page you can click to see the other groups if you click the links with the up or down arrows, since many of you can't read the Korean anyway.

In any case, I had a relaxing week of nothing at work, so I made stuff for my camp the whole time. And watched a lot of TV. Sometimes they forget to turn the power on in my wing of the school since there is literally no one at school right now. One of my students even came in for camp but it starts tomorrow.

Outside of school I didn't do much this week either on account of being sick and also having nothing to do.

We went to Itaewon to get fish & chips on Tuesday, which was amazing.

Tuesday night I had some pretty bad personal stuff come up that carried over into Wednesday, and Grace and Tina came over to help me deal with that on Wednesday evening. It put me in a much better mood since it is always really great to see them, but I wish the circumstances had been better. Alas.

Thursday was New Year's Eve and So Jung happened to be at school that day, so I got to chill with her for a little while. Also my grad school bff Bryan got engaged! He proposed at Bonaventure with a killer ring. Good work, Bryan!

As I am 100 years old on the inside and was still sick, Tina and I stayed in for New Year's. We skyped our parents, so we got to be in 2016 while they were in 2015 haha.

Ahhhhh we're technically 26 Korean age, 24 American age. And we lived in a different year for 14 hours!

Wine and good times.

After lazing around most of Friday, we decided to welcome in the New Year with Grace and her boyfriend at the Mokdong Ice Rink, which is really close to where I live. It was super fun!

They make you wear helmets

We're the coolest

Tina and I snuck some pics of them

When they noticed that we had gotten off the ice hehehe

They snuck some of us too!

Literally two of my favorite souls in Seoul

We got some chicken and beer, then Coffee Bean (which is like our favorite coffee place and all of the people there know us since we frequent the one near my house so much) before heading home. It was a really good time. Spending hours together feels like minutes. What a good start to the new year!

Another good way to start was to be reminded of this lovely lady. Spent the new year together in 2014, reunited in 2015, and in 2016? Who knows where we'll meet.

On Saturday Tina and I finally got our lives together (after I went to the doctor in the morning) and saw Star Wars.

IT WAS AMAZING.

My favorite part is how angsty Kylo Ren was. And how the main character is a baddass girl. I wish Rey had been a thing when I was 9...

Also, do yourselves a favor and see the movie, then check out the Emo Kylo Ren twitter. It is amazing.

Here is a less emo version of him. His lightsaber design is hella cool. Practical? Kylo Ren don't care.

We met up with Lauren for the movie, and had dinner and ice cream after. It's been pretty warm here of late, and it's always nice to see Lauren. We all agreed that the movie had a lot of major plotholes and whatnot, but the nostalgia of it all took over and we loved the movie. When that scrolling text comes on the screen..... oh the feels!

We made our way home to Tina's place and played some games with our neighbors. If you want to ruin friendships. play "One Night: Ultimate Werewolf" and "The Resistance." Nah but really they're really fun games.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping since I'm sick and my medicine wasn't sitting well. So I was pretty tired Sunday morning, but super excited.

For the first week in a long time, we literally only had a 2 hour dance class. And this week Tina and I got our girl group wish: we did EXID's Hot Pink!

We're been begging for a girl group for like ever, and since we had the performance and other things, this is the first one since like September,

Unfortunately our normal beloved teacher's grandmother died, so we didn't get to see her. We had the head teacher for this class, and her style was a lot different. Still, we managed the whole song! I'm sore from all of the body rolls and core stuff, but it was so fun!

EXID was a group for a while, but they shot to popularity from a fancam of one of the members, Hani, performing this song:

"Up and Down"

Hani showing off one of the more famous moves from "Up and Down." You can understand the title.

Hani is awesome. People always told her she should get plastic surgery or told her she should look a certain way to get famous but she stuck to her guns and didn't, and now she's hella famous. She's also super tomboyish in real life, but obviously really sexy and feminine on stage. You go, Hani! You do you!

It was also just announced that she's confirmed to be dating JYJ's Junsu (who was famously part of TVXQ and split from SM Ent and the new group JYJ got blacklisted from broadcasting but is still hella popular also he's in Dracula the Musical and I love him...) and you can tell by this picture:

So in love

Seriously, the Korean tabloids are weird. But I really like both of them and hope they date well. I love celebrity couples!

Since "Up and Down" became famous, EXID has been a hot ticket. I've seen them a few times at various concerts and I really like them. Their songs are really catchy, and they're amazing. Their legs are amazing.

Another big hit, "Ah Yeah"

Finally doing one of their dances, I understand why.

Here's the dance we learned, "Hot Pink" in class today:

Since they do quite different stuff during the song, most of the time we followed Hani's moves (she has the blue-green hair and the plaid shirt) and then some of the others for parts where Hani doesn't do as much.

Usually we only learn a little bit of the song, but this time we learned the whole thing since it's not as complicated choreography, You just get to be sexy and have fun the whole time.

It was a lot less stressful than learning 1 minute of Growl, and while definitely easier than the boy groups we've been doing, it left me sore from being able to actually do the moves, so it felt good. Plus we got to leave after 2 hours, not stay at the studio for like 6, so it was awesome.

Here is a funny video of EXID attempting to dance to some famous boy groups songs: "I Need U" by BTS, "Growl" by EXO, and "Fiction" by Beast. I love everything and everyone in this video. They request Fiction because they don't know the other ones well and it's hilarious.

Hopefully I have a video of us doing Hot Pink soon! Here are some photos anyway: